This project is a GPLv3 open source unix AirPlay2 Mirror server for Linux, macOS, and *BSD. It was initially developed by antimof using code from RPiPlay, which in turn derives from AirplayServer, shairplay, and playfair. (The antimof site is no longer involved in development, but periodically posts updates pulled from the new main UxPlay site).
UxPlay is tested on a number of systems, including (among others) Debian 10.11 “Buster” and 11.2 “Bullseye”, Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04, Linux Mint 20.3, Pop!_OS 21.10 (NVIDIA edition), Rocky Linux 8.5 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.3, Arch Linux 5.16.8, macOS 12.3 (Intel and M1), FreeBSD 13.0.
-Its main use is to act like an AppleTV for screen-mirroring (with audio) of iOS/iPadOS/macOS clients (iPhones, iPads, MacBooks) in a window on the server display (with the possibility of sharing that window on screen-sharing applications such as Zoom) on a host running Linux, macOS, or other unix. UxPlay supports a “legacy” form of Apple’s AirPlay Mirror protocol introduced in iOS 12; client devices running iOS/iPadOS 9.3.5 or later are supported, as is a (non-free) Windows-based AirPlay-client software emulator, AirMyPC. (Details of what is publically known about Apple’s AirPlay2 protocol can be found here and here).
+Its main use is to act like an AppleTV for screen-mirroring (with audio) of iOS/iPadOS/macOS clients (iPhones, iPads, MacBooks) in a window on the server display (with the possibility of sharing that window on screen-sharing applications such as Zoom) on a host running Linux, macOS, or other unix. UxPlay supports a “legacy” form of Apple’s AirPlay 2 protocol introduced in iOS 12, and some features are missing. (Details of what is publically known about Apple’s AirPlay2 protocol can be found here and here).
The UxPlay server and its client must be on the same local area network, on which a Bonjour/Zeroconf mDNS/DNS-SD server is also running (only DNS-SD “Service Discovery” service is strictly necessary, it is not necessary that the local network also be of the “.local” mDNS-based type). On Linux and BSD Unix servers, this is usually provided by Avahi, through the avahi-daemon service, and is included in most Linux distributions (this service can also be provided by macOS, iOS or Windows servers).
Connections to the UxPlay server by iOS/MacOS clients can be initiated both in AirPlay Mirror mode (which streams lossily-compressed AAC audio while mirroring the client screen, or in the alternative AirPlay Audio mode which streams Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio without screen mirroring (the accompanying cover art in this mode is not displayed, but metadata is displayed in the terminal). Switching between these two modes during an active connection is possible: in Mirror mode, close the mirror window and start an Audio mode connection, switch back by initiating a Mirror mode connection.
NVIDIA with proprietary drivers
The nvh264dec plugin (included in gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad since GStreamer-1.18.0) can be used for accelerated video decoding on the NVIDIA GPU after NVIDIA’s CUDA driver libcuda.so is installed. This plugin should be used with options uxplay -vd nvh264dec -vs glimagesink. For GStreamer-1.16.3 or earlier, replace nvh264dec by the older pluginnvdec, which must be built by the user: See these instructions.
Video4Linux2 support for the Raspberry Pi Broadcom GPU
-Raspberry Pi (RPi) computers can run UxPlay with software decoding of h264 video (by adding -avdec to the uxplay options) but this usually has unacceptable latency, and hardware-accelerated GPU decoding should be used. The unmaintained 32-bit-only omx (OpenMAX) driver used for this by RPiPlay is no longer officially supported by RPi OS (Bullseye): the replacement is v4l2 (Video4Linux2). Fixes to the GStreamer v4l2 plugin that allow it to work with UxPlay on RPi are now in the GStreamer development branch, and will be available in the upcoming GStreamer-1.22 release, A (partial) backport (as gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-1.18.4-2+~rpt1) has already appeared in RPi OS updates. Until the full update appears, or if you are using a different distribution, you can find patching instructions for GStreamer in the UxPlay Wiki. Patches are available for all GStreamer releases 1.18.4 and later.
Raspberry Pi (RPi) computers can run UxPlay with software decoding of h264 video but this usually has unacceptable latency, and hardware-accelerated GPU decoding should be used. Distributions such as RPi OS (Bullseye) release have dropped support for unmaintained 32-bit-only OpenMax (omx) GPU decoding (used by RPiPlay), in favor of Video4Linux2 (v4l2). Fixes to the GStreamer v4l2 plugin that allow it to work with UxPlay on RPi are now in the GStreamer development branch, and will appear in the upcoming GStreamer-1.22 release. A (partial) backport (as gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-1.18.4-2+~rpt1) has already appeared in RPi OS updates. Until the full update appears, or if you are using a different distribution, you can find patching instructions for GStreamer in the UxPlay Wiki. Patches are available GStreamer releases 1.18.4 and later.
Some Linux distributions such as Debian do not allow distribution of compiled GPL code linked to OpenSSL-1.1.1 because its “dual OpenSSL/SSLeay” license has some incompatibilities with GPL, unless all code authors have explicitly given an “exception” to allow such linking (the historical origins of UxPlay make this impossible to obtain). Other distributions treat OpenSSL as a “System Library” which the GPL allows linking to.
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@The above script installs the executable file “uxplay” to /usr/local/bin, (and installs a manpage to somewhere like /usr/local/share/man/man1 and README files to somewhere like /usr/local/share/doc/uxplay). It can also be found in the build directory after the build processs.
Finally, run uxplay in a terminal window. If it is not seen by the iOS client’s drop-down “Screen Mirroring” panel, check that your DNS-SD server (usually avahi-daemon) is running: do this in a terminal window with systemctl status avahi-daemon. If this shows the avahi-daemon is not running, control it with sudo systemctl [start,stop,enable,disable] avahi-daemon (or avahi-daemon.service). If UxPlay is seen, but the client fails to connect when it is selected, there may be a firewall on the server that prevents UxPlay from receiving client connection requests unless some network ports are opened. See Troubleshooting below for help with this or other problems.
One common problem involves GStreamer attempting to use incorrectly-configured or absent accelerated hardware h264 video decoding (e.g., VAAPI). Try “uxplay -avdec” to force software video decoding; if this works you can then try to fix accelerated hardware video decoding if you need it. See Usage for more run-time options.
Raspberry Pi: For GStreamer-1.20 or earlier, see patching instructions for GStreamer. If “uxplay” by itself does not work, use “uxplay -v4l2” (or use “-rpi” as a synonym for “-v4l2”) on your desktop X11 system, and optionally specify a videosink with “-vs ..”; use “uxplay -rpiwl” as a synonym for “-v4l2 -vs waylandsink” on a desktop system with Wayland (this applies to Ubuntu). On a system without X11 that uses framebuffer video (such as RPi OS Bullseye “Lite”) use “uxplay -rpifb” as a synonym for “uxplay -v4l2 -vs kmssink”.
Raspberry Pi: For GStreamer-1.20 or earlier, see patching instructions for GStreamer. If “uxplay” by itself does not work, use “uxplay -v4l2” (or use “-rpi” as a synonym for “-v4l2”) on your desktop X11 system, and optionally specify a videosink with “-vs ..”; use “uxplay -rpiwl” as a synonym for “-v4l2 -vs waylandsink” on a desktop system with Wayland (this applies to Ubuntu). On a system without X11 that uses framebuffer video (such as RPi OS Bullseye “Lite”) use “uxplay -rpifb” as a synonym for “uxplay -v4l2 -vs kmssink”. You can test UxPlay with software-only video decoding using option -avdec.
Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS (now continued as Rocky Linux or Alma Linux): (sudo yum install) openssl-devel libplist-devel avahi-compat-libdns_sd-devel (some from the “PowerTools” add-on repository) (+libX11-devel for ZOOMFIX). The required GStreamer packages (some from rpmfusion.org) are: gstreamer1-devel gstreamer1-plugins-base-devel gstreamer1-libav gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free (+ gstreamer1-vaapi for intel graphics).
OpenSUSE: (sudo zypper install) libopenssl-devel libplist-devel avahi-compat-mDNSResponder-devel (+ libX11-devel for ZOOMFIX). The required GStreamer packages (you may need to use versions from Packman) are: gstreamer-devel gstreamer-plugins-base-devel gstreamer-plugins-libav gstreamer-plugins-bad (+ gstreamer-plugins-vaapi for Intel graphics).