Any way to use AirPlay, instead of Screen Share, to an Apple TV?

A slideshow app for Google Photos and your Camera Roll
ikjadoon
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Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2020 2:46 pm

Any way to use AirPlay, instead of Screen Share, to an Apple TV?

Postby ikjadoon » Fri Apr 24, 2020 2:57 pm

Unfortunately, the current app uses the iOS Share Screen API instead of the AirPlay API to send the photo feed to an Apple TV. Because of this, we can't automate the app.

iOS Shortcuts, the first-party tool to automate iOS apps, only allows AirPlay to be triggered. Share Screen, presumably for security restrictions, can't be triggered.

Or is there another way to automate Soloslides to send the photo feed to the Apple TV, say, every morning at 6AM? If not, I'd love to put AirPlay compatibility in as a feature request. With AirPlay, we'd be able to automate the app & it'd be a great way to wake up to see your photos scrolling through in the living room TV, instead of on the small iPad screen alone.

That is, today with iOS Shortcuts, you can only trigger Soloslides to open. We'd love if we could also trigger Soloslides to begin broadcasting to the Apple TV, via iOS Shortcuts.

We love the app otherwise; clean, simple, just enough feature, and well worth the purchase!

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tim
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Re: Any way to use AirPlay, instead of Screen Share, to an Apple TV?

Postby tim » Fri Apr 24, 2020 3:32 pm

Thanks for the feedback! seems like you have an interesting use-case.

What most people refer to with "AirPlay" is actually designed for video & audio only. You can't "AirPlay" static photos AFAIK - that's why screen mirroring works the way that it does.

A couple of thoughts:
  • did you see Night Time mode in SoloSlides? That lets you schedule when it shows an image. This should work over screen mirroring too, if you're able to leave your screen mirrored all the time.
  • Rather than build automation options into the app, we should just have a native Apple TV app instead... assuming you have a gen4+ Apple TV this would be the better option...
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ikjadoon
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Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2020 2:46 pm

Re: Any way to use AirPlay, instead of Screen Share, to an Apple TV?

Postby ikjadoon » Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:54 pm

Thank you so much for the reply, Tim! My apologies for the delay. I think I hadn't set up the notifications properly here.

Yes, definitely a bit of a unique case, I think, haha.

Oh, I understand: that I did not know about AirPlay. Thank you for enlightening me.

Ah, yes. We actually do use Night Mode on the iPad all the time! The issue becomes that the TV gets used throughout the day on different inputs and then turned off at night. Currently, when we turn on Screen Mirroring (and I presume AirPlay, but I could be wrong), iOS automatically 1) turns on the TV and 2) switches the input to the Apple TV. With Night Mode, it'd depend on having the TV set to the Apple TV input each night and ensuring no one turned off the TV.

Oh, that's a good question: we do have a recent model, the current-gen Apple TV 4K. I don't know enough about Apple TV apps, actually, but if they can be set to turn on at a set time, that would be neat.

I understand that this might not be a popular request, too, so I'll try working here to see if I can try to automate turning on screen mirroring with Accessibility Gestures.

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tim
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Re: Any way to use AirPlay, instead of Screen Share, to an Apple TV?

Postby tim » Tue Apr 28, 2020 12:06 am

No worries, and thanks for the update.
Interesting set of challenges you face -- if the TVs are turned off at night, are you saying they auto-power-on when you turn on screen mirroring? That's not a feature my TVs have, so I don't have any experience with that. I wonder if that is a newer Apple TV HDMI-CEC thing...

At the moment we don't have the resources to develop this app for tvOS but it is always on my mind...
Please write a review for Wifibooth on the Apple App store! Indie developers like me really need people like you to review their apps. Instructions on how to write a review: http://goo.gl/w8NsDI.


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