AirPlay Receiver option missing from sharing preferences pane

Question

Mac mini 2018. macOS Monterey 12.5

I have previously used this desktop as an AirPlay receiver. In the sharing pane of the system preferences there was a tick box for turingin airplay receiver on/off.

That tick box is no longer present, and I don't know why. I have reset the NVRAM, and booted in safe mode, with no change.

In System>Library>PreferencesPanes>SharingPref.PrefPane>Contents>Resources there is a xml file named "service list." It reads:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>OpticalDiscSharing</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <false/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>OpticalDiscSharing</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Services_DVDorCDSharing</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>ScreenSharing</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <false/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>ScreenSharing</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Services_ScreenSharing</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>AppleSharing_FileSharing</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <true/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>AFPStopWindow</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>AppleSharing_PrinterSharing</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <false/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>PrinterService</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Services_PrinterSharing</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>AppleSharing_RemoteLoginSharing</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <false/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>RemoteLoginService</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Services_RemoteLogin</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>ARDSharing</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <false/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>ARDService</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Services_ARDService</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>AppleSharing_AppleEventSharing</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <false/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>RemoteAEPassword</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Services_RemoteAppleEvent</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>InternetService</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <true/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>InternetService</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Internet</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>ContentCaching</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <false/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>ContentCaching</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Services_ContentCaching</string>
    </dict>
    **<dict>
        <key>class</key>
        <string>AirPlayReceiverSharing</string>
        <key>clientonly</key>
        <false/>
        <key>nibname</key>
        <string>AirPlayReceiverSharing</string>
        <key>searchKeyword</key>
        <string>Services_AirPlayReceiver</string>
    </dict>**
</array>
</plist>

(Bold added)

Can I just change "false" to "true" and save the file?

Any other ideas? I have no idea what I'm doing.

Answer 1

After further research, I learned that in this model, Apple deactivated the AirPlay Receiver feature with the release of macOS 12.3.

There's a complicated patch posted on GitHub using OpenCore Legacy Patcher, which I'm trying to figure out.

https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/releases

Answer 2

Simplify things and just use homebrew to install shairport-sync and pulseaudio, if all you need is audio. .

brew install shairport-sync
brew install pulseaudio

Then start pulseaudio audio server, and afterward the shairport-sync server that is essentially the airplay receiver. You can use two different terminal windows for this at the beginning. If everything goes as planned the shairport-sync will connect to pulseaudio and pulseaudio will in turn play the streamed data that receives from it. You can tweak settings in /usr/local/etc/shairport-sync/ and /usr/local/etc/pulse/

pulseaudio --exit-idle-time=-1
shairport-sync

Go to another device and select your Mac as the Airplay destination. And voila, your Mac is the Airplay receiver. It works for audio only. You can then dedicate your time to make pulseaudio and shairport-sync start automatically at login as daemons and with no terminal required.