MacOS – Macbook not discovering Apple TV for Airplay after Mavericks update

This is a long-standing bug in the software with OS X Mountain Lion, that unfortunately Apple has not acknowledged or addressed. The simplest solution is to restart, but I don't like to restart my computer simply because AirPlay is broken.

Instead I do the following, which fixes the issue nearly 100% of the time, without a reboot:

1. Turn off AirPlay Mirroring
2. Open Terminal.
3. Type in the following commands (pressing return after each):

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

You should see your AirPlay icon disappear and quickly reappear in your menu bar during this process. After that, fingers crossed, all should work again. I stole this fix from the Apple Support Forums and it has worked well for me.

Okay, after dealing with this for quite some time, I finally found a solution that worked for me. I figured I'd come and share for others as well.

In order to resolve the choppy playback, I ultimately went in to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset All Settings. After resetting, the device downloaded the very latest OS for the Apple TV, and after everything was done, the Airplay quality between the MacBook and AppleTV is actually pretty decent.

In testing, I was able to mirror my display without any noticeable choppiness. I was also able to extend my desktop on to the TV, and this worked surprisingly well. Even playing YouTube videos was of decent quality, with almost zero choppiness during playback.

What I have not tried yet... and will update this answer later on, is reconnecting my photo streams. As it's common to have 1000+ photos in my shared streams, I'm concerned that this may have slowed the device down (just a guess, honestly). I'll do some more testing today, mirroring as is, then adding the photo streams and comparing, to see if that causes any issue. If it does, I can always reset again.