Imagine arriving home, listening to music on your iPhone. You want to start that music playing on your home speakers instead, only you don’t want all the hassle of using Control Center, or the AirPlay panel, to do the connection manually.

If you own a HomePod, all you have to do is hold your iPhone near it, and playback will transfer. But what about regular AirPlay speakers? Can you hand off to those? Yes! You can. With a quick one-time setup, you can have the music or podcast app switch from your headphones, and play on any AirPlay speaker you have at home.

Sony is rolling out an update to select 2018 and 2019 TVs that adds AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support for the first time.

The features are part of a wider Android 9 upgrade, which also adds Dolby Atmos. But if your existing set isn’t on the list of supported devices today, it never will be.

In iOS 13, you can share songs and watch movies with a friend, with each of you using your own AirPods. The new feature is called Audio Sharing, and it lets you instantly — and temporarily — pair a second set of AirPods to your iPhone or iPad. It’s like the olde schoole method of using a headphone splitter to plug two sets of headphones into one jack socket, only way more expensive and fancy.

Here’s how to use it.

LG will start bringing AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to its newest Smart TV sets this week.

2019 models will play nicely with iPhone, iPad, and Mac after the update. You will be able to stream content straight from your Apple devices, and control your set in the Home app on iOS.

Netflix has explained why it stopped supporting AirPlay video casting in its iOS app. The change is a result of the new TVs with built-in AirPlay support being released, and apparently not in retaliation for the recent announcement of Apple TV+, a rival streaming service.

You can no longer stream Netflix programs from your iPhone to a big-screen TV via AirPlay.

This feature, which has been available for many years, disappeared just a few days after the announcement of Apple TV+, a rival streaming service. The timing has brought accusations that Netflix stripped out AirPlay in retaliation.

Update: Netflix has released a statement explaining why it pulled this feature out of its app. To learn more, please read Netflix says it ended AirPlay support to benefit customers.

The wait for LG’s first lineup of TVs with Apple tech built in is almost over. After unveiling them  in January, the Korean company said today that it will begin rolling out its big-screen models with AirPlay 2 and HomeKit in April.

These are apparently part of Apple’s move to broaden the availability of the video streaming service it’s expected to unveil in a couple of weeks.

iPhone, iPad and Mac should soon easily stream video to Roku boxes if an unconfirmed report is correct. Roku is reportedly talking with Apple about adding AirPlay 2 to its products. 

Apple has recently been working to significantly broaden the availability of its proprietary video and audio protocol.

Popular open-source video player VLC is getting AirPlay support “in about a month.” VideoLan, the team behind it, also plans to make it easier for users to switch to VLC from iTunes.

The confirmation comes just as VLC celebrated a staggering 3 billion downloads — around a quarter of which came from mobile devices.

One of the nice surprises to come out of CES this week is that a bunch of TV manufacturers are finally adding AirPlay 2 support to their latest sets. To help you keep track of which ones, Apple has published a list of TVs that are compatible with its streaming platform.

These are the ones to look out for if you want to send content to your TV over AirPlay.