Bose sound Bar Not Showing with Airplay2
Updated: Jan 10, 2021
We have three Bose Soundbar 700's in our house but only one of the three was available through Apple AirPlay 2. Today, I finally decided to dig in and try to figure out what was going on.
The problem, as it turns out, was a very simple issue which makes perfect sense now. Before I get there, I went through the normal troubleshooting steps. I confirmed that each speaker was attached to our WiFi network. I confirmed my phone, which I was trying to place music from, was connected to the network. I also checked that my Eero wasn't blocking the speakers.
As it turns out, the problem was that I had multiple devices on our home network with the same name. In order for a device to show up with AirPlay2, it needs a unique name that isn't shared with other devices on your home network.
Well, obviously, lol.
Unfortunately, Apple doesn't make it obvious that multiple devices on the WiFi network are sharing the same name when it comes to AirPlay2. For me, as I've added devices over the years to our network, I generally accept the pre-built names, i.e., Living Room, Kitchen, and etc. In this instance, the Bose speakers that weren't working were "Home Theater" and "Living Room", both of which were names used by my Apple TV's in those same rooms.
To resolve, I renamed them to "Bose - Living Room", "Bose - Home Theater", "Apple TV - Living Room" and "Apple TV - Home Theater". Once I gave each of my Bose speakers a unique name, they all showed up available with AirPlay2 and I can now stream George Ezra to each of the speakers and dance the day and night away.