Airplay is the Apple equivalent to Google’s Chromecast feature. The idea is to be able to wirelessly stream audio or video to a nearby device, quickly and seamlessly. If you own any Apple products, like an iPhone or Mac, you’ve probably used Airplay to mirror your screen, send music to a smart speaker, or watch a TV show on your TV.
But now you have a Fire TV Stick and you are wondering, why is there no Airplay support? It is one downside to the Fire TV Stick, but there is a workaround. You can use a 3rd party app on your Fire TV Stick to gain Airplay functionality.
In this guide, I’m going to explain how to get Airplay to work on a Fire TV Stick. I’ll walk you through the process of installing the 3rd party app. Then I will show you how to stream something over Airplay. Finally, I’ll give you a review of the app, and my overall thoughts on how well it works.
AirScreen app workaround
The 3rd party app that we will be using is called AirScreen. It’s an app on the Fire TV store that enables all the popular streaming connections, such as Airplay and Chromecast.
Since Fire TV Stick’s don’t support Airplay, we will have to install this app to enable it. You only have to install AirScreen on the Fire TV Stick, so don’t worry about having to put anything on your Apple devices. Once installed on the Fire TV Stick, it will just show up as a device when you want to Airplay something.
Install AirScreen on your Fire TV Stick
To install AirScreen, navigate to the Amazon App Store on your Fire TV Stick. Use the search tool to search for “AirScreen”.
Click on Get to download AirScreen. It’s a free app. Once it is installed, click Open.
Mirror your iPhone, iPad, or Mac screen
Before you can Airplay to the Fire TV Stick, you need to add your device. First, make sure your device is connected to the same Wifi network as your Fire TV Stick. Then, open up the AirScreen app.
Continue through the welcome message until you get to a screen with a QR code and URL. This is how you add your device. If you have an iPhone or iPad, just scan the QR code. For Mac, visit the URL in a web browser.
If the connection was successful, the AirScreen app should change to the dashboard, and your Mac or iPhone should land on a page with some brief tutorials on how to stream your content.
On the AirScreen app, I recommend changing the name of the device so something like Fire TV Stick. You can do this from the settings gear icon in the menu.
To stream something to the Fire TV Stick, you need to mirror your screen. Open your settings on Mac or iOS, tap the screen mirroring icon, and select whatever name you assigned on the AirScreen app. On your device, put whatever content you are playing in fullscreen mode and hit play.
Review of the AirScreen app
Using the AirScreen app to bring Airplay functionality to a Fire TV Stick is not a perfect solution. The quality of the stream isn’t as good as native Airplay or Chromecast. At times, the connection is glitchy. But if you have a good Wifi connection, it does a decent job.
One confusing thing about this workaround is that you have to use screen mirroring mode to stream content, you can’t just hit the Airplay icon. I’m sure this has to do with the limitations of the app. Screen mirroring can’t stream at a normal Airplay bitrate, so screen mirroring is the only option.
Final thoughts
Overall, using AirScreen to get Airplay support on a Fire TV Stick is a decent workaround. If you rely on Airplay a lot, I wouldn’t recommend this as a long term solution, unless you really don’t mind the glitches and quality issues. It would be better to find a used Apple TV 4K, rather than purchasing the Fire TV Stick.
But I think most people just need a quick way to get content from their iPhone or Mac to their existing Fire TV Stick. If that sounds like you, as it was for me, then this workaround does the trick.
Related: Has Your Fire TV Stick Gotten Slower? Try These Tips