So you are an iDevice owner and hate Apple just because whatever it makes is proprietary to its own product. In same quest their new service called AirPlay is only supported by Apple TV, Mac and few other speakers/docks. This service is frankly speaking quite fantastic because you can stream music from your iDevice or iTunes to any of your AirPlay supported device and you admit it or not it is a great feature for a smart phone.
Great if it’s so fantastic, I want to try!
I knew you would like to try this service and will gradually become used to this service. Now if you are a Mac user you already have this functionality, but if you are a Windows PC user then Apple doesn’t support you. I know it’s bad and you may curse apple for this, but don’t.. Instead bless the open community that works so hard to keep you happy and derive proprietary functionality to more common devices. One of such open source community contributor is Frank Friemel who developed Shairport4w.
Shairport4w is a small, simple, portable and above all free App that helps you stream all your music from iDevice to Windows using AirPort. Basically Shairport4w turns your Windows into an AirPlay receiver makes streaming breeze. The total setup takes less than a minute, this app relies on Apple’s Bonjour service and it should be running to hear your iDevice on PC. Bonjour service gets automatically installed with iTunes and you needn’t install it separately. If you don’t have an iTunes installation then on first run Shairport4w will ask you to install Bonjour service.
Following is the step by step process to make this software run and successfully receive AirPlay signals:
1. Download Shairport4w from sourceforge [Download Link]
2. As already highlighted, it’s a portable utility and installation is not required. Just extract the zip file.
3. Click on change to specify a name and password(optional) for your Shairport4w receiver. Once done and click set.
4. Leave it running in background and your Windows is ready to receive your stream.
5. Launch iTunes from any Computer or Music app from your iPhone, iPod or iPad and select Shairport4w name from AirPlay list and you are good to go.
Note: It can only be used to stream music and not videos, although you will be able to hear audio from a video.