Jailbreak: How To Turn Your iPhone and iPad Into AirPlay Speakers

One of the current limitations of Apple's AirPlay technology is that you cannot use an iOS device as an AirPlay speaker. Sure you can do this with an Apple TV. However, you can’t send audio from an iOS device to another iOS device or from iTunes on your Mac/PC to an iPhone/iPad. However, the folks at MacStories have figured out a way to do just that using jailbroken devices. According to MacStories:

Imagine the possibilities of iOS devices as AirPlay speakers: you’re in the car, iPhone is connected to your car’s audio setup, a friend’s in the backseat playing with his iPad. He wants to send some music from his iPad library to the iPhone, he fires up the iPod app on his tablet and instantly streams music to the car’s audio system thanks to the iPhone acting as a speaker. Or, your Mac’s in your bedroom and you want to play some tunes on your iPad. If only the iPad was an AirPlay speaker, you wouldn’t have to sync music (and thus eat space) on it.

Requirements:

• iTunes 10.1 installed on your computer;
• Jailbroken iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad running iOS 4.1 / iOS 4.2.1 (4.2.1 recommended);
• This .zip archive;
• Cyberduck installed on your Mac (WinSCP for Windows users)

- Download this archive, and extract the contents on your computer. You’ll have two files ready to be copied on your iOS device: “airtunesd” and “com.apple.airtunesd.plist”. - Copy “airtunesd” to /usr/libexec on your iOS device. Copy “com.apple.airtunesd.plist” to System/Library/LaunchDaemons. You can use Cyberduck for this. In order to transfer files on your iOS device, make sure you’ve installed OpenSSH from Cydia. - Change the permissions for both files to 755. You can do this using Cyberduck or iFile directly on your device. - Reboot your device. - Make sure your computer and the iOS device are on the same local network. - Start iTunes on your computer, and play a song. If everything has been set up correctly, you should notice the AirPlay icon in the lower right corner. Click on it, and you’ll see a speaker icon with the name of the iOS device you want to turn into an AirPlay speaker.

This is awesome. Imagine turning your old iPhone 3G into an AirPlay device for your audio system. Or, being able to stream sound from your computer to your iPhone over Wi-Fi. If any of our readers attempt this nice trick, please let us know. Leave your comments below.

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