Need a replacement for Beamer, must work on M1/Big Sur

Beamer has been my go-to app for streaming a file from my Mac to my AppleTV.

Unfortunately, the app immediately crashes on Big Sur (or maybe just on M1 Macs, I’m not sure which), the developer has been unresponsive (their ‘support’ link on their website leads to an expired page, and their Twitter page is idle since September 2018).

Without getting into something like Plex, I am looking for an app that can basically take any video file and send audio and video to the AppleTV.

Any recommendations?

(x/p to MPU Forum)

Also had problems with Beamer. Not crashing. Once in a while it doesn’t stream.

JustStream. Works like Beamer, but in menu bar.

Also Elmedia Player. Works more like VLC/IINA, but with ability to send to Apple TV.

Interestingly both JustStream and Elmedia Player are available via Setapp. I don’t really like JustStream being menu-bar only. Elmedia Player’s UI is ugly, but I’ll give it a go.

Thanks!

Update:

MPU folks recommended Airflow (which also works well), but I’m going to stick with Elmedia Player for now, since I already have Setapp. The UI isn’t pretty, but it works nearly the same as Beamer did.

Airplay doesn’t do it for people? is such apps just for non standard Mac codecs? Genuinely curious.

JustStream worked well for me, although the need to download the audio driver separately threw me for a bit. Thanks.

AirPlay, when I’ve. tried it, always seemed fragile and persnickety. That being said, I haven’t tried it again in a long time.

I’ve run into that with various Apple technologies in the past, like AirDrop. For the longest time, it was unreliable whenever I tried it. It’s still a little funky, but I’ve taken to using it preferentially when moving screenshots to my Mac.

AirPlay was the same way, years ago, but AirPlay 2 was an improvement and with newer devices and operating systems throughout, it seems to be pretty solid now.

I think/thought that these apps still stream video files through Airplay. I could use QuickTime Player to stream videofile.mp4 files onto my Apple TV.

I use the alternative players above because QuickTime Player does not open videofile.mkv or videofile.webm.

Also, the more specialised apps may have a playlist feature, so that one video plays after the other on the Apple TV without constant intervention.

1 Like

Yes I can see that and some of the apps also broadcast to smart TVs as well.

I have found Airplay to be very reliable, have any of you experience with PC based apps (hopefully free, thinking students here) beaming to AppleTVs?

Beamer Lives!

I was happy to see this today:

Release Notes for Beamer 3.5

  • Adds support for Apple Silicon Macs
  • Fixes layout issues on macOS Big Sur

Source: https://beamer-app.com/release-notes/3.5.html


I haven’t actually tried it yet but wanted to pass along the good news.

You can download latest version here.