Chrome and Safari can send YouTube to one AirPlay speaker from the Mac’s sound menu. Playing it on two or more takes either a Multi-Output Device (wired or Bluetooth only) or a mixer app that takes the browser’s audio. The one-speaker part is free and takes ten seconds. The rest is where people get stuck, usually after half an hour of looking for a setting in Chrome that was never there.
How do you send a YouTube tab to an AirPlay speaker?
You don’t send the tab. You point the whole Mac at the speaker and the tab follows.
Open Control Center in the menu bar, click AirPlay under Sound, and pick the speaker. Everything the Mac plays now goes there: the YouTube tab, Spotify, the message chime, all of it. Swap back the same way. It survives a restart, so the speaker you left it on this morning is the one it wakes up on. There is no per-tab control, and nothing in Chrome’s own menus does this, because Chrome never talks to the HomePod at all. It hands the sound to macOS and macOS delivers it wherever it is currently pointed.
That is also where the limit lives. Apple’s own page on streaming audio says it in one line: “You can’t use AirPlay to stream audio to multiple speakers from Control Center on a Mac.” Not a Chrome problem, not a YouTube problem. Tick one, and the rest of the house stays quiet.
Is Safari’s AirPlay button the same thing?
No, and mixing the two up wastes a good hour.
Play a video in Safari and the player picks up an AirPlay button of its own. That one sends the video, picture and sound together, to an Apple TV or an AirPlay-compatible TV. It is a screen, not a speaker, and it is why lip sync usually holds up on that route: the TV gets both halves and lines them up itself.
The Control Center route is the audio one. It leaves the picture on your Mac and moves only the sound. Two different buttons, two different jobs, and only one of them has anything to do with getting a song into the kitchen.
Can a Multi-Output Device play YouTube on two speakers?
It can, with two conditions that rule out most of the reason people want it.
Audio MIDI Setup, in /Applications/Utilities, can stack several outputs into one. Apple’s guide walks through it: add two devices to a multi-output device and audio sent to the primary device also plays through the others. Select it as the Mac’s output, open YouTube, and both speakers play.
The first condition is that AirPlay speakers are often greyed out in that list, so what you can actually stack is wired speakers and Bluetooth speakers. The second is that the volume keys on your keyboard stop working while a Multi-Output Device is selected, which catches everyone out on day one. It also copies the same sound to both and does nothing about timing, so two speakers of different makes tend to echo each other slightly. Playing Mac audio on multiple speakers at the same time has the full recipe and the rest of the catches.
Why is YouTube’s sound behind the picture over AirPlay?
Because AirPlay sends the audio ahead of time and the speaker holds it before playing, and the picture on your screen gets no such head start.
That head start is the point. Wi-Fi drops packets and re-sends them, and a speaker with a second of music in hand plays through that without you ever hearing it. The cost is a gap between the Mac making a sound and you hearing it, and over AirPlay that gap is about two seconds (Rogue Amoeba’s note on audio delays puts the number on it). macOS has no setting for it.
Which decides what this is good for. Music videos, a live set, a long mix, a podcast with a face on it you were not watching anyway: all fine, because nothing on screen has to agree with anything. A tutorial you are following along with, a film, a football match with the neighbours shouting a second earlier: not fine, and no app changes that. Using a HomePod as your Mac’s speaker goes through where the delay bites and where it never surfaces.
How do you get YouTube onto every speaker at once?
By putting something between the browser and the speakers that can hold a conversation with all of them, which is what Audiout does from the menu bar.
It takes the sound your Mac is already making and streams it to the speakers you tick, on one clock, so the kitchen and the living room land on the same beat. Nothing about YouTube changes. You press play in the same tab. The audio goes from your Mac to your speakers over your Wi-Fi network and nowhere else.
Every speaker gets its own fader, so the kitchen can sit at 80% while the bedroom stays at 45%, and one Main Audio fader above them pulls the whole house down without losing that balance. Save a set of speakers and their volumes as a scene and one click in the menu bar brings it back. You can also route the browser on its own, so a YouTube tab goes to the kitchen while a call stays on the Mac, and that works for AirPlay and Bluetooth speakers. A Chromecast speaker takes the whole mix rather than one app’s sound.
What it does not do is shorten the AirPlay delay, so it is still music and background, not lip sync.
Does this work for Netflix and Prime Video?
In a browser tab, yes, and for the same reason it works for YouTube.
A mixer takes the browser as one app. What site is open inside it is not a thing it knows or needs to know, so Netflix in a Chrome tab travels the same road as a YouTube tab, and so does Prime Video, and so does a radio station’s web player. The delay travels with it, and that is the part to weigh before you rearrange your evening. Over AirPlay the dialogue arrives after the mouths have finished, and nothing on either end fixes that.
Where that leaves you depends on what you are actually doing. One speaker and a film, use Control Center and pick the speaker nearest the screen, free and done in ten seconds. Two Bluetooth speakers and no AirPlay in the house, Audio MIDI Setup will stack them for nothing, and you live with the volume keys. A house full of speakers of different makes and a playlist you want in all of them, that is the one macOS has no answer for. Try the free 14-day trial of Audiout for Mac, which asks for no card and no email. After that it is €24.99 once, for Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 14.4 or later.
Common questions
Can Chrome AirPlay to two speakers on a Mac?
No. Chrome has no AirPlay picker of its own, so it plays to whichever speaker the Mac's sound menu is pointing at, and Apple states plainly that you can't stream to multiple speakers from Control Center on a Mac. Two speakers needs something underneath the browser, either a Multi-Output Device or a mixer app.
Why is YouTube audio behind the video over AirPlay?
AirPlay sends the sound ahead of time and the speaker holds it briefly before playing, which is what keeps it smooth over Wi-Fi. The gap that buys is long enough to see, and macOS has no setting that shortens it. The picture stays on your screen with no such head start, so the lips and the words drift apart.
Does this work for Netflix and Prime Video too?
In a browser tab, yes, because a mixer takes the browser as one app and does not care which site is open in it. The AirPlay delay applies the same way, so the sound will trail the picture by more than a second. That makes it good for background listening and poor for anything you need to watch lips on.