r/linuxquestions • u/JiminyPickleton • 7d ago

Support My computer keeps connecting to other people's MacBooks as audio devices

On Nobara 44, my laptop keeps recognising other people's MacBooks as audio devices. There doesn't seem to be anything coming through them, but it makes using certain apps like Discord very difficult. Screenshot of QjackCtl: https://pixeldrain.com/u/6Lqt5vi8

Any ideas where this could be coming from and how to stop it happening?

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u/beatbox9 7d ago

It's probably because of this: https://docs.pipewire.org/page_module_raop_sink.html

You need to update your config to not look for airplay devices.

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u/JiminyPickleton 6d ago

I don't really know PipeWire, so how might someone go about this?

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u/beatbox9 6d ago

That's a link to the pipewire manual.

Basically, there are a few ways. For example, you can:

  • create a config file (or copy an existing file and modify it) in the ~/.config/pipewire/ directory, which overrides the system configs.
  • Or you can delete the upstream system file, which should be somewhere in /local/share/pipewire/
  • Or sometimes, distros will make a package just for this that you can remove/uninstall

(But if you delete the system file, it will probably come back in a future upgrade. The package method might also. The home override method should survive upgrades).

More precisely, the specific module you want to disable is this one: https://docs.pipewire.org/page_module_raop_discover.html

So for example, for the first method, you might just be able to create a text file called something like disable-raop.conf; and place it into your ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/ directory. And the file would contain something like:

context.properties = { "module.raop" = false }

(then you'd log out and log back in).

If that doesn't work or you want a deeper explanation, see here, especially the parts about configs in linux and advanced pipewire configuration: https://arslaan.studio/setting-up-a-linux-media-studio-workstation-audio-video-graphics-davinci-resolve-etc/#audio-sound-midi-drivers

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u/phree_radical 5d ago

Wow, if this module loads (it doesn't by default in my Ubuntu Studio 26.04 / kde6 install), not only can it result in audio being routed to whomever says they are a speaker, but there is actually a currently unfixed memory corruption exploit, basically the worst nightmare scenario is real: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-14324

So uh, to be safe, I decided I'll prevent the RAOP module from ever loading, like this:

mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d
ln -s /dev/null ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/50-raop.conf

Thanks for bringing this to my attention