An AirPlay receiver: an Apple TV, HomePod, AirPlay-capable TV, or a Mac with AirPlay Receiver turned on.
Apple's AirPlay control channel listens on TCP 7000; the device advertises itself over mDNS (_airplay._tcp) and clients then talk HTTP-ish RTSP to this port to negotiate screen mirroring and audio streaming. It turns up on home-network scans from Apple TVs, HomePods, and third-party TVs with AirPlay 2, and on Macs since macOS Monterey where AirPlay Receiver is a Sharing toggle. Note that IANA registers 7000 to afs3-fileserver, not to Apple, so the registry name on your scanner output is usually wrong here.
Do not expose
AirPlay is a LAN protocol with weak-to-optional pairing and has had a run of remote code execution bugs (the 2025 AirBorne set), so it has no business being reachable from the internet.
$ curl -s -m 3 http://TARGET:7000/info | head -c 200Seen this on your network? Beige Box scans your Wi-Fi and shows every open port on every device — and its Ports tool links straight back here.
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Corrections or a missing port? Reply @rimrocksystems.