Sometimes, a connection is severed improperly. For example, you were mirroring your screen to a TV, and you turned the TV off or walked out of Wi-Fi range without stopping the AirPlay session. The helper process might get "stuck" trying to re-establish a handshake that is no longer possible, causing it to loop and spike CPU usage.
However, malware authors sometimes disguise malicious processes by naming them similarly to legitimate system processes (a technique known as "masquerading"). A virus might call itself AirPlayXCPHelper (with swapped letters) or AirPlayXPCHelper but located in the wrong folder. airplayxpchelper mac
It is included with macOS by default. It is not a virus, adware, or spyware. Sometimes, a connection is severed improperly
A legitimate AirPlayXPCHelper will typically reside within the system framework folders, usually somewhere akin to /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUtils.framework/... or /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AirPlaySupport.framework/... . It is not a virus, adware, or spyware
If you need the AirPlay Receiver feature, try restarting the underlying services.
While the process is safe, users often report that airplayxpchelper uses (40-100% of a core) or drains the battery on MacBooks. This is usually not a sign of malware but a functional bug or resource loop.