FairPlay is Apple's DRM system — the technology that controls protected video playback on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS and Safari. It's been around since 2003 (originally for protecting iTunes Store music) and has evolved into the DRM solution for Apple's entire ecosystem. If your streaming service supports iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, or Macs at all, you need FairPlay — Apple doesn't permit Widevine or PlayReady on its platforms for premium content.
The technical setup is somewhat different from the other major DRMs. FairPlay uses Apple's hardware Secure Enclave on modern devices to perform key handling — a separate processor that the main OS can't read, making the protection physically harder to bypass than software-only DRM. For 4K HDR content from major studios, hardware-level FairPlay is required; older devices without the Secure Enclave can only play up to 1080p protected content. Encryption is AES-128 (compatible with cenc), but the license format and key delivery flow are Apple-proprietary.
For a product team, FairPlay is non-negotiable for any service that wants to reach the Apple audience — which in many markets is 30–50 % of premium streaming subscribers. Practical recipe: encrypt content once with CENC using a shared key, run FairPlay license servers alongside Widevine and PlayReady (most multi-DRM services handle all three with one API), and let Apple's native players (AVPlayer in iOS apps, HLS-based Safari playback) handle the license fetch automatically. The user-facing UX is identical to non-DRM playback — viewers never see the FairPlay machinery — and the content team integrates it once and largely forgets it exists.
