Apple TV

Stay up-to-date on the latest Apple TV news and learn how to get the most out of your device with our comprehensive tutorials and guides. Discover new features, troubleshoot issues, and explore the best apps and games for your Apple TV.

Rumor: Apple TV 5 with ‘dramatically improved’ CPU and ‘new functions’ due in early-2016

The fourth-generation Apple TV has been available for less than two months and already talk is turning to a next-generation model.

A new report by DigiTimes, a hit-and-miss Taiwanese trade publication, cites unnamed supply chain sources as saying that a fifth-generation Apple TV with a brand new CPU and a heat-dissipation solution is entering into trial production in December and volume production in the first quarter of 2016.

Oceanhorn gets iCloud save compatibility with Apple TV, flashier graphics on iPad Pro and more

Oceanhorn, the beautifully crafted fantasy adventure game from FDG Mobile Games GbR, has received an essential update in the App Store today. Bumped to version 2.7, this edition fixes the problem with iCloud save files created on the iPhone and iPad not being recognized on the Apple TV.

Those lucky iPad Pro owners will enjoy this update's ultra quality graphics on their tablet, with an improved world map and environment decoration.

Lastly, Oceanhorn 2.7 sports a better sound engine and fixes various bugs.

Review: Infuse 4 is the ultimate media center software for your Apple TV

It cracks me up that a jailbreak was needed to let Apple TV user enjoy their own media libraries directly on the device—and yet here we are today as FireCore, the same developer behind the aTV Flash(Black), unveils an Apple-sanctioned media player app for the new Apple TV.

As I wrote in my preview a few days ago, Infuse 4 for Apple TV (releasing later today in the App Store) is an awesome app that turns Apple's fourth-generation set-top box into a powerful, easy-to-use media center.

No longer do you have to worry about video formats, file conversion and subtitles—Infuse 4 for Apple TV takes care of all that jazz, and then some more. The app can stream your media from a Mac or Windows PC, NAS or Wi-Fi drives and even through a server app like Plex, Kodi or Servo.

It automatically fetches movie details and artwork, integrates with trakt.tv for keeping watched progress in sync on multiple devices, retrieves subtitles from OpenSubtitles.org and more.

Most importantly, its powerful decoder renders any “foreign” video format directly on the Apple TV hardware, no conversion needed, in silky smooth sixty frames per second.

What more can you ask for?

Review: SiriMote—control media playback on your Mac with Siri Remote

Wouldn't it be nice if you could use the Siri Remote that came with your new Apple TV to control media applications on your Mac? After all, the remote is Bluetooth-based and Mac itself has robust support for Bluetooth networking.

With SiriMote, a new freeware app, now you can. Created by Vienna, Austria-based Eternal Storms Software's Matthias Gansrigler, SiriMote lets you control various functions of the Mac using your Apple TV's Siri Remote.

Twitter announces Digits-based logins coming to Apple TV apps

Hot on the heels of Facebook's release of an SDK for tvOS which lets developers create apps with Facebook Login based on eight-digit security codes, Twitter today announced bringing a similar feature of its own to the set-top box.

Digits, Twitter's own login and verification system based on phone numbers and verification codes, is coming to tvOS. This means that developers can now start writing Apple TV apps that users can log into by entering a short alphanumeric code in Safari on iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

Check out an unofficial client which lets your Apple TV stream Steam games from a PC

Kevin Smith, the developer behind the MAME emulator that allows you to run classic Nintendo and Sega games, as well as play arcade games on your fourth-generation Apple TV, is back with another cool software: an unofficial client that can stream Steam games from a Windows PC to Apple's new box.

The solution takes advantage of an iOS edition of Moonlight, an open source implementation of Nvidia's GameStream technology used by its Shield console.

Moonlight technology makes it possible to stream the full collection of Steam games from a PC to the new Apple TV without needing to run on the Apple TV hardware.

Review: SteelSeries Nimbus Wireless Controller

If you want to do serious gaming on the Apple TV, then using a wireless Bluetooth controller isn’t an option, it’s a necessity. Yes, Apple controversially made it a requirement for all games on its platform to support the Siri Remote, but that’s not going to cut it for any game with an even mildly complex control scheme.

Games like Alto’s Adventure and Mr. Jump play perfectly fine, and are even suited for the Siri Remote, but in most cases, you’re definitely going to want a controller as an option.

Unfortunately, there is no Apple-branded controller to speak of, but Apple did co-design a controller with the help of SteelSeries. The result of that partnership is the SteelSeries Nimbus, and Apple is promoting this controller as the de facto standard alternative input device for the Apple TV.

All of that considered, while there are other 3rd-party Bluetooth controllers that work with the Apple TV, the most obvious choice is the SteelSeries Nimbus.

I purchased a Nimbus on day one, and have been playing with it for weeks. Is the $49.99 controller worth your time and hard-earned money? Is it really the best way to control games on the Apple TV?

Apple TV apps can now implement Facebook Login and sharing features

If you own Apple's fourth-generation Apple TV, you have probably noticed that apps and games for the set-top box currently lack common social features such as Facebook Login and sharing.

But that's about to change soon as Facebook earlier this week announced immediate availability of the first beta of its Facebook SDK for tvOS, which gives developers the means to build immersive social experiences on tvOS.

Amazon allegedly confirms that Instant Video is hitting Apple TV before year-end

Online retail giant Amazon is bringing its Instant Video service to the new Apple TV after all. As a quick refresher, Amazon recently pulled both Google’s Chromecast HDMI dongle and Apple’s Apple TV from sale because the two set-top boxes, in Amazon's own words, don’t “interact well” with its video subscription service. Confirmation of a tvOS version of Instant Video was inadvertently leaked by Amazon itself in response to a question on Twitter.

The app should hit the Apple TV App Store by the end of the year.

Preview: Infuse for Apple TV + developer interview

As an Apple TV believer since its inception, I'm ashamed to admit that I've never jailbroken my device even though the lack of downloadable media player apps that would let me play “foreign” video file types has been driving me nuts.

When the latest Apple TV launched, I immediately got in touch with James Abeler, better known as prominent jailbreak developer FireCore, who happens to be the brains behind the ultimate Apple TV jailbreak, aTV Flash Black, and the creator of a versatile iOS media player, called Infuse.

As someone who has been pretty much cheerleading Infuse since its April 2013 debut, I was extremely impatient to find out if an Apple TV edition of Infuse would be on par with its iOS counterpart.

James was kind enough to add me as a beta tester so I was able to play with Infuse for Apple TV for about a week, and here's what I was able to gather.

Several new App Store categories, including News and Education, appear on the Apple TV

After being limited to just two app categories for the past few weeks, several new categories have appeared to help flesh out app discovery on Apple's recently released set top box. Along with the Games and Entertainment categories, users will now find Education, Health & Fitness, Lifestyle, News and Sports categories.

To view the new categories, simply launch the App Store app on your Apple TV. The new categories may still be propagating, though it may be worth trying a reboot if they don't show up immediately.