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.

Tip: use this secret Siri Remote shortcut to manually send tvOS diagnostic logs to Apple

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 11, 2016

Much like other Apple devices, your Apple TV lets you elect to have tvOS periodically send usage data to Apple and share crash logs with developers. When Share with App Developers is enabled underneath the Diagnostics Data heading in Settings → General → Privacy, your Apple TV will send diagnostic and usage information to Apple.

This data is used for the sole purpose of improving Apple's products and services. None of the collected information identifies users personally but those who are concerned about their privacy will likely have this feature disabled, just in case.

There are cases when Apple might ask you to send them these log files manually—for instance, when using the Apple TV's hidden remote diagnostic feature to help an advisor troubleshoot any problems you may be plagued with.

Thankfully, tvOS has a secret Siri Remote shortcut to override your Privacy settings and manually send those crash logs and diagnostic data straight to Apple.

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How to reveal and use tvOS’s hidden remote diagnostics mode on your Apple TV

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 10, 2016

Nearly five years ago, Apple started taking advantage of a new feature that lets customers send diagnostic data to an Apple advisor to help troubleshoot any problems they might be having, without having to take their device to an Apple Store Genius.

This remote diagnostic mode, which has since been implemented across all iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices, is also available on the fourth-generation Apple TV. In this quick tutorial, you're going to learn how to access and take advantage of tvOS's hidden Diagnostics screen on your Apple TV.

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How to install nitoTV on Apple TV 4

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated December 10, 2017

If you've been around the jailbreak community for a few years, you are probably familiar with nitoTV for Apple TV, the installer that gained popularity back in the days of the Apple TV 2. Things had become a little uneventful for a few years due to the lack of a jailbreak for Apple TV, but now that things have changed, nitoTV developer Kevin Bradley is back at it with an updated version of the popular installer.

In this post, we'll show you how to install nitoTV on your jailbroken Apple TV.

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Tip: adjusting how movies and TV shows are sorted in your Apple TV Wish Lists

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 9, 2017
Apple TV Siri Remote in hand

Aside from major new features in Apple's new tvOS 9.2 firmware for the fourth-generation Apple TV, which released to the public on Monday, March 21, there're plenty of under-the-hood improvements to be excited about.

Among them are handy sorting options for the movies in your Wish List and TV shows in your Favorites. In this tutorial, we'll demonstrate how you can tell your Apple TV to show recent TV episodes first and change sorting options for movies in your Wish List.

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How to jailbreak the new Apple TV using Pangu

Andrew O'Hara ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

Now that the Pangu Team has released their jailbreak for the new Apple TV, we have had some hands-on time with the tool and were successful in jailbreaking our own test device. In this post, we will share detailed step by step instructions on how to jailbreak the new Apple TV using Pangu. Before we get started, we must share a few words of caution.

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How to update your Apple TV Siri Remote

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 10, 2023
Apple TV and Siri Remote on a red yellow gradient background

A tvOS update may include new firmware for the Siri Remote to fix bugs, improve reliability, and add new features. Improve your Apple TV experience by learning how to effortlessly update your Siri Remote, and stay in control with the latest features and improvements.

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How to place Apple TV in recovery mode

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 20, 2018

If your Apple TV won't start up properly, or you are a developer who wants to install a tvOS beta, you must first put your set-top box in recovery (DFU) mode. As is the case with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices, entering DFU mode makes a malfunctioning Apple TV discoverable in desktop iTunes so you can restore it to factory settings, downgrade to an earlier version of the software or side-load a beta firmware onto it.

The method to put an Apple TV into DFU mode differs from that for other iOS devices. In this post, you'll learn how to put an Apple TV into recovery mode so you can restore it to factory settings if it's acting up.

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How to stop ‘Up Next’ videos from autoplaying on YouTube

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated July 26, 2023

One of my pet peeves with YouTube is how after completing a video, the service shoves a new video down your throat with a feature called "Up Next," which gives you a 15-second time frame to click the "X" button at the top right of the video before the next video starts to play.

Sounds familiar? If you feel the same way, then you've stumbled upon the right tutorial, because we're going to be showing you how you can disable this feature right from the YouTube website without installing any plug-ins, hacks, or other crazy stuff.

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How to watch Super Bowl 50 on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and other devices

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 1, 2018

On Sunday evening, millions of people will gather around their TV sets to watch Super Bowl 50. The game features the Denver Broncos taking on the Carolina Panthers, and kickoff is scheduled for 6:30 (ET).

For those of you who aren't going to be around a television Sunday night, but still want to follow along with the action, we've put together a list of ways you'll be able to do so using an iPhone, iPad, Mac and other devices.

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