16 Tips and Tricks to Maximize Your Apple TV 4K Experience

Apple TV 4K is one of the best streaming devices available, delivering access to the most popular streaming services, connecting with Apple HomeKit, letting you play games from Apple Arcade, and even lets you enjoy private listening by pairing your AirPods. While Apple has made it very easy to get Apple TV 4K set up in mere minutes so that you can get right to watching your favorite shows, it’s got plenty of features that you might not be aware of.  

Apple TV 4K comes equipped with an Apple A15 Bionic processor, which means there is plenty of power packed into a small package, capable of delivering your favorite shows to the screen for years to come. However, this device is capable of much more than simply streaming, and not everything requires a compatible Apple device to take advantage of. Though, let’s be frank, there are several features available only to those who own other Apple devices.

So what exactly is Apple TV capable of? Let’s take a look. 

Enable dark mode

Are you a fan of dark mode on your devices? Apple tvOS can do that. From within the settings menu you can choose between Light, Dark, or Automatic. Selecting Dark will keep the Apple TV in dark mode all the time, while selecting Auto will shift from light during the day to dark during the night — just like the iPhone.

Step 1: Open the Settings menu by selecting the icon that looks like a gear.

Step 2: Select General and then Appearance.

Step 3: Select Light, Dark, or Automatic.

Arrange your home screen

One of the perks of Apple TV is the ability to curate the way your home screen looks. You might want to arrange the apps in the order of most-used up top. You might also want to delete some apps or tuck some apps into folders.

Be selective about which apps you put in the top row because tvOS uses the top row apps when it starts suggesting content you might want to watch — but not all apps work equally. That’s why you might want to put Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu there. Paramount+ also seems to work.

Step 1: To move apps, simply highlight the app you want to move, press and hold the Select button until the app starts jiggling, use the directional buttons or the swipe pad to move the app where you like, and then click Select again.

Step 2: Deleting apps or creating folders starts the same way. Highlight the app, press and hold until it jiggles, and then you want to press the Play/pause button. This will give you more options, and at that point, you can delete an app. Or, if you want to create a folder or move an app to a folder, you do that here as well.

Continue Watching

If you’re in the middle of a marathon re-watch, the last thing you want is to scroll through menus to get back to the show you turned off before bed. Thankfully, you can fix this problem by enabling Continue Watching. This feature is hiding inside of the settings menu, and will show your most recent watches within the tile for each streaming service you’ve installed.

Keep in mind that you’ll need to have the streaming service you were watching selected for the Continue Watching options to be shown on your Home Screen. You can also toggle between Continue Watching, and Watch Next. The latter option will show you shows or movies from the selected streamer that might interest you based on your watching history.

Step 1: Open the Settings Menu.

Step 2: Select Apps.

Step 3: Select TV

Step 4: Scroll down and under Home Screen, select Top Shelf. When you select this option it will toggle between What to Watch, or Continue Watching.

Return to the Home Screen

At times it seems like Apple has menus within menus. If you’ve realized you’ve delved too deep and just want to return to the home screen you have options.

Press and hold the back button or the menu button and it will return you to the home screen.

Connect Bluetooth devices

If you’ve got headphones, keyboards, or game controllers that you want to use with Apple TV, you’re in luck. A variety of Bluetooth peripherals are compatible with this streaming device.

Obviously, with Apple’s AirPods, the process is streamlined. But any pair of Bluetooth headphones will work for private listening. And you might want to connect a PlayStation or Xbox controller for playing games and basic navigation. Also, keyboards can come in handy for typing in text, such as your many passwords, if you want to save some time. (But if you have an iPhone or iPad, those work great, too.)

Step 1: Open the Settings menu.

Step 2: Select Remotes and Devices,

Step 3: Select Bluetooth.

Step 4: Select the Bluetooth device you want to connect with Apple TV.

Adjust your Siri remote

The Siri remote is the easiest way to navigate through the UI for Apple TV. However, that doesn’t mean it will work the way you want it to right out of the box. There are a variety of options available to adjust how it works including touch-pad sensitivity, and using voice commands.

Step 1: You may notice that the touch-enabled click pad is a little too touchy — or maybe it isn’t sensitive enough. Either way, you can adjust this by clicking Settings >Remotes and devices> Touch surface tracking and then finding your sweet spot.

Step 2: On the other hand, if you find you don’t really like using the touchpad at all and would rather disable it entirely, do that by clicking Remotes and devices, then Clickpad, and selecting Click only. Now the touchpad is turned off, and it’s back to a directional pad and select button.

Step 3: You can use Siri for more specific jobs, and often, it’s easier than using the remote. For instance, let’s say you want to back up or advance in a movie or TV show. Just ask Siri to “go back 15 seconds” or “skip ahead 20 minutes.” This can come in really handy when scrubbing through a show takes a long time – as it does often on HBO Max.

Step 4: You can also save several clicks by asking Siri to pull up specific shows in apps or specific channels in live TV apps. For example, you can say, “Open Stranger Things season 3 on Netflix,” or, “Open ESPN on Fubo.”  Now, Siri doesn’t cover every single app, but more often than not, you’re gonna get right where you want to be more quickly by using voice than by clicking around.

Create individual profiles

If you’re sharing your Apple TV with the whole family, or roommates, this may mean you want different options available, or different apps on standby. That’s where individual profiles come into play. Each user will need their own Apple ID in order to create a profile, but after that they can customize the look of Apple TV to their liking.

Along these same lines, you can use Family Sharing on the Apple TV — it functions the same across all Apple devices. If you are the family organizer, you can share your subscriptions to apps and services with up to six people. The thing is, you can’t set up Family Sharing on an Apple TV itself. So, you’ll need to do it on a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. It’s worth the time to set up because once you do, if you add a “family member’s” Apple ID — I mean, it could be a roommate, right? — they will have access to the subscriptions you already pay for through Apple.

Step 1: Open the Settings menu.

Step 2: Select Users and accounts.

Step 3: Select Add new user

Step 4: Add the Apple ID of the new user to add them.

Keep your system secure

AirPlay is what lets you stream video or music to the Apple TV from another device, and it can be done by anyone within range of your Apple TV unless you lock it down behind a code.

Once a device is granted access, a code won’t be required again. So if you grant your friend or roommate access once, they’ll continue to have it unless you remove their device from the approved list.

Step 1: Open the Settings menu

Step 2: Select Security

Step 3: Select AirPlay

Step 4: Select Allow Access.

Step 5: Select the option that works best for you. You can choose between Anyone on the Same Network, Only People Sharing This Home or Require Password.

If you choose require password, you’ll need to set it up when you enable this option.

Fine tune your AV settings

By default, your Apple TV 4K is going to communicate with your TV and determine what the best video settings will be. It may ask you if you want to turn on HDR, and you can go ahead and say “yes” if you have an HDR TV. If you do that, though, your Apple TV will always be in some kind of HDR mode, be that Dolby Vision, HDR 10+, or HDR, depending on your TV. This means that if you watch content that wasn’t made in HDR, you’ll be getting fake HDR, and you may not want that. Especially with really dark content — ahem, Game of Thrones.

You can select Match dynamic range, which means that the Apple TV will go to SDR mode when you’re watching content made in SDR and then help your TV kick into HDR mode when watching HDR content. It’s the same idea with Match Frame Rate. Rather than show all content at the same frame rate, you can have the Apple TV deliver the content as it was made — this is especially important if you like watching movies in 24 frames per second, as they were made — otherwise, they can look artificially smoothed out.

On the audio side of things, there really isn’t much you need to mess around with. Almost everything should be automated. Go ahead and thumb through this, though. You can turn on Reduce loud sounds, for instance, and that will apply dynamic range compression, which is great when you’re just using TV speakers, but it really puts limits on your soundbar or home theater system.

Step 1: Open the Settings Menu.

Step 2: Select Video and audio

Step 3: Select Match Content, and then Select Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate to adjust your video quality.

Step 4: Select Enhanced Dialogue, or Reduce Loud Sounds to adjust your audio settings.

Swap between recent apps

If you’re moving between multiple apps, say by gaming and then relaxing later with some games, you have an option for quickly moving from one to the other. When you trigger recent apps a scrollable menu will pop up with all of the apps you’ve been using, including the home screen. By swiping through, and selecting the app you want, you can quickly move between them without needing to do anything else.

Step 1: Click the TV Button twice.

Step 2: Select the app you want to switch to.

Get the most out of Airplay

AirPlay is Apple’s protocol for sharing audio and video. Whether you use Apple Music, Spotify, or another music service, you can click the AirPlay button (this looks like a rectangle with an upward pointing arrow under it) on your Apple Device and select Apple TV to play music through the Apple TV. The same goes for video. If I’m watching a YouTube video, for example, I can move it from watching on my phone to watching on Apple TV. The Apple TV will also let you screen mirror, though, which is great for Zoom calls.

Step 1: On your iOS device open the Control Panel.

Step 2: Select Screen Mirroring.

Step 3: Select Apple TV.

Image calibration

For you iPhone owners, this is a way to optimize everything that you watch on your Apple TV. This is kind of a picture calibration process that bypasses your TV’s picture settings, so you might not want to use this if you’ve spent time getting your picture settings the way you want them. However if you haven’t fussed with the settings this can help you tweak them.

If your TV supports Dolby Vision, you might see this option grayed out because it’s handling all that calibration instead.

Step 1: Open the Settings menu.

Step 2: Select Video and audio

Step 3: Scroll all the way down to Calibration, then select Color balance.

Step 4: Then, take an iPhone with FaceID and iOS 14.5 or later and bring it near the TV.

Step 5: Follow the instructions on the TV.

Watch with friends using SharePlay

This is a feature that doesn’t get talked about enough, but it’s great for watch parties. Apple calls it SharePlay, and it requires that the people that you watch with have an iPhone or iPad, too, at least. What you do is start a FaceTime call — add as many people as you want. Once you have them on the call, go to your Apple TV and make sure that your user is selected. You can do that by pressing and holding the TV button on the remote, then checking the upper portion of the pop-up window to verify you’re logged into your Apple ID.

At that point, you can start playing a movie or TV show, and because you are on a FaceTime call already, the Apple TV will ask if you want to use SharePlay. Say Yes, and then you’ll be asked to confirm whether you actually want to start SharePlay on your iPhone or iPad. Once you agree, you and your friends can watch the content together in sync.

Alternative remotes

Since we’re talking about iPhone and iPad, don’t forget they, along with your Apple Watch, can be used as an Apple TV remote. This is especially helpful when you need to type something in. On your watch, you can choose the Remote app. On your iPhone or iPad, go to the Control Center by swiping down from the upper righthand corner and then selecting the icon that looks like an Apple TV remote. Any time you need to enter text, a keyboard will automatically pop up on your phone.

Spatial Audio

One of the best parts of going to the movies, or having a full surround sound setup at home, is the immersive feeling as the sound moves around you. Apple has made that much easier by delivering spatial audio, which is compatible with AirPods Pro, AirPods Pro 2, newer Beats Headphones, or AirPods Max.

You have two options when enabling spatial audio with Apple TV. Head-tracking, or fixed. To get the best experience, we suggest using head tracking – this changes the soundstage depending on where you turn your head, so if you turn your head to the left as you are facing your TV, then the audio will seem to come from the TV. But if you don’t want this, you can turn it off.

Step 1: Open the Setting Menu.

Step 2: Select Remotes and devices.

Step 3: Select Bluetooth and then select your headphones.

Adjust head tracking with spatial audio

Head tracking for spatial audio is a feature that is automatically turned on when connecting a set of compatible Apple wireless headphones or earbuds. Whether you want to turn head-tracking on or off, this is how you get it done.

Step 1: Make sure you’re playing media. Open the Control Center by long-pressing the remote’s home button. Your content will automatically pause.

Step 2: Select the headphones (or earbuds) icon and press OK.

Step 3: The currently showing Apple TV content will be replaced by a full-screen overlay showing you the options for your wireless headphones.

Under the Spatial Audio heading, look for the button that says Head Tracked. If it is highlighted in blue, it is turned on. To turn it off, select the Fixed button and press OK with the remote. Or select the Off button to disable spatial audio entirely.

If the Head Tracked button is gray, it is turned off. To turn it on, select it and press OK.