How to set up the Apple TV

Before you begin setting up your Apple TV, you need to connect it to your TV. This is not actually possible to do so without an HDMI cable – something that doesn’t actually ship with the Apple TV.

You may have an HDMI cable already, if not, Apple sells Belkin’s 2m Ultra High Speed 8K HDMI Cable here for £29.95/$29.95 (ideal if you have a new 4K Apple TV), alternatively, you can buy an HDMI cable on Amazon, like this one, for less than £6/$6.

Once you have an HDMI cable, you can set up the Apple TV. Here’s how:

1. Plug in the power cable and connect your Apple TV to your TV via the HDMI lead.
2. Turn on your TV and switch to the HDMI input your Apple TV is connected to. (If your TV supports HDMI-CEC you may not even have to switch to the HDMI channel – it may switch automatically).
3. Press the Menu button on the Siri Remote. If this doesn’t make the Apple TV come to life, connect the Siri Remote to your Apple TV by holding down Menu and + keys.
4. Select your language and country using the remote.
5. Here’s where your iPad or iPhone can come in useful. If you have a device running iOS 9.1 or later you can use it to set up your network. If you place your iOS device close to or on top of the Apple TV it will beam the network set up information over (including your complicated router password).

You will need to make sure Bluetooth is switched on on your iOS device. The Apple TV quickly “found” our iPhone over Bluetooth and attempted to connect to the same Wi-Fi network our iPhone uses.

You’ll be glad of this when you realise that manually inputting passwords is a nightmare due to the torturous on-screen keyboard, but we’ll get onto that next.

Entering your Apple ID and password is the next step, and it’s likely to be a frustrating experience due largely to the clunky on-screen keyboard where the entire alphabet is displayed in a single line (rather than in a grid structure as is the case on the older Apple TV) along with the most commonly used symbols.

This means you are scooting from one side of the screen to the other, and inevitably skimming over the letter you wish to choose because you aren’t familiar with the intricacies of the track pad at the top of the Siri Remote.

Use Siri

The easier option is to dictate your email address and password using Siri, by clicking on the relevant field on-screen and holding down the Mic button on the Siri remote.

Speaking of the Siri Remote, we won’t go into detail here as there is a lot to cover, but we have a complete guide to using the Siri Remote and a handy roundup of  things to say to Siri on the Apple TV too. 

Use the iPhone remote app

tvOS 9.1 brought support for the Remote app on the iPhone, allowing you to use your iOS device to enter sensitive login information and search queries instead of the Apple TV’s annoying onscreen keyboard. In fact, the text entry field should automatically pop-up on your iPhone whenever text entry on Apple TV is required. 

You can also use Apple Watch’s built-in Remote app to control the Apple TV.

The next steps in the process of setting up your Apple TV are as follows:

1. Choose whether to enable Location Services: You might be wondering why this would be necessary on a static machine, but it’s worth doing if you want Apple’s new aerial screensavers to change based on what time of day it is.
2. Opt into Siri on the Apple TV: Next you need to opt into Siri (assuming it’s supported in your country – you might assume that because you have Siri on your iPhone, Siri will be available on Apple TV, but this isn’t the case). Say yes to Siri to take advantage of the built-in mic on the Siri Remote and the new commands that you will be able to use with your Apple TV.
3. Opt-in to Aerial screensavers: It’s worth noting that Aerial screensavers are opt-in rather than opt-out, and you will be asked during setup if you want to display them. If you have a limited broadband deal you might want to be cautious here because Apple warns that enabling screensavers will result in about 600MB of downloads per month.
4. Agree to send diagnostic data: The final screen asks if Apple can get diagnostic data from your Apple TV, including your location. It’s totally up to you if you sign up to this, but you can’t complain if the Apple TV doesn’t improve in the way you want it to if you don’t allow it to send diagnostic information to Apple.

Once you’ve gone through the initial setup, you’ll be taken to your Apple TV’s Home Screen.

You may notice it’s a little different to the Home Screen of older Apple TVs, if you are familiar with those models. 

There is no Netflix, which may have you worried for a minute – but there’s no reason to be concerned. If you are wondering how to watch Netflix on the Apple TV, fear not; a Netflix app is available in the Apple TV App Store.

So now is the time to have a look around the App Store for some apps to populate your Home Screen with.

We have a Compete guide to the Apple TV App Store, plus how to find the best apps for those that need a little more help.

There are lots of ways to personalise your Apple TV. You might love Apple’s slow-moving aerial shots of various locations around the world, like London or the great wall of China, but what if you fancy looking at something else?

If you are bored with the aerial wallpapers currently displayed, you can enable an option to display new ones more frequently.

The new aerial screensaver settings are accessed via Settings > General > Screensaver. The default is to download new videos monthly, but you can change it to weekly or daily. Beware: each batch of new videos weighs in at about 600MB.

This will give you more variety, but unfortunately, you can’t choose which views you see – there’s no way to choose your favourite city and just watch that, which is a shame.

If you are completely bored with the aerial screensavers, you can choose to use your own photos instead. You can use photos in your photo library, Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library. To do that:

1. Open the Photos app on the Apple TV and select the album you want to be the screensaver carousel.
2. Tap screensaver to set that album as screensaver.
3. To finesse your settings even more, go to Settings > General > Screensaver > Screensaver Type.

Apple also provides Animals, Flowers, and Nature photos as screensaver options, and you can also use album artwork from the music app if you want to.

Once you have selected your photos you can choose the transition type from a variety of options, including Ken Burns, and additional options within that, like Fade Through Black. You can also choose how long a slide is displayed for.

The Apple TV will automatically go to sleep after an hour, but you can put it to sleep yourself if you wish to. Some might say that there is no value in putting modern electronics to sleep as leaving them awake doesn’t use up a lot of energy, but if you have the Apple TV in a bedroom you are likely to want to stop the light showing when you turn in for the night.

To put your Apple TV to sleep, hold the home button for a few seconds until you access the side menu and then select Sleep.

Press any button on the Siri remote when you wish to turn the Apple TV on again.

Perhaps rather than wanting to send your Apple TV to sleep, you’d prefer to leave it on. The Apple TV will go to sleep by default after an hour, but maybe you like to leave the aerial screensaver playing in the background.

To change the default setting, go to Settings > General > Sleep After, and then change this from one hour. The options are Never, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours and 10 hours, so there is bound to be one that suits you.

If something odd happens with your Apple TV, the best solution might be the tried and tested “turn it off and on again” method. It is possible to restart your Apple TV by tapping Settings > System > Restart.

Alternatively, you can press and hold the menu and home button on the Siri remote at the same time and let go when the light on the front of your Apple TV starts flashing.

Apple has included a number of accessibility options with the Apple TV, and VoiceOver is one of the biggest.

You can ask Siri to turn VoiceOver on, or navigate to Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver.

Once VoiceOver is activated, text highlighted with the Siri Remote VoiceOver will read out loud.

You can pause VoiceOver by tapping the touchpad once with two fingers, and tap twice with two fingers to resume.

Another accessibility feature offers the ability to magnify the screen of the Apple TV.

To turn on the Zoom feature, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Zoom.

Once activated you can use the touchpad on the Siri Remote to magnify images on the Apple TV, zoom in on a particular section of the screen, pan around an image, or change the screen magnification.

You can also turn on Closed Captions – which are essentially onscreen textual description of non-speech elements in what you are watching. Triple-click the Home button to open the accessibility options that include VoiceOver, Zoom, Closed Captions, and Audio Descriptions.

Subtitles, on the other hand, can be turned on if you swipe down on the remote touchscreen during any fullscreen video playback.

If you want to choose a default, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut and choose your default.

It is actually possible to take a screenshot on the Apple TV, but it’s not simple. Here’s how.

1. Download Apple Xcode development environment from the Mac App Store on your Mac.
2. Install Xcode on your Mac.
3. Connect your Apple TV to your Mac using a USB-C or USB cable.
4. Open Xcode. Select Window > Devices and choose the Apple TV.
5. Click on Take Screenshot.

If that’s not ideal, you can also take a screenshot using the Notes app on your iPhone.

You can also record video from your Apple TV.

1. Connect your Apple TV to your Mac using a USB-C cable.
2. Open QuickTime on your Mac. Select File > New Movie Recording.
3. Click on the arrow beside the record button and select Apple TV from the Camera and Microphone options.
4. Click the Record button.

You can see and (usually) hear anything running on your Mac, iPad or iPhone on your TV if you use AirPlay to stream between the two devices via the Apple TV.

To use AirPlay on your Mac, click on the AirPlay icon in the top-right of the menu bar and choose Apple TV. You can choose to mirror the screen or use the TV as a separate screen to view content.

To use AirPlay on your iPhone 8 or earlier, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and select Screen Mirroring, while those on iPhone X or later access the Control Centre via swiping down on the top-right of the display. As with the Mac version of AirPlay, you will have the choice of mirroring your screen or sending pages to your TV screen.

The only issue with using AirPlay on your iPad or iPhone is you will be unable to use the device while it is streaming content to the TV and things like phone calls will interrupt your viewing.

We have in-depth tutorials on how to connect an iPad or iPhone to a TV and  how to connect a Mac to a TV for those that need to know more. 

This is one of those things that everyone wants to do but is only really possible with a workaround.

There is an open-source project that should allow you to view web content on your Apple TV, according to 9to5Mac. Users can scroll around the web using the glass trackpad on the Siri Remote. However, it’s unlikely that the web browser will launch on the App Store though because it requires a private API to function.

The alternative is to use AirPlay to stream a webpage from your Mac, iPad or iPhone to your TV via the Apple TV. This way you will be able to see the webpage on the larger screen, but note that any navigation will need to be done via the device you are sharing from – so scrolling will need to be done on your Mac, for example.

We have a tutorial on surfing the web on an Apple TV, and also cover how to share your Mac screen to your TV.

If you have any issues with your Apple TV, the first step is usually to check that your software is up to date.

To check whether there is an update go to Settings > System > Software Updates > Update Software. If there is an update you will be able to download and install it here. (You will find Software Updates in Settings > General > Update Software on the older Apple TV models).

Be wary of Apple TV updates though, there have been reports in the past of updates causing problems for some people. We recommend waiting a few days before updating just in case.