Inside Apple TV 4K — the best addition to your TV set

The Apple TV 4K set-top box is the most expensive one you can get, but it’s also the best for its range of features and its ease of use — once you know how to get the most out of it.

Apple TV 4K plugs into your TV set and brings you streaming services, games, music, and apps. It can be a karaoke machine, it can be a video conferencing tool, and it comes with a fairly limited App Store.

But the thing about having an Apple TV 4K is that it just works. It’s so long ago now that I can’t remember what prompted me to buy one, but it was just for me, just for my interest — and it did not stay that way.

Within a couple of weeks, Apple TV 4K stopped being the thing I turned on when it was just me in the living room. Instead, it became the only thing anyone switched on.

We presumably still have the UK’s Freeview digital service coming in to our TV set, and our broadband supplier has some TV channels too. But good luck even finding the remote for their set top box, it is always and only Apple TV 4K that we turn on.

And yes, that’s even though we have a smart TV. Perhaps if we hadn’t bought that after we got the Apple TV 4K, it might be that we used its features more, but as it is, no chance.

Apple TV 4K in its box with the Siri Remote

It helps, though, that once you’re used to Apple’s set top box, going through any smart TV’s menus feels preposterously slow.

None of this is to say that Apple TV 4K is perfect, however. One problem is right there in the name — when you just say “Apple TV,” you might mean the set top box, but you can equally mean Apple’s TV app that lets you watch the streaming service Apple TV+. And that Apple TV app is on Apple TV 4k, fine, but also iPhone, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro.

Concentrating on the set top box and its Apple TV app, though, they are now very much focused on streaming. But they were originally more for playing back your library of movies and TV shows that you bought on iTunes.

All of that material you’ve bought on Apple devices over the years is available on the set top box, but getting to it takes more steps than it used to.

Then there’s search. Apple TV 4K features broadly two searches, one you can do across the whole system, and one that works within each individual app.

It is routine to find yourself intending to search an app like YouTube and instead be asking Siri to look across everything. Or speaking of YouTube, there are some apps that are peculiarly poorly designed, with random crashes.

And when you do intend to search the whole system, it ought to be good at telling you, for instance, that “Kissing Jessica Stein” is already in your library and that “Slow Horses” is on Apple TV+. Much of the time, it is good for that, too, but occasionally it’s hard to know what’s free or you’re already paying for, and what’s an extra fee, until you dig down far enough.

Then there’s also Netflix, which is on Apple TV 4K but won’t quite play nice with the whole system — despite briefly and tantalizingly appearing to. Apple wants you to just have to open its own TV app and work from there, but Netflix requires you to go via its own app.

You can download Netflix and many more apps directly to your Apple TV 4K

So at heart, Apple TV 4K is a simple system with some apps that work together nicely, but there are outliers like Netflix, and there are irritations like YouTube.

Plus because Apple has changed how Apple TV 4K works so that by default, the company’s own TV app is the focus. If you’re a longtime user, that can be irritating, and if you’re new, it can even stop you realising that there are more options.

Inside Apple TV 4K — the hardware

There have been seven versions of the Apple TV set top box since the original was launched in 2007.

The current Apple TV 4K is a small box that’s 3.66 inches in width and depth, and 1.2 inches in height. It now always comes with one port for a mains cable, and one to connect to a TV set using HDMI.

Apple TV 4K

There is a version with an extra gigabit Ethernet port, too.

More visibly changed over the years is the Siri Remote, which is currently a silver control that’s 5.4 inches tall, and 1.4 inches wide. It features a round touch-sensitive button with arrows for moving left, right, up and down.

Doubtlessly because it’s the part of Apple TV 4K that you keep holding in your hand — and keep losing around the house — the Siri Remote has had a lot of attention from both users and Apple. The current edition is the fourth major design, and as well as the round touch-sensitive segment, it has five more buttons on the front:

1. Back
2. Play/Pause
3. Mute/Unmute
4. Home
5. Volume up and down

That’s what’s on the front, yet there is one more control on the side. This is the Siri button and it is on the right-hand side of the remote.

Previously, the Siri button was on the front and the problem was that you would forever be picking up the device upside down. This replacement design removes that, but it also pops Siri on the side where you’ll forget it’s even there.

Which is a shame, because Siri has one particularly good feature on Apple TV. Press the button and say “Siri, what did he or she say?”, and Siri will both rewind the video a few seconds, and temporarily turn on subtitles.

Like so many things with Apple TV 4K, this is an excellent feature but it doesn’t work with every app.

Inside Apple TV 4K — the software

By default, Apple TV 4K is set so that when you start it, it opens up in the Apple TV app. If that app were the way to watch everything on the set top box, it would still be a bit irritating because it effectively hides everything else the box can do.

An Apple TV 4K home screen

Originally, Apple TV 4K opened instead to a home screen which included a series of apps, of which Apple’s TV was one. If you prefer that, you can turn it back on.

Scroll to the Settings app, go to Remotes and Devices. Then choose TV Button and change it to the home screen.

If you’re less fussed, you can leave the box opening on the TV app and then press the Home button on the Siri remote.

When you do that, you go to this home screen with all of the apps. Don’t expect “all” to mean very many, however, and at least not at the start.

The apps you see have changed over the years so especially if you’ve inherited this Apple TV 4K, you might see different things. But typically what you’ll get right out of the box is:

1. Apple Arcade
2. Apple Fitness
3. Apple’s TV app
4. App Store
5. Music
6. Photos
7. Podcasts
8. Settings




Apple Arcade is Apple’s gaming service which might be a boon to you and worth every penny of its $6.99 monthly fee. Or it might be something you never open and only pay for because it’s included in your Apple One Bundle.

The most important app at the start and possibly forever, is Apple’s TV app. But then there is the App Store and it’s through here that you get everything else.


The Apple TV app showing how you choose your next episode to watch

Again, though, don’t expect “everything else” to mean a lot. Compared to the iOS or even Apple Vision Pro App Stores, the Apple TV one is small.

But it does include apps such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, as well as other streamers.

Many or possibly now most streamers that have their own app on Apple TV 4K also work with Apple’s TV app. Their shows are included in that Apple TV app, and they are listed under headings like what to watch next.

As we said, Netflix does not do this. If you are a Netflix subscriber, you can only watch it on an Apple TV 4K by downloading its own app.

Downloading, by the way, works exactly on Apple TV 4K as it does on all of Apple’s devices. You just may get a bit bored of having to enter your password over and over since there’s no Touch ID or Face ID.

That said, there is an Apple TV app in Control Center on your iPhone. It will even pop up as a suggestion whenever you’re in a password field, and you can more easily type — or paste — your password through that.

Inside Apple TV 4K — all apps are different

In principle, all Apple TV 4K streaming apps work the same way. They have films and shows, they have a search function, you can make a list of favorites or ones to watch later, and so on.

However, in practice, every app does this navigation in a different way and you will take time to get used to them. Once you’re playing back any video, though, they practically all work the same way as the Apple TV app.

Apple’s TV app is probably the one to get used to first, anyway, as it does this thing of aggregating many other streaming apps. And most of the time, using this app is a question of clicking left and right, up and down, through lists of shows, and then selecting what you want.




During playback, this and most apps show you a timeline of what you’re watching. This appears when you start a show, or when you later pause it.

It’s a straight horizontal line with the end time showing and a cursor for where you are now. You can move that cursor left or right to get to a point you want.

But don’t expect precision. This is a fairly crude way of jumping to partway through a video and while sometimes the timeline shows you a thumbnail image of where you’ve got to, sometimes it doesn’t.

Fortunately, if it is that you need to skip forward to where you go before you were rudely interrupted, there is an alternative. When you restart a video, you are prompted to “Resume Playback” or “Start from Beginning.”

Note that if it’s a live stream you’re watching then this can be hit or miss. “Start from Beginning” tends to fail with the BBC iPlayer, for instance, if that start is more than about two hours ago.

Yet even then, you can move the cursor back to the right time, you can scrub back more than two hours.

Whatever you’re watching, when you are playing it, you get nothing on screen but the show or the film. But you can press Pause, or you can flick the remote up and down, to get settings and now the new InSight feature.

Flicking up causes some apps on the platform, to drop down a series of panes with settings to do with language, audio, and subtitles.

If you instead flick down, though, what you see still depends on the app you’re using, but it’s more consistent. It will often show the timeline of the video plus assorted controls such as, on YouTube for instance, going to a channel, or picking a related video.

With Amazon Prime, for another example, the flick down range of options includes what the service calls X-Ray. This is where you can get more information about the actors currently on screen, and this is precisely now what Apple has implemented in its app as InSight.

So now if actors, directors, and writers are doing a poor enough job that your attention isn’t held, you can now fiddle about with InSight.

Inside Apple TV 4K — TV app

Since Apple’s TV app contains Apple TV+, your existing library of films and TV shows, plus it subsumes other streamers such as Amazon Prime, it’s perhaps the most significant app on Apple TV 4K. But it’s also an app that has grown up from listing your existing library, to trying to guide you through thousands of hours of streaming choices.

Go into the TV app and you’ll get a trailer for a current show, most often from Apple TV+, over an Up Next list that initially shows five films or shows. They can be shows you haven’t finished, or they can be the next episode of a series you’re following.

Scroll left to right and the TV app shows you a ceaseless list of options. Maybe it eventually runs out, but we counted fifty recommended shows and there was no hint of an end yet.

Once you’ve swiped on Up Next, though, the trailer vanishes and the list of recent or recommended shows moves to the top of the screen. It so reveals more options, starting with a Top Chart of Apple TV+.

In any list on the screen, you can click through and when you find what you want to watch, press to start it. But if you instead swipe to the right, you get a pop down menu.


Left: the TV app’s Home button. Click on that to get right: options including any purchased items

This initially appears as a button at top left named Home, but if you go into it, the button changes to a dropdown menu with your name at the top.

Your cursor is now on an entry in that menu which, possibly confusingly, is also called Home. You can scroll up to your name and click to change to a different user, if you’ve set more than one up.

If it’s that you want to set up an extra user, you first come out of the TV app entirely. Then you could go open the Settings app, find Users and Accounts, and lastly select Add New User.

But you can also just press and hold on the remote control button that looks like a TV set, a rectangle with a stand-like line below it. That opens the Apple TV 4K’s Control Center, and you can select the icon of a person, then press for Add User.

Back in the TV app and having clicked on the Home button, the pop down menu shows Search, Channels & Apps, and half a dozen other selections.

Channels & Apps lists all connected apps where their programs are shown inside Apple’s TV app. Click on the name of a streamer here and you go to a subset of Apple TV devoted to them.

Or you can press the back button to get the menu up again.

This is one of the peculiarities of the TV app. Once you click to go into it, you have to press the Back button not to go back out, but to call up this drop-down menu of options.

These options are for Apple TV+, MLS, the Store and your Library. Choosing your Library brings up a straightforward list of your films and TV shows, divided into categories.

All of it there, waiting for you to swipe over and select them.

Inside Apple TV 4K — Settings

As well as swiping right to left, or flicking up and down, there are more options. You can press and hold on the power button to turn the set off.

Or you can press and hold on the home button to bring up Control Center. This gives you quick access to connecting a game controller, or AirPods, for instance.

From the home screen, you can get to far more granularity with the Settings app. This is where you can change Wi-Fi networks, change accounts, and set up remote controls.

One control of note is under Settings, General, and it’s called Screen Saver. You’ve heard about this — Apple TV 4K displays the most remarkable landscape photography when it’s been left idle for a time.


Apple TV 4K has simply beautiful screen saver videos

Let the screensaver start, and then when it’s showing you somewhere, gently touch the Siri Remote and you’ll see a caption saying where the photography was filmed. Sometimes it seems hard to get that gentle touch to work, but if it doesn’t, you can swipe left or right to get the next screen saver, then back to this one and it will display the destination.

Inside Apple TV 4K — Managing apps

Settings is an app, and so is everything else. You can add new apps from the App Store, and you can also rearrange apps, or remove them.

To remove or rearrange them, press and hold on an app until a pop-out menu appears. That includes the option to create folders with collections of apps, but it begins with the option Edit Home Screen.

Choose that and you can drag the app to any position you want.

There is one special position, though. The very top row of apps on Apple TV is marked out as a Dock with up to six apps in there.

What’s special about these is that if you select them but don’t open the app, the top third or so of the screen changes. At the very least it will show the app’s logo, but more often it will play videos from the app, such as trailers.

Depending on the app, it may also show you one or two of the shows you’ve recently been watching. You’d presume the idea is that you can quickly go back to those, and sometimes you can, but sometimes you still have to go through the app’s front screen first.

Regardless of whether the app is in this Dock or not, you can rearrange it — and you can select Delete App from that same menu. After that, you can choose to Delete the app, or Offload it so that you keep the app but it isn’t stored on your Apple TV 4K.

There is nothing at all to stop you deleting any app except for

• Apple Arcade
• App Store
• FaceTime
• Music
• Photos
• Podcasts
• TV
• TV Shows (from iTunes)
• Search
• Settings

You can, though, move any of these to any position. So you could push them down to the bottom of the screen, or you could put them into a folder.

It’s of course up to you what apps you install, and which of those you use. But move your favorite six up into the dock and you may never need to scroll down further.

But speaking of those apps, the FaceTime and Music ones are particularly significant, because they both extend what your Apple TV can do. These are the apps you use to do video conferencing and sing karaoke right on your Apple TV set top box.

Video conferencing

Your first thought about video conferencing on an Apple TV 4K has got to be that there isn’t a camera. You might well be able to see your caller in glorious full-screen quality, but they won’t see a pixel of you.

And they won’t, not from the Apple TV 4K itself. Instead FaceTime on the set top box can link to the camera on your iPhone. This works on second or third generation Apple TV 4K, and to use it, you:

1. Open FaceTime on Apple TV 4K
2. Click on your name in the screen that appears
3. When prompted to continue, turn to your iPhone
4. Wait for a Continuity Camera request from the TV to appear on your iPhone
5. Tap the notification, then tap Accept
6. Position your iPhone ready for your call

Apple TV 4K will use your iPhone’s rear cameras, not the front selfie one. Place your iPhone on its side with the camera facing you.

You’ll be able to see how you look, how the framing of the video is, directly on the Apple TV 4K. Then start a FaceTime call, or accept an incoming one.

Curiously, the karaoke feature only works with a more specific generation of the Apple TV 4K. You must have the third generation or the feature simply does not appear.

It won’t always appear even then, though, as your ability to sing karaoke to a song requires that song’s publisher to allow it. Very many do, but not all.

Apple TV 4K will display lyrics for most songs but for some, you can also sing along

To find out if you can sing to a track, all you can do is:

1. Open Apple Music on Apple TV 4K
2. Find a song you like and play it
3. Press the Menu button on the Siri Remote to bring up options
4. Select the Lyrics button
5. Look for a microphone button toward bottom right of the screen
6. If it’s there, the song allows karaoke, so select it
7. Sing, or have a very good go anyway

There’s of course nothing to stop you singing to anything, if you really must, but what this feature does is let you dip the volume of the real singer. You can remove them almost entirely, you can effectively duet with them, or you can let them take back over at full volume like nature and the artist intended.

You’ll use Apple TV 4K every day

You may — seriously — also never need to watch anything through any other way than Apple TV in future. The issue of Netflix not playing nice, or apps like YouTube crashing, is a pain, but overall, it works.

It presumably isn’t the TV set that Steve Jobs said he had cracked, but it is smoother, faster, and easier than any current alternative.