


Somewhat annoyingly, you have to hold down the digital Siri key while giving the command - the Remote appears to relay your voice to the Apple TV for transcription rather than handle it natively.īut that’s grasping at straws. Just as with the physical Apple TV remote, you can shout commands like “search for movies starring Dakota Fanning,” “play music by the Beastie Boys,” or “show me popular sci-fi shows,” and if they’re at least semi-intelligible, your Apple TV will respond accordingly. As Cue promised at WWDC, Siri is present and accounted for: It’s activated by pressing a virtual Siri button. Once paired to your Apple TV, the Remote app shines. Connecting the iOS remote to an Apple TV now requires no more than keying in on your iPhone or iPad the sequence of numbers that appear on your television, a process that worked consistently in our testing. Gone is the antiquated setup process in the old Remote app, replaced by simpler, PIN-based pairing.
#Apple tv remote app for mac software
The new Remote app doesn’t come as a surprise, exactly - Apple’s head of internet software and services Eddy Cue teased it at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June - but that doesn’t make it any less welcome. But on Tuesday, Apple released a new app, Remote, that’s significantly more capable. It lacks a proper keyboard, for one - you have to hunt and peck for letters using a digital directional pad - and doesn’t integrate with Siri on the fourth-generation Apple TV or offer virtual keys for games. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of losing your Apple TV remote between couch cushions, you’re probably aware of how cumbersome the alternative - the Apple TV remote for iOS - can frequently be.
