Sure it’s awesome to own the latest cool gizmo or gadget, but what makes that investment even more worthwhile (and practical) is truly understanding, navigating, and embracing all its under-the-radar features, surreptitious shortcuts, and cool customizable elements. Here are some of the things you didn’t know that you wanted to know about your brand-new, 4th generation Apple TV remote.
Yes, You Can Move Those Icons To Different Spots
Rearranging your apps on your Apple TV is simple. Just swipe “navigate” to the specific app you want to move, then “click and hold” the touchpad down until you see the app wiggle. Next, swipe up, down, left, or right to relocate it to a different spot on your Apple TV’s icon grid. To make the change permanent (and stop the jiggling), click it again.
Go Ahead, Delete Those Apps When You’re Done Installing Them
To rid your Apple TV of an app, simply “navigate” over to the unwanted app, highlight it, and then click and hold down the touch surface of your Siri remote until the app jiggles. Next, press the “play/pause” button on your remote. You’ll get asked via a message on the screen if you are sure about deleting the app; if you are, just click on “delete” or remove it. Changed your mind? Just click on “cancel” and the app will remain. FYI: you can’t get rid of the tvOS apps that were shipped with it.
Super-fast Swiping.
This one takes some getting used to, but once you’ve mastered the feel for it, you’ll be swiping super-fast (or super-slow) depending upon your preference. If you swipe a little “harder” on your Apple TV remote touchpad, the cursor will zoom across the screen. This works for the icons for the apps, too. The faster you physically swipe your touchpad, the faster the cursor will fly across the screen. If you want to carefully select one icon or letter at a time, slow down your swiping speed and voila! your cursor slows down.
Errrgghh! Typos
A common (and annoying) issue while texting is trying to correct spelling mistakes or wrong word choices! That frustrating problem is now easy to remedy (so you don’t have to swipe all the way to the right to (finally) get to the delete key). Simply hover over a letter when you’re typing, then click and hold the touchpad down. This action will display all the alternate characters for that letter or number you meant to hit. In addition, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see a backspace key right there to fix your mistake!
Choosing Screensavers.
If you double-click “menu” button, you’ll start the screensaver. If you don’t want to use one of Apple’s truly stunning aerial options for your screensaver, you can use your own photos! Just open the “photos” app on your TV and tap on the album you want to use as the screensaver carousel. To change it, go to settings, then general, then screensaver, thenscreensaver type!
Adding Songs To Your Playlist.
If you’re listening to one of your favorite tunes on your Apple TV and want to add it to your music, just click and hold on the name of the song and a menu will pop up. It gives you lots of options of what you can do with the tune (add it to your playlist, check out the song’s album, or start a station based on that song!) If you don’t want to do anything in particular with that song, just press the “menu” button and it will take you back to your song list.
Hurry Up And (Pretend To) Go To Sleep!
There’s no way to power down the Apple TV, but you make it go to sleep! If you want to put your Apple TV to sleep in a jiffy, just hold down the home button and that will prompt your Apple TV to ask you if you want to also turn off devices connected to the Apple TV (a.k.a. your television set). You can also access sleep mode by going to “settings” and then“sleep now” mode. If you want to wake it up again, press the home button just once.
Skip The Scary Scenes (Or Watch Them Again).
If you don’t want to see a scene in a video (or you want to see it again), just hold your finger at the top of the trackpad (right or left side – it doesn’t matter) and you can skip ahead 10 seconds or rewind 10 seconds!
