Hands-On Apple 247 transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
All right, open the Apple TV app on your iPhone right now and scroll past the big featured poster at the top. Below the row of things you've already started, there's a row called Watchlist. And if you're like most people, either you didn't know you had one or the show you swear you saved isn't in it. That isn't carelessness on your part. Apple has renamed and relocated this list more than once, and it gave the app, the streaming service, and the black box under your TV The same 3 words. Today, we're untangling the Apple TV app, what the rows actually mean, how to feed it to your other streaming subscriptions, and how to stop it from auto-playing something you didn't ask for. Stay tuned for this episode of Hands On Apple. Podcasts you love.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:55]:
From people you trust. This is TWiT. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Apple. I am Micah Sargent, and today we are taking a look at the Apple TV app because depending on what device you're on, things can get a little confusing. So let's talk about what this means. Before anything else, you know, works, before any of it actually functions the way that you expect, it's important that you understand how each of these tools, depending on which device you're on actually function and what they all mean. So first and foremost, depending on the device you have, you may have an Apple TV 4K or you may have another Apple TV. And on that box called the Apple TV 4K or Apple TV is an app called Apple TV app.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:57]:
And here's the thing, the streaming service is now called Apple TV as well. Because Apple dropped that Plus, it used to be called Apple TV Plus, from the Apple TV on November 3rd, 2025. So honestly, that removed the last easy way to tell the service apart from everything else wearing that exact same name. And what's great, but also can be a little confusing as well, is that the app comes pre-installed on your iPhone. On your iPad, on your Mac, on your Apple TV 4K, and on your Apple Vision Pro. But it's not just there because it also runs on Samsung televisions, LG televisions, Sony televisions, Vizio smart televisions, Roku televisions, Amazon Fire TV, PlayStation, Xbox, Windows, and also since February of 2025, it also runs on Android. Yeah. It's everywhere.
Mikah Sargent [00:02:56]:
Everything that you would expect to have on Apple TV, you can find on all of these devices. And there's another thing to understand. Everything personal in the app follows your Apple TV account. It's not the hardware that's holding on to all of the personalization. It's the account. So that means that signing in on a friend's TV is going to bring that same watchlist and watch progress with it when you sign in. Oh, and by the way, I have covered the Apple TV a little bit before. I talked about the ability for your phone to be used as a means to match color balance between the television and the Apple TV itself.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:42]:
So if you check out episode 194, you can learn more about that. Now, when it comes to the TV app, the Apple TV app, uh, things have changed. over time. So let's head into iOS and take a look. Here we are on iOS, and as you can see, I've got the Apple TV app in front of me. And as I mentioned before, we've gotta scroll down a little bit past that featured poster to see the Continue Watching screen. The row that Apple used to call the Up Next section, it's gone. It's now Continue Watching.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:15]:
These are the things that are already in progress. There's another place where things that are not already in progress are saved, And it's separate. And here's the annoying thing about that. We gotta scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll. And there we are, watchlist, all the way down there at the bottom or near the bottom. It's very far away. It's the separate row for titles that are saved for later. And depending on what Apple TV is serving you, It gets dropped there.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:52]:
How do you go about saving something? Well, let's tap on this Remembering Dolly Parton section where we can see some of the apps that— the apps, the shows that Dolly Parton has been a part of, like the Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas. Let's say we want to add that to our Up Next. That's no longer called Up Next. It's called Continue Watching. and Watchlist. So we tap on that and you can see there are 3 options: Go to Movie, Add to Watchlist, and Share Movie. We're going to choose Add to Watchlist. And if we go back to our home screen, you'll see that it pops up in the Watchlist.
Mikah Sargent [00:05:32]:
In order to get it into Continue Watching, you actually have to play it and start watching it. So touching and holding on the poster on the iPhone or the iPad and tapping to Add to Watchlist is how you go about doing that. Of course, pressing and holding the click pad on the Apple TV remote, the Siri remote, and then selecting Add to Watchlist is how you do it on the Apple TV. If you don't want something in your Watchlist or in your Up Next, simply tapping and holding on that item in either of those and choosing Remove from Watchlist or Remove from Continue Watching will allow it to go away. Here's the kind of catch though. Things that are added to the Watchlist Also do appear in Continue Watching once you start watching them. So if you— well, and here it is as well. The Continue Watching section is showing the Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:33]:
So the only difference is that it shows down at the bottom in Watchlist, meaning that you have not begun watching it yet. Whereas The other content that I have on here that I have started watching shows the progress of the episode or movie. It gets a little confusing and this kind of overlap between the two does make it a little bit unclear what you're meant to do. So in order to get it to the next stage, of course, finishing an episode will drop the next one in that continue watching section if you're watching. show. And so that row sometimes fills up with stuff that you may be going, where, where did that come from? I had no idea that I was watching that. And both rows, remember before when I said that when you log in with your Apple account, that makes a difference on what's showing up? That's because both rows sync to every device that's signed into the same Apple account. So your iPhone, your iPad, your Mac, your Apple TV 4K, your Vision Pro, and supported smart TVs, they all show the same content.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:43]:
It can be a little confusing how they go about showing that content because depending on the device, you may not have access to some of the apps. So I have found that macOS tends to be the place where the fewest apps and streaming services will show content. And frankly, the app is only as useful as the services that are connected to it. So if we go to the home page, as you can see, we are here where we have Continue Watching at the top. We can scroll down, not as far as Watchlist, to the section that is marked with Channels and Apps. This section shows you the different apps and channels built into the Apple TV. Disney+, HBO Max, and this, by the way, this is a very long— List. section.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:37]:
So first and foremost, the options that are available based on the subscriptions that you have will appear at the beginning. So Disney+, HBO Max, NBC, which is part of Peacock, Paramount+, PBS, Peacock, Prime Video— those are all places where I am signed in. What comes after are the places where I'm not signed in, like MGM+ and Hulu and BritBox and Acorn TV and Adult Swim, AMC, Animal Planet, BBC BBC Select, BFI Player, and on and on and on. And when I say on and on and on, I mean that. It keeps going. OWN, the Oprah Network, is the last one there. You've got TNT, you've got CW, you've got Telemundo, you've got Starz and Shudder and ScreenPix and Sygo and Red Bull TV. Again, the list continues on and on and on and on.
Mikah Sargent [00:09:35]:
And here's the thing. Connected Apps is its own sort of understanding because it's separate from the built-in channels that Apple offers where you can pay for a subscription to one of the services, the streaming services within the Apple TV app. Whereas Connected Apps are third-party apps that can also serve content into the Apple TV. So outside shows can appear in To Continue watching. Without them, the app only knows about Apple's own catalog and purchases. On Apple TV, those connections live in Settings, Apps, TV, and these are under Connect to TV. So we can take a look at some of the settings that are available to us. If we tap in the top right corner, if we're on the home screen, we tap in the top right corner on the avatar here, It brings up your Apple account information, and you'll notice there's a section called Connected Apps.
Mikah Sargent [00:10:35]:
This shows you the different apps that I have installed or have installed at some point that are connected. AMC, Animal Planet, BBC America, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+, PBS Video. These different apps I've signed into at different times, and so they are providing information to the Apple TV and making it available to me to watch there. In the US, the supported list, it's very long. It includes Disney+ and Hulu, some of these other options. But there's one limit that's very important to understand, something that's very frustrating. Netflix, of all places, has never participated in the connected apps option. So you have to watch Netflix stuff via the Netflix app directly and scroll through and do your searches that way.
Mikah Sargent [00:11:25]:
Understandable. But here's the thing, here's the annoying thing. Netflix appeared briefly in February of last year, and then people celebrated, and then Netflix said, oh, that was a mistake. It was very frustrating. YouTube and YouTube TV, they also are not available to you, but they've never been available, so it's understandable that they continue to not be there. Apple's own list of supported apps is country by country, so a service that connects in the US may not connect abroad. That's something to be to bear in mind. And Apple TV channels that you buy inside the app and separate apps installed from the App Store, they will sit side by side in that same row.
Mikah Sargent [00:12:10]:
So you can kind of lose track of what's actually being billed. And it's part of the reason why I recommend to people who have trouble keeping track of that to do as much as you can as an Apple TV channel, particularly because it means that if you log in on a Samsung TV or a Roku or another one of these devices, You are able to log in and access your Apple TV channels on those devices. So you don't have to rely on that smart TV having an app for one of those third-party options. Let's talk about some of these switches that you may want to flip, some of the settings that you may want to change, be it autoplay, spoilers, your history, your watch history. It's all over the place. And the first part starts with autoplay because autoplay is actually inside the app. It's not in the settings. In order to access it, you tap home, you tap your face in the top left-hand corner or top right-hand corner, and then you look for the playback option and you'll see there are a couple of things here.
Mikah Sargent [00:13:22]:
First, play next episode. What that does is that at the end of an episode of a series, it will automatically play the next one. But the second one is a little bit different. After a series finishes, or a movie finishes, or a sporting event finishes, it can automatically play content that is recommended for you based on your previous watching experience. If you don't like that, turn it off. I like to have play next episode turned on. I like to have play a recommendation turned off because I have found that the recommendations are not very good for me. You also have the ability to view sports scores within the app underneath the settings, which we accessed by tapping on our face in the top right corner, or whatever you happen to have there as your Apple account in the top right corner.
Mikah Sargent [00:14:13]:
We choose Sports in the settings, and you turn on Sync My Sports. Upon doing so, Apple says sports leagues, teams, and athletes you follow will sync across Apple News, Apple TV, and other Apple apps. I don't follow sports, and so I do not have that in my options. Now, that's not the only set of controls that you have when it comes to your Apple TV app. You can also decide whether you want play history to be a part of the experience. If we, uh, again, tap in the top right corner on our avatar and we choose Apple TV settings, you are presented with a list of controls, including streaming options and download options and automatic downloads and audio. And one of the options here is under the device preferences pane and use play history is here alongside show sports scores. And it says, allow TV shows and movies played on this device to influence For You recommendations and continue watching across your devices.
Mikah Sargent [00:15:28]:
So that means that if you have a device like a child's iPad, for example, that's watching a bunch of nonsense, you can turn it off on that device so that your child's favorite show does not influence the algorithm that is suggesting content to you. Very handy. Inside the app, you also have the ability to clear out the history. So if you are unhappy with how the content is displaying, you can use the clear history option, which we will go back into the app. We'll tap in the top right corner, And we will look at, I think it's in, nope, not in playback. It is in privacy and access. Here, if we choose clear play history, then everything that you've watched on this device and other devices is cleared out and you can kind of start fresh. It clears every single signed-in device and lets you rebuild your algorithm from there.
Mikah Sargent [00:16:38]:
You also have streaming and download quality in your settings. So if you have a low, uh, if you have, if you have a limit on how much data you're able to download, or you, if you have a limit on your bandwidth, this is a great way to decide how that content shows up for you. So in streaming options, I have use cellular data, and under cellular, I have high quality set. You can also set it to automatic. Wi-Fi, high quality or data saver. And then under download, whether or not cellular data is allowed and what languages are available as well. I like to have high quality turned on across the board because I happen to have a plan that has unlimited data. But if you have a limited data plan, then changing this might be good for you.
Mikah Sargent [00:17:30]:
There's a lot to explore when it comes to these settings within your Apple TV app. And again, this is an Apple TV app that is available in so many places. So setting these settings on a device that makes it easy to do so, like your iPhone or your iPad or the Apple TV itself, is a great way to make sure that everything is kind of locked in before you decide to log in on a third-party device. So here's my homework for you. Open the Apple TV app on whatever device gets the most use. Scroll on down to the channels and apps row and check whether the streaming services already being paid for are actually connected. Connecting even 2 of them changes the Continue Watching row from a list of Apple's own shows into something that's actually worth glancing at. And while you're in there, go ahead and turn off Play a recommendation, because as I said, I don't like the recommendations.
Mikah Sargent [00:18:28]:
And frankly, it is the setting that's most likely to start a show that nobody chose. Whereas if you have it set to play the next episode, that's a different story. Profiles, kids mode, and the more in-depth sports side of the app— we're not going to do that in this episode in order to keep it you know, within this, uh, 25-minute package, 24-minute package. But that may be something that we look at in the future. If those are worth a follow-up and you would like to learn more about Profiles and Kids Mode and the Sports app, then, you know, say so in the Club Suite Discord. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Hands On Apple. It's always a pleasure to bring you this show.
Mikah Sargent [00:19:17]:
It's truly one of the highlights of my week. So be sure to tune in next week for another episode. And if you have questions, comments, concerns, or more, hoa@twit.tv. And forgive me today for the shininess. My AC is broken and I am sweating as I'm recording this episode of Hands On Apple. Goodbye, everybody, and I'll catch you next time. Bye. See you again next week for another episode of Hands On Apple.
Mikah Sargent [00:19:51]:
Thanks for watching.
