Apple today released tvOS 9.1 for the new Apple TV. Betas have included Siri support for controlling Apple Music, which Apple first said would be available for customers by early next year. Update: tvOS 9.1 does indeed add Siri support for Apple Music to all users. Apple’s Remote app also works with the new Apple TV for the first time. That means text input from iPhones and iPads will make setup much easier (and on par with older Apple TVs). watchOS 2.1 lets Apple Watch’s built-in Remote app work with new Apple TVs as a D-pad too.
Apple released the first software update to the new Apple TV, tvOS 9.0.1, in mid November. The update delivered no new features or visual changes, instead likely focusing on bug fixes and performance improvements.
New Apple TV owners have awaited a few features from the third-gen Apple TV that will hopefully come to the new box including Remote app support from iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches, Bluetooth keyboard support for entering complicated passwords especially at setup, and Apple’s Podcasts app, which has been seen in promotional material but not yet released.
To update to the latest version on the new Apple TV, go to the Settings channel then look for the System section near the bottom. From here look for Software Updates under Maintenance, then select Update Software and Download and Install. tvOS 9.1 will download and install, and require a system restart to complete.
The update process does not present release notes, however, so changes are not listed through Apple TV. Will dig through the latest version and update this post.
Apple also released OS X 10.11.2, iOS 9.2, and watchOS 2.1 today.
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tvOS 9.1… Final;ly, support for the iOS Remote app!
Still no Siri support for Home Sharing through the computers app? That’s patetic. Get your s@$t together, Apple. Siri support for Home Sharing was the sole reason I bought the damn thing.
Seems weird you would have bought something for a feature it doesn’t offer. I’m not even sure what Siri support for Home Sharing would mean though. The ability to play movies ripped to your desktop/laptop through Siri?
I bought it before anyone knew what Siri would do. Apple.com has since been updated to reflect that Siri search does not support Home Sharing. And what that would look like is me telling Siri to play a song or movie or TV Show that I have locally stored in iTunes on my computer (purchased or otherwise) rather than streaming it from the iTunes Store. I have slow internet and it takes forever to stream stuff that I’ve already bought. It’s much faster to have something locally available and stream it to my Apple TV than for me to stream it directly from iTunes.
I’m with you. Yes, I would like to tell Siri to play one of my music playlists and have it happen. Or to play a movie in my iTunes Library and it acknowledges that I have it, and plays it. Instead, all I get are options to buy something I already have. I also purchased my ATV4 under the assumption that Siri would—of course!-scan your iTunes Library and know what you have, including your media in results when you make a request. I never suspected that Apple would completely ignore everyone’s existing media not recently purchased through iTunes and just use Siri to encourage new purchases and nothing more. But any time someone complains about this oddly missing, no-brainer feature (that should be simple to implement), everyone races to Apple’s defense claiming that anything in your iTunes Library—the library system that Apple has been encouraging you to build for the past 15 years—is irrelevant and probably illegal. WTH? I find it incredibly rude of Apple to abandon iTunes Libraries and render Siri useless except for Apple’s money-generating streams.
Apple has not updated the Home Sharing experience since it was introduced years ago. There’s nothing to suggest they have any intention of adding universal search or Siri support either.
The best experience for Home Sharing today is via Plex. Hopefully when Apple (finally) releases their universal search API, developers at Plex will be able able to leverage it to bring universal search to Plex (and by extension, to Home Sharing.)
Home Sharing is crippled in part do to record labels not wanting it after Apple Music.
That’s a dumb thing to say. Really dumb.
I agree what the point if Siri doesn’t see the stuff we already have. I got tons of stuff the I had before I ever got my first iPod or any digital player I spent days converting my CDs and other music to MP3 and I’m disapire D this still doesn’t work. Has been a gripe of mine on the phone as well with home sharing. Also there are people who have bought music either threw Amazon or google that add to their iTunes Library but again no Siri support on the Apple TV for it.
I completely agree, Siri is useless to me without being able to find my own music. It never entered my mind, reading the promotional material, that Siri wouldn’t read my iTunes system library. The sole advance for me with the ATV4 is the new Home Button. Wish I hadn’t bought it – and that’s the first time in 30-years I’ve said that about an Apple product.
ŴAIT, WAIT! Siri does support Home Sharing – and quite well. You just have to give her the right commands. I have a big Classical library. So if I ask Siri ‘play Beethoven sonatas in My Music’ she’ll pick one at random and start playing it. Or if I ask ‘play Clementi Playlist in My Music’ she starts at the beginning. Equally if I ask ‘play Nixon in China in My Music’ she starts Adams’ opera at the beginning. She’ll even play specific items if you give her the whole name as listed in your library and add the critical phrase ‘my music’. It’s truly nifty!
Don’t see update for iOS app. Did update on TV, still nothing. Deleted and reinstalled old iOS app. Did it get pulled?
No update for the remote app needed.
Unless I’m somehow mistaken I believe this is for the 4th gen AppleTV. 3rd gen AppleTV’s introduced 1080P for playback and then there was a revision change during that generation that allowed for dual radio use to do Airplay mirroring without the need to be on the same networking subnet.
Never mind….apparently when I read that the first time I saw “for” rather than “from”. lol
I wish they added the keyboard they added to the search app to the rest of the system. It is a much easier way to navigate and type.
Remote App should been updated instead of enabling the keyboard,its disappointing it hasn’t been updated. Dictation or Siri via the remote app would been nice.
I’m seriously impressed by how quickly Siri responds to Apple Music requests. This is now the world’s best instant jukebox for parties.
Apple Music with Siri doesn’t work for me. Any music questions i ask it says can’t help me. How are you guys getting it to work?
The update now causes massive interference with my to aerial! I updated and unless I put the TV into sleep mode it causes my tv not to get any signals!
First off, anyone having the problem that the “My Music” section doesn’t show my iTunes purchases? I’m logged into my iTunes account, so I don’t understand why it won’t load iTunes songs. Is the Music app only an Apple Music app, therefore it’s useless if I’m a non-subscriber? I’m thinking this is not the case since the “My Music” tab displays the message: “You don’t have any music on this Apple TV (Music you sync from iTunes or purchase from the iTunes Store shows up in your library.” Which leads me to my final questions: This message indicates I can store music right on the Apple TV, no?! So, how do I do that?!?!
The ios remote doesn’t let you choose TV Shows or Movies…what good does that do?
When I choose Air Play speakers for the Audio the Apple TV keeps on going back to the TV speakers that os really annoying
What good is Siri if it can’t search in our own librairy?
I think the Apple TV was release too soon for Apple’s capacity to do a good jobs with it.
Since the latest update NHL streaming keeps freezing the Apple TV…
Maybe they’ll get it before 2017
Since the new update, will Siri play your purchased music and music uploaded to the cloud if you subscribe to iTunes Match (but don’t subscribe to Apple Music)?
I’m not sure if this is a region thing or what as I’m in Canada, but the remote app was updated 2 or 3 weeks ago and the release notes blatantly said it now worked with the 4th gen apple tv. I’ve used it seamlessly almost every day since. It doesn’t have siri but It still does everything it used to do on my 2nd and 3rd gen apple TVs. that’s plenty for me.