5 Apple TV Settings You Should Change Immediately – BGR

There are things your Apple TV does better than any smart TV — from providing more solid software and stronger privacy to seamlessly integrating with other Apple devices. Apple TV is also incredibly easy to set up out of the box. All you have to do is plug it into your display of choice and go through the on-screen prompts until you’re redirected to the home screen. From here, it’s just a matter of downloading your streaming apps and signing in as you normally do.

You’re free to start binge-watching immediately, but to make your Apple TV work best for you, there are actually a couple of settings you might want to adjust first. These are designed to improve your Apple TV’s video quality, operability, and overall user experience. They’re all quickly accessible from the Settings app, although some are more hidden than the others. Here are these five Apple TV settings you should consider changing right away.

Light Sensitivity is an accessibility tool on Apple TV that lets you control the overall brightness of the screen. It’s especially handy when you want to dim the TV even more while you’re binge-watching at night or in a dark room. If the lowest brightness level is still too harsh to your liking, Light Sensitivity can fix that for you. To use Light Sensitivity on Apple TV, you need to enable it first with the following steps:

1. Open Settings from your home screen.
2. Click on Accessibility.
3. Under Vision, select Display.
4. Under Display Accommodations, choose Light Sensitivity.
5. Click on Light Sensitivity to activate it.
6. To set how intense the brightness should be, press Intensity and swipe on the clickpad to move the slider to your preferred level.

From here, you can set the back button as a shortcut to make it more convenient to access the Light Sensitivity feature later. Here’s how:

1. In Settings, open Accessibility.
2. Head over to the very bottom of the page.
3. Click on Accessibility Shortcut.
4. Choose Light Sensitivity.

Now, try pressing the back button three times. You should notice that the screen dims. Hit the button three times again to disable Light Sensitivity and go back to your original brightness.

By default, the TV button on the remote is designed to be a shortcut for the Apple TV app. Press it once, and it should automatically open the app for you. This seems like a logical functionality in general, and many other streaming devices also have some version of app shortcuts on their remotes. But unlike other devices, the Apple TV remote doesn’t come with a button that goes straight to the home screen. To get to your Apple TV home screen, you’d have to long-press on the back button. This seems inconvenient, especially since you’ll likely be returning to the home screen multiple times in a single session.

The good news, though, is that Apple allows you to change what the TV button does. Instead of the TV app, you can set it to jump to the home screen. Here’s how to do so:

1. Launch the Settings app.
2. Scroll down to Remotes and Devices.
3. Under Remote, highlight the TV Button.
4. Switch it to Home Screen.

Now, when you press once on the TV button, you should be taken to the Apple TV home screen. To open the TV app, you can just launch it from the home screen like any other Apple TV app.

On your Apple TV home screen, you’ll find the top shelf — where your favorite apps live — and the suggested content that automatically plays and encourages you to click. Aesthetics-wise, this seems all fine and dandy, but in terms of practicality, you might want to have your current movies and shows right up there instead. Sure, you can go to the Apple TV app to check the next content on your personal queue. But it’s much quicker and easier to pick up right where you left off when it’s on the home screen, no app launches required. Thankfully, this is one setting Apple TV allows you to change. Here’s how:

1. Add the Apple TV app to your top shelf if it isn’t already there.
2. Head over to Settings.
3. Select Apps from the menu.
4. Under App Settings, select TV.
5. Scroll down to Top Shelf under Home Screen.
6. Click on it to change it from What to Watch to Up Next.

The Up Next queue is automatically populated with movies and shows you’ve started but haven’t finished yet. You can also manually add new titles to it, so you won’t have to search for them the next time around. To do so, go into the TV app, hover over the content you want, and press and hold the center button on your remote. It should show a context menu, where you can select Add to Up Next.

Whenever you’re searching for a new show or movie to watch, you might have noticed that the letters on the Apple TV keyboard go all the way across the screen instead of being packed in a smaller space. This is the default configuration for Apple TV remotes with touch clickpads like the first to third generation Siri Remote. At first glance, this linear layout makes the screen look visually cleaner. But typing with it can be pretty frustrating as you’re forced to repeatedly go back and forth through all the letters.

It’s more efficient and intuitive to work with a grid keyboard, where the letters are on top of, instead of next to, each other. That’s exactly what you get when you use your phone as a TV remote. But if you don’t have your mobile on you, or prefer to stick with your Siri Remote, there’s actually a way to switch your Apple TV’s keyboard layout to a grid type. All it takes is opening the Settings app and finding General. Then, under Language & Region, go into Keyboard Layout and change Auto to Grid.

The next time you find yourself typing in a text field on your Apple TV, the keyboard will now appear in a neat grid format on the left of the screen instead of stretched out at the top. It’s important to note, though, that the keyboard still isn’t in a QWERTY arrangement — just a 6×5 grid.

Just as much as you’d want to watch everything on your Apple TV in Dolby Vision at 60fps, the reality is that not all content is made for such settings. Your TV or projector might support them, sure, but if you try to force every video into this high format, there’s a good chance they would look off. It’s best to watch your shows and movies as they were originally mastered.

Fortunately, Apple TV comes with the Match Content setting, divided into two options — Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate. What Match Content does is automatically adjust the output to the same range and frame rate as the content, so your movies and shows would look as intended. This lets you set a high video format as the default and have Apple TV handle the switch to a lower setting when needed. To enable Match Content on Apple TV in the Settings app, navigate to Video and Audio. Then, choose Match Content and click both Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate to turn them on.

There is one downside to using Match Content, though. You might run into instances when your Apple TV will temporarily show a blank screen and a “No Signal” or “Searching for Source” message. This happens when the format of the content you clicked on is different from Apple TV’s default format. While Apple TV is trying to match its settings to the content, it can drop the signal for a short moment.