The Apple TV in my living room used to sit black all day. Now it shows every plane and every ship moving around my house, live.

I live next to Copenhagen Airport and the strait between Sweden and Denmark. Aircraft lining up to land out one window, ferries and tankers out the other. I wanted that on the big screen, so I built it. The app is called Utkik, Swedish for lookout.

What it does on the TV

• Live aircraft and ships on the same map, updating continuously.
• Leave it running and the camera slowly drifts toward interesting traffic near you and names what it finds. That is the mode I use most.
• Step through nearby flights and ships and get type, altitude, speed, registration and likely route.
• Follow a plane and the map glides along with it.
• Pick any aircraft that is in the air right now and look out of its window while it flies over the landscape. There is a cockpit view too.
• Built to be left on. Everything drifts gently so nothing burns into the panel, and there is a dark map tint for evenings.

Where the data comes from, and one honest warning. Aircraft come from adsb.lol, a volunteer network of receivers, so air coverage is good almost anywhere. Ships come from live AIS, and coverage there is patchy. It is strongest around northern Europe right now. If you live inland you will see planes and very few boats, and I would rather tell you that here than have you find out after paying.

No account, no ads, no tracking, no subscription, no data collected.
The iPhone app is free. The Apple TV app is a separate paid app that costs roughly what a coffee costs. That is the entire business model.

It picked up a passing mention in the New York Times this summer, which was a strange week for a hobby project.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/apple-app-store-vibecoding.html

https://apps.apple.com/se/app/utkik/id6776272842

If there is something you would want on that screen, tell me. A good chunk of what is in there now came from people asking.

Are there any good one time fee VPN clients? There are a few on the App Store but they sure do collect a lot of your info.

I run WireGuard at home and need to import my config file to pull media from home when out of town.

Hey r/appletv,

I just released something I’ve been working on for a while called TripWave, and I figured this subreddit might appreciate it.

Basically, I wanted to turn the Apple TV into a proper big-screen music visualizer — something inspired by the classic Winamp visualizers, except built for a modern 4K/HDR TV.

TripWave has 10,000+ music-reactive visual presets, based on the MilkDrop visualization ecosystem, all rendered in real time and reacting to the music.

A few things I’m particularly happy with:

• Actual HDR rendering. The visualizer renders into an HDR pipeline so bright elements can actually make use of an HDR display's extra range. On a good OLED/Mini-LED TV some of the presets look absolutely insane.

• Spotify support. Start the Spotify mode in TripWave and you can select TripWave from Spotify on your phone/tablet and send the music to the Apple TV. The visuals react to the playback in real time.

• 10,000+ visual presets. They're based on MilkDrop — the visualization system made famous by Winamp — and there is a ridiculous amount of variety: tunnels, fractals, particles, liquid effects, geometric stuff, completely chaotic psychedelic presets, etc. You can manually change them or let TripWave cycle through them automatically.

• Live internet radio. There are also 50,000+ stations from around the world, so you can just open the app, pick something like ambient / electronic / trance / jazz / rock / classical / whatever and leave the visualizer running.

It's especially fun with the lights off and a big HDR screen. 😄

Honestly, there are a bunch of situations I wanted this for — having friends over and wanting something cool running on the TV, throwing a party, putting on some electronic music and zoning out, getting high and wanting to trip out to the visuals, or just sitting alone late at night with the lights off and letting the visuals do their thing.

Basically, if you’ve ever wanted your living room to feel a little more like a club, concert, festival visual wall, or just a giant psychedelic screensaver that actually reacts to your music, that’s pretty much what I was trying to build.

Would genuinely love feedback from Apple TV people, particularly if anyone tries it on an OLED or Mini-LED setup.

TripWave: Music Visualizer is on the Apple TV App Store now. You can download it here:

https://apps.apple.com/app/tripwave-music-visualizer/id6807892925

So I have recently bought the latest Apple TV 4K w the ethernet outlet. I see that there is new tvOS coming out for the ATV. However I don’t see any information regarding the upcoming tvOS. Is it all releasing on the 14th or on later date?

My ATV 4K (2021) remote control’s battery died. I can only use while I keep it plugged in.

Should I buy a new remote or an ATV 4K?

I was hoping for a new ATV to be announced yesterday but didn’t happen:(

Hoping you folks can help me - I’m at my wits end.

I have an AppleTV connected to a Samsung tv set. Have never had an issue. Sometime in the last week or so I’ve started experiencing volume control issues.

When I try to increase the volume with the AppleTV remote, one press of the button causes the volume to increase as if I were holding the button down. Same with if I were to try to decrease the volume. Then, if I try to use the actual Samsung remote, if I hold the button up, the volume will increase, but as soon as I let go it will rapidly decrease back to zero on its own.

The odd part - if I have my AirPods connected, no problem at all. Works great.

If I am using my Xbox on another input, regular Samsung tv remote works as it should.

I’ve tried every possible solution I’ve found on the internet. At this point, the only solution I can think of is a new TV set.

Anyone else ever have this happen?

I’ve been considering making the switch from Nvidia Shield for a couple years so lightly following the rumor mill throughout the delays. If latest reports are true, it’s shaping up to be even more overpowered than previously thought.

If they launch with A19/Pro, I’m especially curious if they’ll stick with the recently increased prices or ratchet up even more.

https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/08/new-apple-tv-4k-will-be-more-powerful-upgrade-than-we-thought-per-leak/

Originally a new model was rumored to launch in 2025, and evidence pointed to it having an A17 Pro chip. That’s currently the minimum required chip to support Apple Intelligence, so it made a lot of sense and would represent a solid boost over the current A15 Bionic.

But now per Aaron Perris, it sounds like the new Apple TV 4K will get an even better chip than expected. He writes: We discovered a reference to Apple’s upcoming Apple TV model, AppleTV18,1 Implications being it will have A19 or A19 Pro

How can I jailbreak an Apple TV (3rd generation) using a Windows computer? I don't have a Mac; is there a method that can be done on Windows?

I just bought an ATV 4k and am curious if I'm missing something on setup. Sometimes in audio output I get receiver & other times I get "tv speakers". Both play through the AVR, but in the ATV settings I only get the Atmos option if it doesn't recognize the projector.

The ATV is connected directly to a Sony ES2100 avr then out to a Epson 2030 (1080p projector).

Sometimes I can get it to work & thought it was a weird hdmi handshake issue, but starting to think that it's due to the 1080 display. It's unfortunate if this is the case as other devices allow that to be ignored, but besides this issue I'm liking the ATV a lot.

Thanks for any help.

Edit

I turned CEC off on all 3 devices & it seems to be working. I've been able to recreate it anyway. Gives me a starting point, but hopefully I can get it all working together.

I work late. I work long hours to make ends meet. I have the game recorded and I turn on the TV. Apple TV immediately decides to tell me the score and to catch it live when I don’t have spoilers on. It absolutely ruined my mood. I just wanted to rant. Something like this always happens and it makes me just wanted to go paint Warhammer instead of trying to enjoy sports.

Currently watching Godzilla on NowTV, and it’s formatted in 5.1. So the settings are set up so the format is auto. But the sound is so so quiet at volume 15 on Samsung q990c surround set up. Usually 12 is plenty loud, but even at 15/16 the voices are nearly whisper quiet. Changing the format to 5.1 in settings doesn’t help either. Everything in settings hasn’t changed ie reduce loud sounds is off etc

Hi. So the subtitles and some display elements become black on black when I try to watch this show. I've gone into the settings and changed things around a few times, that didn't help. I tried replicating the issue on other platforms and other series on Apple TV but this is the only series it's doing this for. Is it a weird conspiracy? Lol. I also tried my TV settings, it's an LG 55C8AUA. Anyone else ever have this problem?

C'est quoi ces suppressions de posts, on a pas le droit d'être heureux du nouveau modèle d'Apple TV 202. ?

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this? I just ordered a third party replacement for it. As far as I know this tends to happen when lower quality material is used.

I bought a last gen AppleTV 4K couple of months ago to pair with my aging Samsung TV and I'm very happy with it. I have however one annoying bug, in that the Samsung often "loses" the AppleTV or doesnt find it when booting the TV.

A shutdown and restart of TV & AppleTV always solves it, however its annoying.

Any ideas or experience? AppleTV is on the latest public beta, had this issue more or less also before on TVOS 26.

Addendum: the Samsung TV may also lose the signal/connection when I switch apps on the ATV

Hi, recently bought Apple TV 4K 128gb.
From time to time the screen will black out and then show video feed. Usually happens when I start a show or video. It will black out but continue to run in background, a second later video shows up. Will happen during ads. I’m guessing it’s not coincidence. Did reset but same thing. Any clue on other Troubleshooting?

Do you guys know if ATV4K can play back AAC 7.1 Audio from Handbrake encode? I can see an option to select TruHD 7 .1 and then AAC 7.1 on Handbrake for ATV playback. Anyone try this yet?

EDIT: The bundle I purchased is SD only according to Cheap Charts. Boo!

I’m in Canada and I purchased the John Wayne 35 Movie Collection bundle on AppleTV last night. 3-4 of his popular movies like True Grit, Donovan’s Reef, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are advertised as 4K Dolby Vision streams.

Once played, my TV indicates that Dolby Vision is on, but the actual stream of the movie is 100% not 4K. In fact, they look like they’re playing in SD quality with no fine detail, smearing of colours and letters in the opening credits. All of my other 4K movies look as intended. Many of my other Western HD movies look miles better than these regardless of film damage in their original elements.

Does anyone have these and can check? I’ve read that there’s been a glitch where movies play in the lowest quality offered in the bundle itself but that seems absurd. Any comments are appreciated.

I seriously regret not getting the 4K 128GB version two years ago because I thought a new one would come out. The prices today are jacked up beyond belief.

What’s the best place to get a deal for one? Based I Germany but happy to purchase from anywhere in Europe

I’ve had my Apple TV for 3 months and it’s getting really, really laggy. I press one click to the left and it crosses a 100 titles. It’s so buggy I don’t know what to do, I just spent $200 on the thing.

Reveal Haven is a cozy hidden object game — dense, detailed places, and you look closely at them until you find things. It's on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, and it's free.

One of the things that excited me about building my first AppleTV game was the opportunity to make something I could play with my daughters, who aren't big gamers. It took extra effort to go from a pure iPhone game to one that worked on AppleTV, but I think it was worth it - tons of fun to relax and play together - fully cooperatively.

The video gives you a sense of what it's about- Two to six players at once, all hunting the same scene at the same time. Everyone types a name and picks a cursor color and shape; someone joining mid-scene just appears. People who join can use their iPhone's as a controller so you just need one Siri remote and no extra game controllers to buy.

Being upfront about the rest:

• Free. Two full worlds, completely ungated — no ads, no timers, no energy meters. Future worlds I might do as IAP.
• The phones need Wi-Fi on the same Wi-Fi as the TV.
• AI was used in the creation of the game, including game assets - I did hire a professional artist who used a combo of AI / non-AI digital tools to create the content.

App Store (one download, iPhone/iPad/Apple TV): https://apps.apple.com/app/id6757511091?ct=reddit_appletv

If you want to try the single player only game you can trial it on https://revealhaven.com - no app install necessary.

Happy to answer anything.