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Teaching your Apple TV to use a 3rd party remote

by Michael Gray Nov 24th 2010 at 9:30AM

Usually, if you're trying to get a new remote to work with home electronics, you teach the remote to work with your electronic device. You look up the name and brand of your electronic in the remote's manual, plug in the super secret code, and hope it works. It's especially painful if your universal remote control doesn't have the necessary code for your home electronic.

The Apple TV is smarter than that. You actually teach the Apple TV to use whatever remote control you want to use. It's kind of nice to have a home electronic that's smarter than a remote control. It can even use the remote that came with your television, cable box, or DVD player. Here's how to do it.

Go to the Settings menu, select General, and then Remote. Choose the Learn Remote option. Make sure the remote you're using isn't already controlling something else (like "Television.") On the Apple TV, choose Start. On the Apple TV screen, the Up button will become highlighted. Press the button on the remote control you'd like to use for Up. And then continue down the rest of the controls.

Setting up a new remote to work with the Apple TV really couldn't be much easier.

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Usually, if you're trying to get a new remote to work with home electronics, you teach the remote to work with your electronic device. You...
 

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15 Comments

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Jason Anderson

Looks like the Konami Code.

November 25 2010 at 2:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kree

WARNING!!!! I set this up with my tv remote and then went back to TV, navigated around a bit. Even though I'd set the apple tv to sleep it had woken it's self up and was about to rent some old movie that I'd never heard of.

I recommend tuning on parental controls so that it asks for a passcode before letting you rent a movie (you can allow all other parental controls)

November 24 2010 at 6:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to kree's comment
junkie

Better method is to use a universal remote only and then use an unused device for this. LIke my cable box controller has extra options to control a DVD player or AUX. I set up AppleTV to be controlled when AUX is selected. It works fine. When I select Cable or TV there is no concern of the AppleTV being accidentally controlled.

November 24 2010 at 7:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ben

This is one of the BEST feature of the Apple TV.

November 24 2010 at 2:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eideard

Harmony 880 never needed this feature.

November 24 2010 at 1:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Phoenixfury

I'm actually stunned this hadn't come up sooner since the Apple TV (2010) has been out for a few months now. Well any how although I have a Harmony 520 remote, I taught the Apple TV to use the Harmony instead of the other way around. I didn't bother entering the Apple TV info for the Harmony remote because I assume if the original Apple TV is in the Harmony data base, it would likely just have the limited remote buttons. So what I did was added a random Samsung DVD player as a device for my Harmony then trained my Apple TV to use that setup instead. As a result I am able to use the advanced features that can not be found on the Apple TV remote itself.

I also want to throw this out there for Harmony 520 owners (and possibly other Harmony remotes) I'd like to suggest making the Menu and Prev the same button. Menu on the Apple TV acts more like the prev button on all other devices anyway. On my remote Menu is just above Prev and sometimes gets confusing for me when I would hit Prev and nothing happened. By making them both function the same, you'll have your bases covered.

November 24 2010 at 12:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jerry

One of the things Steve Wozniak did right after leaving active work at Apple (waaay back when) was to go and start a new company that invented the universal remote.

At the time, he commented that it was a real pain trying to keep track of a whole bunch of them. It seems his ideas are still being used.

November 24 2010 at 11:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John.B

Mad props, Michael.

This should resolve the issue some people seem to have with the lack of a volume control on the Apple TV remote itself (regardless that it doesn't belong there, anymore that you'd expect that on a DVD or Blu-Ray player).

November 24 2010 at 11:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jason

Wow they straight up stole my idea: www.flirc.tv

But like a good friend of mine just said, at least now you know it was a good idea.

November 24 2010 at 11:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to Jason's comment
J

The best thing about this is that you can teach extra commands, like 10 second rewind and 30 second skip ahead. I found that setting my universal remote to tivo mode and using that to teach the apple TV worked out well. I get the arrow keys and select, but I also get dedicated use of the fast forward, rewind, start, stop and 10 second rewind buttons. My universal remote also controls the sound too, which is an added bonus above the ATV remote.

November 24 2010 at 10:45 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jerid Hill

I have mine set up to use the PS3 Bluetooth Universal controller. I control my TV, AppleTV & PS3 with it.

November 24 2010 at 10:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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