The Apple TV is loaded with features numerous capabilities to enhance your viewing experience, such as allowing captivating full resolution screensavers and customizing the locations of apps on the main home screen. Despite all of its great capabilities, how disappointing would it be if Apple didn’t develop Siri for Apple TV? Very!
Fortunately, Siri for Apple TV exists, and it does everything you’d expect it to and more. For now, the company has stated that Siri for Apple TV is only available in Australia (English), Canada (English, French), Germany (German), France (French), Mexico (Spanish), Netherlands (Dutch), Norway (Norwegian Bokmål), Japan (Japanese), Spain (Spanish), Sweden (Swedish), UK (English), and of course the US (English, Spanish).
How to Connect Siri to Apple TV
For enabled locations, connecting Siri to your Apple TV is extremely easy. It’s as simple as clicking a button. In fact, that’s exactly what it is.
If you’re turning on your TV for the first time fresh out of the box, the setup will prompt some basic installation dialogue, then ask you if you want to utilize Siri. From here, you can either click Use Siri, or Don’t Use Siri. Since you would love to use your Apple TV to its fullest potential, you’ll go ahead and choose Use Siri!
If you’ve accidentally chosen Don’t Use Siri or disabled it at the start and now wish to enable it, it’s easy to turn it on.
- Find your way into Settings, then General.
- Look for Siri and switch the option to On.
Enabling Siri For Apple TV In An Unsupported Region
For the unfortunate souls who don’t live in one of the locations listed above but would still love to have Siri for their Apple TV, don’t fret! There is a workaround though it’ll involve a lot more than clicking a single button.
- On your Apple TV, head into Settings and navigate to the General section.
- Under Language and Region, hit Language.
- Choose English.
- Go back to the main Settings menu and this time navigate to the Accounts section.
- Under Apple ID, hit iTunes and App Store.
- Under Preferences, hit Location.
- Choose a country that is supported (listed above).
- Back at the main Settings menu, go to Accounts then iTunes and App Store and login with a US App Store Account. If you don’t have a US account, simply register for one.
- Your TV should then prompt you to decide if you would like to enable Siri or not. Pick Use Siri and enjoy!
What can Siri do?
Beyond the playback controls, Siri does everything you’d expect it to and more. Starting with the most practical, you can use Siri to voice search recommendations. The easiest way to do that is to get a recommendation by asking “What should I watch?” Siri will recommend popular movies and TV shows across apps like iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu.
You can also narrow your search results by filtering by genre and cast. If you really like horror movies, simply ask “What horror movies should I watch?” If you find that Leonardo Dicaprio movies are hugely entertaining to you, you can ask, “What movies are Leonardo Dicaprio in?” If you’re looking to filter using both categories, go ahead and do so by asking, “What horror movies are Leonardo Dicaprio in?”
Aside from helping with searches, Siri can also answer a lot of questions you might have about movies. For example, if you’re trying to figure out the real name of an actor and not his character, you can do so straight from your TV and without finding a smartphone or computer to Google it. Just ask! For example, asking, “Who played Hermione Granger in Harry Potter?” will prompt Siri to answer “Emma Watson.”
For the sports fanatics, Siri also keeps track of sports games. Siri not provides scores and upcoming games, she an also go as far as to giving you statistics of each individual player. Now that’s something that could come in handy for TV sports viewing!
With its advantageous features, it’s a mystery to me as to why anybody would not allow Siri for Apple TV. That’s like having a swimming pool for decoration. You have it, why not use it!