How to Clean Up Your Apple TV Homescreen


apple tv homescreen

With more and more channels are being added to Apple TV every few weeks, the homescreen has started to become fairly cluttered. The most recent addition of Red Bull TV brings the total icons to more than 30.

Leaving the icons as-is means having to scroll through channels you probably won’t ever use to get to the few you constantly access. There are a few tricks to organizing your Apple TV homescreen and with them; you should get a much better experience.

Reorganize

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The easiest method for cleaning up your Apple TV homescreen is to reorganize the channels so the ones you access the most are at the top. Rearranging Apple TV channels is very similar to how you reorganize your iOS device’s homescreen.

Using an Apple remote, move the cursor to select the channel you wish to move, then press and hold the Select button on the remote (center button in the directional pad). You should see the channel icon start to shimmy, just like an iOS app that’s ready to be moved. Once the icon starts to shimmy you can use the directional pad to move the channel icon where you want it to be. Once it’s where you want it, you just need to press the Select button again to place the channel.

Complete this same process for each channel icon you want moved. Reorganizing the homescreen is one thing, but what about those channels that you know you’ll never use? Instead of just moving them all to the bottom wouldn’t it be nice if you could just hide them?

Hiding Channels

Apple TV doesn’t offer an actual way to hide apps, but with the help of Restrictions you can clean up the Apple TV homescreen and hide those unnecessary channels. First, select the Settings channel on your Apple TV and then the General section.

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Next, head down to Restrictions and select it. Choose Turn on Restrictions. You’ll need to enter a password to enable restrictions, but you can easily enter 0000 to get past this.

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Once Restrictions are turned on, you need to fix a few settings before going any further to avoid headaches down the road. Under the first section of restrictions you should set Purchase and Rental to Allow, Restrict Movies to No, Restrict TV Shows to No, and Explicit Music and Podcasts to Allow. If you don’t set these now your Apple TV will be fairly locked down when you try to watch any move over PG.

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Basically you have a few options for each channel and feature on your Apple TV when it comes to Restrictions: Ask, Allow, and Hide. Ask means you’ll have to enter your password, Allow means business as usual, and Hide does just that, hides the channel.

Now that these settings are fixed, you can scroll down the list of channels and hide the ones you don’t want and allow the ones you use. Remember, if any channel says Ask next to it, you’ll have to enter that password, so it’s wise to set them all as either Allow or Hide.

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Once you’re done just hold the Menu button to return to the homescreen. Now the apps you hid should be gone and everything should work as normal. If you find something asking for your password, just head back to restrictions and Allow it. I haven’t tested this with new apps just yet, so you may need to enable new channels when they launch, like the WWE channel that is supposedly coming.


Kossi Adzo

Kossi Adzo is a technology enthusiast and digital strategist with a fervent passion for Apple products and the innovative technologies that orbit them. With a background in computer science and a decade of experience in app development and digital marketing, Kossi brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective to the Apple Gazette team.

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