Getting started on Apple TV: ready in three steps
Want to pair your Apple TV with your Mac or iPhone, or use it on its own without an account? Both work. On its own, channelBar TV suggests feeds for your topics, creates one channel each for news, podcasts and videos, and shows them as a mosaic. The video shows you how in about a minute and a quarter.
On first launch, channelBar TV asks you: “How would you like to start?” You choose between “Pair with iPhone or Mac” and “Use on Its Own”.
Pair with your Mac or iPhone
If you already use channelBar on your Mac or iPhone, pair your Apple TV with it. You set up your channels there, and the Apple TV shows them. To pair, enter on the Apple TV the code that channelBar shows on your Mac or iPhone under “Pair Device…”.
You’ll find those apps on the right: channelBar for macOS and channelBar Feeds for iPhone, each with a QR code. Scan the matching code with your iPhone: the iPhone code takes you straight to the App Store, the Mac code to the Mac app’s page.
On its own, without an account
In the video, we use the Apple TV on its own, without an account. A setup then suggests feeds that fit, in three steps: “Topics”, “Feeds” and “Loading”.
Topics
Your language is already selected under “Content languages”, and so are all three content types: news, podcasts and videos. You just pick your topics, in the video “Technology”, and choose “Continue”.
Rather find your feeds yourself? Then choose “Skip for now”. As long as you have no channel, the mosaic then offers you “Add starter feeds…” and “Add Feed…”.
Feeds
Now you see every suggestion, sorted by type: news, podcasts and videos. Everything is selected; uncheck anything you’re not interested in.
Loading
With “Create channels”, channelBar creates one channel each for news, podcasts and videos. For YouTube, the app asks whether you want Shorts – “All Content”, “No Shorts” or “Only Shorts” – and, the first time, for your permission to connect to YouTube. Without it, channelBar creates no video feeds. Then it loads all feeds.
All set: with “Done”, everything that’s already here counts as read. From then on, only what arrives later is new.
Your mosaic
And there’s your mosaic: news, podcasts and videos, each in its own column. On the right, the “Unread” column collects everything unread: from now on, whatever’s new lands there.
Get more feeds with the plus at the top right: you pick the channel and enter a search term or an address. And you can restart the setup any time: the gear at the top right opens “Settings”, where you choose “Channels and Feeds”, then “Add starter feeds…”.