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Searching Your Own Library with Apple TV App

I have over 2,000 of my own movies that I've either ripped or downloaded from another services that were part of my iTunes library. With the upgrade to Catalina, how do you search your own library of movies and home videos? When I use the search box, it just searches Apple's sources.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 13, 2019 11:57 AM

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Posted on Oct 17, 2019 11:25 AM

Found a solution! (Obtuse UI design...sheesh).


View...Show Filter Field


This brings up a search bar that will look in your library. UNFORTUNATELY...it turns off every time you flip between tv or movies or close the app. But it will search your library.

13 replies

Feb 3, 2020 11:00 AM in response to Joshua Lakes

This is ridiculous - usability of media has degraded severely with Catalina. I am aready using replacements for itunes instead of music Also, the new movie shop has become so unmanageable that I have stopped using it. And also: it is annoying that Apple is using common-day names for its products. It is simply impossible to search for help on the web for products called Music, TV, or Fotos :-(

Feb 3, 2020 2:11 PM in response to Rob Nieboer

P.S.: I think that I am unsatisfied with the media tools in Catalina because it feels like Apple is trying to reduce my control my media library. E.g. when you search for a movie in TV, you get results from their shop mixed with your own files - and the way to control that is hidden. Also in Music: searching mangles your files with Apple's shop. This obstrusive way of taking my control away is common on the iOS system - but I am using a Mac because that is the machine for developers and for content creation, and for keeping control over my files. Additionally, it is not user-friendly to replace information by

colourful pictures - as they've done in the App Store and in all Media stores. If Apple is trying to make MacOS a copy of iOS and take away the user's control, I will have to switch to some other software - it's a direction that I will not follow.

Feb 3, 2020 2:28 PM in response to Anthoreas

I am as frustrated as you. I am a long-time user of Macs - my first Mac was in 1985. Overall, I'm a fan, but the control thing has become over the top.


Even in Photos. There's the whole thing about moving pictures (so-called "backing up") to iCloud. Then you quickly run out of iCloud capacity and you either have to stop the iCloud thing or pay Apple for more capacity. A while after I stopped using iCloud, I discovered that many of the photos in my Photos library are much lower resolution than the original. I no longer have large format pictures of many of my photos, but small, poor excuses for the originals. I will never forgive Apple for this.


I also became so frustrated with the process of moving music and movies to my iOS devices that I bought and still use an app called Waltr 2. This makes it so easy to move files to iPhones and iPads. The company that created Waltr 2 is called Softorino, and they have a number of apps that make life in the Apple Universe easier.



Feb 3, 2020 2:38 PM in response to Rob Nieboer

The good thing is: using a Mac, at the moment you can still keep control over your files if you are willing to invest time. For Music or TV, you can switch off the "Manage my library automatically" (don't really know how that option is named in English). Speaking of Photos: Photos is gorgeous, but it is not a replacement for Aperture, so I had to switch to Lightroom for managing my photos. And if you are not careful, your photos are lost in the cloud - and that is terrible because it is difficult to get them back. However, it is possible to keep control of your iOS photos: Waltr2 is great, but as far as I know, you cannot automate it. Hence, I am using the (very nifty) automation tool Hazel to monitor the Photos directories. Whenever Hazel finds a new photo or movie, it copies it to an "incoming photos" directory from where I can then store it on my Synology diskstation and import it to Lightroom. It is not difficult to setup a job like that in Hazel...

Searching Your Own Library with Apple TV App

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