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Apple TV siri will not search by actor. Why?

According to this Apple Support article HT205300 Siri should search through all the streaming tv apps you have installed [Netflix, HBOMax, Hulu, Amazon ] say for films with a specific actor. But my Siri experience shows me that it can not do this. This is especially frustrating when I am in Apple iTunes Movies and want to search. In fact Siri wil not take any vocal requests in Apple iTunes movies from me. It does not work like this: search YouTube for snow video. Which will bring up snow videos on YouTube. Anbother example is when it will search for movies and only show you several at the bottom of the screen. It does NOT open up the app further to display what you would get if you manually entered your search terms. This really defeats the main purpose of Siri as something you can use to search with. Any suggestions? I certainly hope that siri works better in Apple TV+.

Apple TV 4K, tvOS 15

Posted on Apr 9, 2022 9:08 PM

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Posted on Apr 10, 2022 2:47 PM

… search through all the streaming tv apps you have installed [Netflix, HBOMax, Hulu, Amazon]

For Netflix, only Netflix Originals are searched. Not licensed content.

For Prime, only Amazon Originals and Prime-included titles are searched. Not buy or rent titles from them.


The system wide (all apps) search is different from the in-app search. In-app search searches just within that app. If you search within the Movies app, then it searches iTunes Store movies, as you would expect.

Dictation within the Search tab of an app is not Siri Search.


Siri will search from search keywords as made accessible by content providers. For iTunes Store movies, that includes genre, cast, director, rating, age appropriateness, popularity, and more.. For other content providers, the details (and any omissions thereof) may vary.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 10, 2022 2:47 PM in response to Per Axel

… search through all the streaming tv apps you have installed [Netflix, HBOMax, Hulu, Amazon]

For Netflix, only Netflix Originals are searched. Not licensed content.

For Prime, only Amazon Originals and Prime-included titles are searched. Not buy or rent titles from them.


The system wide (all apps) search is different from the in-app search. In-app search searches just within that app. If you search within the Movies app, then it searches iTunes Store movies, as you would expect.

Dictation within the Search tab of an app is not Siri Search.


Siri will search from search keywords as made accessible by content providers. For iTunes Store movies, that includes genre, cast, director, rating, age appropriateness, popularity, and more.. For other content providers, the details (and any omissions thereof) may vary.

May 14, 2022 3:38 PM in response to Urquhart1244

Gotcha, thanks. But what use are spoken questions to Siri then? I was under the impression Siri could do this. And when it does give suggestions, they are few and far between. I have started to go to JustWatch.com and I search there. They can handle all sorts of requests. Siri needs some work. It is nothing but a Huge collection of data that it should be able to query. But it is unable to. I was under the impression that was what computers were for. JustWatch works really well and will search through many different streaming services and show you also if it is free to stream or pay to view.

Apple TV siri will not search by actor. Why?

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