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My apple tv won't recognize my apple id

Everytime I try to sign to my iTunes store on my Apple tv it tells me that my apple id or password is incorrect. This is the only apple id I have ever had. I did change my passwor on October 13 after multiple probles with my mobile-me to iCloud transition. I have had my apple tv for over 6 months, so I tried both my previous Apple id password (as well as the new one) but it does not accept either of them and even though I have homesharing "On" it doesn't do me any good.


Also, it will not do the software update to 3.4, it tells me my software is up to date. I reset apple tv yesterday and started from scratch to no avail. No problems with my iMac, Macbook Pro, iPad2 or my iPhone, only with Apple TV. HELP!

Posted on Oct 22, 2011 5:44 PM

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Posted on Apr 28, 2017 2:56 PM

This is the answer for gen 2 ATV. I suspected this and then tried. Worked perfectly.

  1. Open any web browser on any computer and go to appleid.apple.com.
  2. Log in to the Apple ID you want to disable two factor authentication for, you may need to use two factor auth to gain access to the account.
  3. Go to the “Security” section of account settings and choose “Edit”.


Turn off 2 factor authentication. Has a few steps but this fixes it.

118 replies

Aug 5, 2015 1:31 PM in response to nanyes24

This is the second time I have this problem and the second time I found this forum. I think I remember the problem, and it has to do with the port. I cannot log into the itunes-store even. I just have to call support tomorrow and get help again. I tried many of the other advice here, and those did not work.


It is weird they still have this problem. So tired of writing my password over and over.

Nov 30, 2015 3:10 AM in response to rfdsteve

I have the same problem with the latest AppleTV, suddenly, after a WiFi router restart due to an electric blackout, I was no more able to log into iTunes Store.

My AppleTV home is almost empty and I can use Netflix only through AirPlay.. not the best experience 😟

I will try soon the use of my iPhone as temporary wifi hotspot to just sign into iTunes and then switch back to home wifi, I hope this will fix the issue.

The weird fact is that if the issue is due to ports locked by ISP in router configuration, I would expect to experiment the same issues also from the iPhone and mac, why only from the AppleTV?

Maybe the TV uses a different port for iTunes authentication?


Max

Jun 8, 2016 5:21 AM in response to Alan Park

So, I've had the very same problem as everyone else here, and seemed to solve it this way.


No matter what I did at that top level account/password stage, nothing worked - Apple TV didn't accept my password, as many times as I entered it.


So, I hit SKIP THIS STEP there at the top level, and eventually (after a few more selections) got all the way through the the main menu.


Here I updated the system - even though this Apple TV was brand new, there was a system software update for it, so I installed that.


Then in the ACCOUNT section, I entered my password there, for the iTunes account, and presto, it accepted it there, and I was in.

So not sure if it was the system update, or just getting deeping into that inner menu/Account that did the trick, but you guys might want to do both.


Dunno what's up with Apple - in trying to solve this very frustrating problem, I saw the same issue people were having going back to 2010!!!!!

6 laters later, we're still all still having this problem. Apple, come on!


Anyway, hope this works for you.

Jul 8, 2016 11:33 AM in response to nanyes24

I had this same problem — Apple TV just would no longer recognize my Apple ID (which I recently had to change). SOLUTION (at least this worked beautifully for me! ) — I simply disconnected the connections to my Apple TV (there were 2 connections in the back) — waited a little bit — then reconnected them and tried again — and Apple TV was again working! It did not even ask me for any password. All of my movies, videos, etc. were intact.

Oct 30, 2016 1:40 PM in response to nanyes24

Ok, I spent some precious weekend hours struggling with this same issue. My Apple ID worked fine on my laptop, but I could never successfully log into Apple TV with the same user name and password. For me, the problem seemed to be that the passwords I was using were too similar to old passwords. What worked was when I tried an entirely new password. Go figure. Message to Apple: communicate these things please rather than have your users spend hours guessing at what the problem is.

My apple tv won't recognize my apple id

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