Newly purchased Apple TV 4 here.
Siri is not on and I cannot turn it on. It shows as off in the settings, greyed out, and pressing it does nothing.
Pressing the mike button simply brings the search area, ready to accept text from the letter-by-letter "keyboard"
What could lead to that? How can I turn Siri on?
I am in France, and I set up my Apple TV language to English
Thanks,
JD
If you can survive without connecting to the iTunes Store, you can just set the system language and Siri will work in that language.
Once you sign in to the iTunes Store, Siri will only be available in the language associated with that iTunes Store.
For me that means "passay unh albume dayrozmeede". Yay.
I can't find a way to edit my post, so I'll add to it here.
For all the frustrated souls reading this thread, there are very good reasons why Apple doesn't allow Siri to be in a different language from the iTunes Store.
At WWDC or one of the live Talk Shows, Phil Schiller mentioned that Siri in the iTunes Store faces a unique set of challenges.
- On the Apple TV, people are looking almost exclusively for named content.
- This content can have titles in many different languages, often that the customer doesn't speak correctly.
- Certain types of searches are much more common than others (for the latest blockbuster movie, popular TV show, etc.).
- The availability of content varies from region to region, so a common query in the US store might not even apply in the French store.
- The availability of subtitles and main languages varies from store to store.
Siri is a group of computer programs optimized for different contexts. In France, the goal is to give a good experience to a French person using the Apple TV. An enormous amount of work went into making this possible, most of it revolving around understanding millions of queries in a French accent.
Siri in French for the French iTunes Store on the Apple TV is very different from Siri in English for the US iTunes Store on the Apple TV.
For Apple to create even five optimized versions of Siri (in the most widely-used languages) for each iTunes Store for the Apple TV would be a massive undertaking with very little benefit to Apple.
Sure, Apple could just "turn on" Siri in your language, but the user experience would suck because Siri wouldn't understand 90% of what you say. Apple doesn't do that kind of thing.
That might be true in France, but in the Netherlands e.g., no titles of movies are translated, so usually the original title in English is used (except for children's movies). This renders Siri in Dutch totally useless as she doesn't understand a single word of English, hence I can't search for a single movie, song or whatever. Apple does need to fix this, as right now my user experience *****. Siri doesn't understand 99% of the things I ask her.
Follow up: I switch my Apple TV to French, and it asked me whether I want Siri. I said yes. And then I got Siri enabled and working... in French.
Then I switched it back to English. Apple TV asked me to confirm, because "Siri is not available in English". ***?
Why <expletive> is Apple TV telling me Siri is not available in English???
Thanks for any help
same thing happened to me but in Spain.
go to
settings
accounts
itunes and app store
LOcation
and choose u.s.
then it tells you if you want to switch Siri on!
Thanks! That fixed it for me.
Same issue here, Siri is greyed out (and turned off) on my new Apple TV v4. Changing the iTunes/App store to USA does enable Siri for me but then it logs me out of App Store because my Apple ID is locked to the New Zealand store.
Help!! Apple fix this ASAP so I can use Siri (which was one of the major selling points) in New Zealand to control my Apple TV.
MC
Siri search on the Apple TV 4 is only available in select countries at launch. This was publicized at the time of the product announcement. Expect more countries and languages to be added in future. The details are located here. Use Siri on your Apple TV (4th generation) - Apple Support
Yes, but the page at the link you give explicitly lists France as one of the country where Siri is supported. Yet I am still denied access.
Now, I would understand that Siri might not be available for some language. But for some countries? Come on! If Siri understands English, whether I am located in Zimbabwe or on the moon should not make a difference.
This really reeks of discrimination.
I, for one, feel discriminated against.
Note also that my iPhone doesn't behave like that. I can happily use Siri in English on my iPhone from France.
On the Apple TV, this is critical, because the only alternative to Siri is the crappy alphabetical letter picker, which was lazy enough not to include upper case as well as lower case at the same time, despite the screen real-estate allowing it - AND not being able to use iPhone the remote app - AND the AppleTV adamantly refusing to use a Bluetooth keyboard.
That's quite a lot for an Apple product!
Purchased it yesterday. I can't seem to turn on Siri. It's greyed out. Siri is the reason why I bought it (4th generation) I live in Mexico City, so I wonder if Siri's not working here, at least for the time being. 😢 😢
Same here in Spain. If I configure all my spanish accounts everything is fine after 3 restores but if I change to my usa account Apple TV says "Siri is not available in usa". It disables Siri and greyed.
that works for me.
First put usa account for iCloud.
spanish account for "home sharing" (before I haven't activate it)
then put usa account for iTunes Store and App Store. Then the system change to usa store, greyed Siri but this time whith the option in "yes". now you can't deactivate but Siri works.
Siri only works if your language is set to the region the Apple TV was sold in and that regional language is supported.
not true, bought it in the uk 2 days ago, set to english and cant get it to work, stays greyed out
despite restarts and reboots.
pretty poor imo
Looks like apple forgot about, "what if a person is in a country that has Siri enabled but chooses the a different language that is also supported?"
i Live in Germany. But I do not speak German very well. So I set location Germany, language English. Siri is greed out. Even if I change the location, to US Or UK or other, it stays the same.
if I choose German, it gets enabled., no matter what country is selected. I even tried turning off location services, but this has no effect. It looks like that Siri is dependent on your IP address.
I opened a ticket with apple support, because the advertisement said it would be supported in 8 countries. But they did not state they would limit it to those 8 languages. This will probably require an update to ATV to fix.... I guess.
From Apple's website:
Siri is currently available on Apple TV (4th generation) in these languages and countries: English (Australia, Canada, UK, US), German (Germany), French (France), Spanish (Spain), Japanese (Japan).*
The language setting has to match the region setting for the region you bought your Apple TV in and it has to be a supported region and language per the above information.
Apple TV 4: Siri is disabled and greyed out?
