The new remote and method to search non-iTunes movies is absolutely useless. I so hope we get an upgrade soon for a movies search, similar to My Music search. For folks who have a large media library (over 1000 movies) the new Apple TV is kinda useless and in fact extremely frustrating (the exact opposite you would want in a user interface). Not sure who signed off on this design.
It's been a couple of years now. Why cannot the AppleTV search connected libraries? The metadata and library data are there. Still a deal killer for me too.
We didn't have Music or Showtime or PBS included at launch but they are now included. I suspect like with Siri on iOS we will see continued evolution with Siri on tvOS...
About Search on your Apple TV (4th generation) - Apple Support
Search for movies and TV shows in multiple apps at once
Use Siri (in select countries) or the Search app to look for movies and shows across apps on your Apple TV (4th generation). You can search by title, genre, actor, and more. With Siri, you can also refine your search as you go.
When you look for content with Siri or the Search app, Apple TV checks these content providers, with more coming soon:
To look for content in one app at a time, just open the app and use its own search function.
About search
I absolutely agree. There MUST be a way to search "shared libraries" for music, movies or whatever for Apple TV 4 to be useful as a home streaming device. It has become so frustrating for us I am seriously considering moving away from apple completely.
Agree as much as you like, you can't search your local iTunes library with Siri.
OR in any Way. You can not search shared libraries at all. Thats the problem.
You'd be better served by contacting Apple to provide suggestions or voice your frustration. This is a user community so we are all users like yourself And can only explain how to work the device as it's currently designed. Don't shoot the messengers because Apple ain't here...
Yes you can search your homeshared music, just select the option called "search", you just can't use siri to do it.
IS there a way yo search home shared movies?
No, they are in alphabetical order, very few people will have that many movies that scrolling through the list becomes a problem
I appreciate your responses but in reality many many people are like me and have over 28k songs and 1200+ movies and growing. Remember every 2 min home video is a "Home Movie" and they all have titles and should be searchable as well as any commercial movie I have in my library, not to mention the 150+ audiobooks and growing. The entire point of a media management center like iTunes is to manage media. If you can't search it, it becomes useless at worst and cumbersome at best.
The problem with the apple TV 4 is they are putting their commercial gain over usability. By only allowing searches for rental/buy/paid subscriptions they are telling the home library user they don't want our business. ( I know, I know, YOUR not apple so why am I venting to you?) Well, the fact of the matter is that all businesses monitor their community feeds and do change their models if there is enough frustration/annoyance at a feature or lack there of - especially when it becomes apparent that $$ will be lost if they don't.
So, Yes this is a community feed and I was HOPING that perhaps I had just missed something [Thank you, by the way for showing me that you CAN search home music libraries]. I have my fingers crossed that apple will include search features for all media soon. It would be nice if it could be done through the main "search" app & Siri, but I would be pleased with just including the "search" ability for all media (movies, home movies, audiobooks even photos) like they currently do (as you pointed out) for the home music library.
A footnote - the scrolling feature on the new siri remote is useless for scrolling through long lists of titles. You can not just hold a down button, there is no alpha shortcut feature on the side and when swiping down the list it is WAY to common and easy to not swipe quite straight and it switches you to the genre or unwatched list (left or right slightly does this when swiping) and then you have to start the list all over again when you go back.
I have gotten use to the remote but my family hates it and you can not use an older remote, only the iPhones. Even the Mifi controllers really dont work well as a remote - so at this point the interface is awful for searching/using a home library of any substance.
In re-reading this I don't want you to think i am dissing your advice - to the contrary I truly appreciate the time you have spent informing me of the limited options I do have.
First, you can use the older remotes; the arrow keys replace swiping. You may need to pair or unpair to make them work.
Second, search relies on a database which has to be created for a library. It's not just a matter of scanning filenames. So we need Apple to enhance the iTunes program to create and maintain a searchable database.
Third, you should post your suggestions for improvements here https://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html. Posting them here has absolutely no effect. Sending them to Apple at least shows there are concerns. I recommend separate posts for each specific issue: search, remote navigation, etc.
The inability to search connected libraries is the main deal-killer for me not updating to the new AppleTV(4). And I have had every one since the beginning. Scrolling is a MESS for those of use with thousands of Movies and TV episodes connected via HomeSharing. The 3rd Gen AppleTV can load connected libraries, I would hope it would not be prohibitively difficult to make the 4th Gen AppleTV load the library file of Home Sharing-connected libraries and include them in the Siri search. The database and metadata exist, and the 4th gen has storage space, it would be great if we could create such a database using iTunes on the connected computer (It would probably take a long while) and be able to update/sync it every now and again with the AppleTV.
Apple TV 4 Non-iTunes Movies search
