Apple Removes ‘TV Remote’ App in Favour of Control Centre Feature ⇥ 9to5mac.com

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

Apple today silently removed its “Apple TV Remote” app from the App Store, which lets users control the Apple TV from an iPhone or iPad simulating a real Remote. The app is no longer available for download from the App Store and Apple has likely discontinued it, which means that it will no longer get any updates.

That doesn’t come as a surprise since Apple has added the Remote feature built into the Control Center in iOS 12, so Apple TV users can have access to all the controls on Siri Remote without having to download any app.

This is kind of a bummer because the Apple TV Remote app has actual buttons for previous and next. The Control Centre feature is a more faithful onscreen replication of the Siri Remote, which does not have those buttons.

I often use my Apple TV to play music, through my receiver, with the television switched off. There is no way to navigate songs unless the Now Playing controls are in the foreground. And, given that my Apple TV prompts me to configure the volume control every time I wake it even though the volume control is already configured, the playback controls are never actually in the foreground and it is impossible to skip a song with the Control Centre remote feature.

The moral of this story is that buttons are often good.

Update: Via Jason Robinson, you can control an Apple TV through an iPhone’s AirPlay controls even if you are not AirPlaying from that iPhone, and it includes typical playback controls.