How to use Photos on Apple TV

Rather than download your photos and videos, Apple TV streams them from iCloud. Before you get to use Photos on Apple TV, you must activate photo sharing on iCloud for your iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC.

Get to Know Photos

Photos gathers all of your images and presents them in an elegant layout. You need to manage your own Photos library if you want to make sure you’re not sharing anything you don’t want to share. You can also set any of these images as a screensaver on Apple TV. The tvOS 10 interface divides Photos into five tabs: Photos, Memories, Shared, Albums, and Live Photos:

Photos: This collection gathers all of your images and videos in the order in which they were taken. Navigate through the collection with your Siri Remote, or select an image to view it in full screen. Memories: Apple TV includes Apple’s unique Memories feature. Memories automatically sorts certain images into albums based on time, location, or people. It is a great way to rediscover moments and places you may have forgotten about. Shared: Access any images you’ve shared to iCloud using iCloud Photo Sharing, or images shared with you by friends or family using the same service. The only snag is you cannot share images with others from the Apple TV because the images are not stored on your device. Albums: This section includes all the albums you’ve created in Photos on your devices, so long as your iCloud settings are correct. You’ll also find all the automatically created albums for video, panoramas, and more. Live Photos: You can see Live Photos on your Apple TV. All you need to do is select the image, press and hold the trackpad on your remote for about a half-second, and the Live Photo will begin to play. If it doesn’t work at first you may need to wait a few moments, as the image won’t play until more of it has been downloaded from iCloud.

AirPlay

If you don’t want to use iCloud you can also stream images to your Apple TV using AirPlay. Select an image, video, or album on your iOS, and flick up from the bottom of the screen to display Control Center and select AirPlay. You can access AirPlay on most Macs, too.