Does anyone use the touchpad on the Apple TV remote?

By mr grieves, 13 July, 2025

Forum

tvOS and Apple TV Apps

I have just bought my first Apple TV and am trying to get my head around how best to use it. It's not quite as user friendly as my Fire TV Cube but hopefully it will click into place.

Anyway I notice by default the remote uses the touch pad so you can clumsily swipe up and down and tap the middle instead of using the more precise clicky things around the sides.

I found the option to turn this touch pad off and things seem a little easier to use.

I'm just wondering - has anyone found any particular advantages to using the touch pad? I know there is the rotor but I'm wondering how useful that is. I added Words but that doesn't seem to let me navigate by word anyway.

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Comments

I have one

How to turn off the touch pad anyways! LOL, hijacking your post i know, but this is easier than posting a new message. Sorry!

Useless interface

Like you I don't find it very useful, and even back in my sighted days I'd still likely not be into it since the point of physical interfaces for me was precisely not having to look at them, so a remote that interprets touch gestures on a physical directional button makes no sense to me. If the touchpad was somewhere else I'd likely be OK with it, but repurposing the directional pad is just bad human interface design in my opinion. Even placing it below the physical buttons on the lower side of the front face of the remote would make more sense to me, because I don't touch that surface myself to use the remote, so actively touching it would be a clear expression of intent unlike sliding my finger over the directional pad when I'm just searching for the direction that I want to press.

The whole system focus on tvOS thing is kinda unintuitive for screen-reader use, since it just assumes that you can see in order to navigate the 2D interface by row and column, and tvOS switching audio profiles when you start playing something also results in a pretty bad screen-reader experience, though pairing AirPods to the Apple TV works around the problem.

Turning it off

If you go to Settings, then Remotes and Devices, then I think the first option there allows you to change the behaviour from click only to click and touch.

(This is not an accessibiltiy setting, just at the top level of settings)

@João Santos

I appreciate you saying that. I always end up blaming my own stupidity when I struggle with something but I've got to say I find the Apple TV interface is just over-complicated compared to the Fire TV.

I guess once you get used to where things are that it should get easier. But I wonder why we need a touch pad at all. Whether you use VoiceOver or not, I wonder what it is useful for?

I was with a friend, his…

I was with a friend, his family has an apple tv. We were trying to get vo speaking at loud the airplay code.
Needless to say that apple tv is the worst thing apple has ever done, much much worst than macos ventura have ever been.
Yeah I never got how to use this unintuitive touchpad interface. Like I get the idea but it's just bad design as said earlier.

turn off the touch pad

I did that the first day. No issues.

My ultimate Apple TV solution

1. Get a fire TV.
2. Get the Apple TV app from the App Store.
3. Enjoy Apple TV content on your fire TV.
4. Win! 😃👍

Where is the love?

I thought the Apple TV was quite popular round here?

It was very popular among…

It was very popular among the french blind community, at least 5-7 years ago. I wasn't expecting to get the experience I got.

I love the AppleTV

Well, I will admit that turning the touch gestures off is the first thing I do when I get a new Apple TV, but overall, I love the Apple TV. IMO, the interface is so much cleaner and easier to use compared to Amazon Fire TV. You also don't have to worry about clutter on the home screen and many apps work very consistently! I use the Apple TV app, Music, Pandora, Serious XM, and several others frequently. I love my Apple TV!
Jim

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