How to customize your Apple TV screen saver settings

Your Apple TV screen saver can display beautiful customizable images and videos after a few minutes of inactivity. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the steps to customize your Apple TV screen saver settings and make the most out of this feature.

Apple TV Screen Saver

Access Apple TV screen saver settings

1) Open the Settings app on your Apple TV.

2) Go to General > Screen Saver.

3) Select Type and then select the kind of screen saver you want.

Screen Saver in Apple TV General Settings

Pick the screen saver type

Screen Saver Type on Apple TV

1) Aerial: If you choose Aerial, you will see some amazing views. You can download new videos of aerial views every day, weekly, or monthly by selecting Download New Video from the previous screen. Just keep in mind the videos can be quite large, up to 950MB. So, if you’d rather not receive new videos, select Never. After selecting Aerial, go back and select Theme. From here, you can show or hide Landscape, Earth, Underwater, and Cityscape options.

Aerial screen saver settings on Apple TV

2) Apple Photos: The Apple Photos type gives you a nice selection categorized as animals, flowers, landscapes, nature, and shot on iPhone. You can see a preview of the category on the left.

Apple TV Apple Photos Nature

3) Home Sharing: If you have Home Sharing set up, you can select that option and access content from your Mac’s library.

4) Music Library: The Music Library option will show a screen full of album covers for your music collection.

5) My Photos: Finally, you can choose to use your own picture albums or shared albums by using the My Photos option.

Once you select the type of screen saver, go back and select Preview to see how it looks. You can also hit the back button from the Home Screen to start the screen saver.

Choose when to start the screen saver

This is a very simple setting where you decide when to start the Apple TV screen saver. You can choose from two to 30 minutes of inactivity by going to Settings app > General > Screen Saver > Start After.

Apple TV Start Screen Saver

Show during music and podcasts

The next screen saver setting is also a simple one. Go to Apple TV Settings app > General > Screen Saver and select Yes or No for Show During Music and Podcasts to decide whether you want to see the screen saver while music and podcasts are playing.

Show During Music and Podcasts in Screen Saver settings

Select the transition type

Transitions are the way in which the photos you select for the type will display. For instance, Flip-Up will show the photos pop up from the bottom and then fade away, and Sliding Panels will shift the photos around in a sliding motion.

Apple TV Screen Saver Sliding Panels
Sliding Panels Transition Effect.

You will notice a Transition heading with various options if you select any Screen Saver Type except Aerial. You’ll also notice two additional transition options at the bottom of the list for Ken Burns and Classic. These are both different photo effect styles that you can check out. And you can adjust the time per slide from 2 up to 20 seconds.

Again, you can pick one, head back and click Preview to see how it will look.

Apple TV Classic Transitions

Setting up a cool screen saver on your Apple TV only takes a few minutes. And you can see some awesome pictures, whether your own or from Apple. What’s your preferred Apple TV screen saver?

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