AppleTV turns on and plays music by itself

[erinsarah]

Okay that was weird...
We have an AppleTV HD connected to a Panasonic TV and to a couple of HomePods Mini. The AppleTV was in sleep mode and the TV was off. I'm sitting in another room, and suddenly hear music playing. I walk into the TV room and see that the AppleTV has woken up, the TV is turned on, a song is playing from the speakers, and the TV OS is in the midst of installing an update. Is this a feature? Or a gremlin?

 

[MBAir2010]

do we have cats?

 

[erinsarah]

do we have cats?

We do not.

 

[Killbynumbers]

Have you been playing music on a Mac or iPhone by any chance when this happens? I'm wondering you are activating airplay without knowing it. I can get my ATV and TV to turn on by themselves simply selecting that ATV in the airplay icon.

 

[Nipperserphil]

If your security is set low / or off on your Apple TV, could it be that a neighbour is able to see the device and connect to it?
For info I can see my neighbours Apple TV from my ios devices, but if I try to connect to it I get a prompt to enter a passcode. I had to rename my Apple TV to distinguish it from the guy next door.

 

[erinsarah]

Definitely not a neighbor thing (I'm surrounded by low-tech grandparents). I have experienced the music coming on randomly as Killbynumbers suggests, and I'm guessing it's related. but at the time this happened no one in the house was listening to music or doing anything related to Airplay. Which leads me back to my gremlins theory...

 

[Boyd01]

I wonder if it's related to the homepods? I have two Apple TV HD's and have never seen this happen. But I don't have homepods. Will admit that I know absolutely nothing about homepods, but have you tried completely shutting down the AppleTV to see if it still happens?

 

[Ruggy]

Do you have a phone set up as a remote? I had odd accounts of the TV switching on when the phone was set as a remote.

 

[JJRR]

I had a similar issue. I think your ATV woke itself up to get updated and then automatically started playing what was in your “now playing” queue.

My issue was:
Apple TV plays music automatically when turned on. When I wake up or turn on Apple TV (ATV) … music will start playing automatically. Very annoying. If you want it to stop happening, you need to do the following:

Clear the “Now Playing” song on ATV:

• Open “Music” app on ATV
• Go to “now playing” - shows song
• force-quit “music” app in App Switcher (double-tap TV/Home - then swipe up the music app)
• Open Music app > “now playing” should be blank and show “Not Playing”

Can confirm the “now playing” is blank on iPhone

• right top corner swipe down
• Click on music card (top right)
• Click “control other speaker & TVs”
• It will show what is “now playing” on iPhone and each ATV.

I had to post this because I could not find the answer anywhere else, and took me a while to figure out.