Secret to pairing Apple TV (4th gen) to Siri remote (2nd gen?)

[rsmith83]

I have a 4th generation Apple TV (A1625) running the current version of tvOS (15.0). I bought a new Siri remote 2nd gen to pair. The Apple TV recognizes the remote because it asks me to bring it closer to the Apple TV to continue pairing. This is where everything goes sideways.

I have tried holding it a foot away, 6” away, even setting the remote on top of the Apple TV per Apple’s troubleshooting guide online, but eventually the “Pairing” notification goes away and nothing happens. If I press any buttons it once again brings up the pairing dialog asking me to place it near the Apple TV. If I try to go into the settings to manually add a remote, the same thing happens as soon as I touch a button on the Siri remote.

Has anyone had this issue, and how did you fix it?

 

[fwmireault]

Did you try to hold for 3 seconds the Back button and the Volume up+ button? It should work

 

[rsmith83]

I should mention that I have two other Apple TVs in different rooms, both 4K models, and I bought and paired new Siri remotes to both of them with no issue. They worked on the first try.

 

[rsmith83]

Did you try to hold for 3 seconds the Back button and the Volume up+ button? It should work

Yes, this was recommended on the Apple troubleshooting page and all it did was bring up the “Pairing remote, bring closer to your Apple TV” menu again.

 

[rsmith83]

For some reason it just randomly started working. I let the Apple TV power itself down after a period of inactivity and then it let me turn it back on with the new remote? I don't know why it was being fickle but at least it's working now.

 

[w5jck]

When I installed tvOS 15 on my ATV 4K 2017 my new 2021 Siri remote stopped working for a few minutes. I restarted the ATV 4K and the remote eventually started to function again. I think perhaps in my case the remote update was installed after the tvOS 15 update, and until it finished installing the remote was clueless as to how to operate under tvOS 15. That is just a guess though. In my case, the new 2021 Siri remote had already been paired with my ATV 4K 2017 while it was still running tvOS 14.x. The last tvOS 14.x update I had previously installed before the release of tvOS 15 had also temporarily disabled the remote for a few minutes.