tvOS 17: AppleTV doesn't search for videos anymore

[tompave]

Hello everyone,

I have an AppleTV 4K (3rd Generation). It comes with the new USB-C Siri Remote, the one in aluminium with black buttons.

The search functionality has always worked fine.* I've always been able to press the "search" button on the side of the remote, and use my voice to give it a search term. Same by selecting and clicking the "search" app in the home screen. That has always opened a tvOS-wide search, returning results from multiple apps. Maybe it has often preferred AppleTV+ content, or from iTunes, but it still could search everything. Most importantly, the results were _videos_.

Now it's searching for anything but videos. The results contain songs, albums and podcasts, mostly. No video content of any kind. If I open an app (for example the AppleTV app, or Netflix, or Amazon Prime Video), then I can still search for video content inside the app, but the tvOS-level search doesn't work for videos anymore.

It's really odd, and very frustrating.

I think it started happening after I upgraded it to tvOS 17. I can't be exactly sure, but it's the only thing that changed recently.

I've tried googling the problem, but I can't find anything useful.
I've looked at the AppleTV settings, but nothing obvious jumps out.

Does anyone have any idea what's happening? Is it normal?

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* "Fine". Well, to be honest there is an issue where sometimes it doesn't start the search but it still records my voice, so that when it actually starts searching, it's as if the "recording buffer" on the remote gets flushed in one go, and everything I said gets entered into the search field. It's actually funny.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Have you tried pulling the plug, waiting about 30 seconds, and plugging it again? I'm convinced that sometimes AppleTV needs a full reboot.

I just checked same model and voice command was completely non responsive. Push the button, say something and it would trigger the search bar but not fill in what was said. So something had changed. I went into "General", down to the Siri section and saw that Siri was turned OFF. Whether this happened with tvOS 17 or not- I don't know. I usually command the Siri version on an iDevice or Mac. But maybe 17 turned it off?

Turned it on and then did some test searches for popular movie names. It was finding whatever I was asking for, ignoring movies of those names in my own library (as usual)... but matching to rentable & sellable ones on the store... or in various other apps.

 

[tompave]

Hi, thank you for the suggestions.

Have you tried pulling the plug, waiting about 30 seconds, and plugging it again? I'm convinced that sometimes AppleTV needs a full reboot.

I've tried and no luck. I've tried a couple of times. The second time I left it off for a good 10 minutes.

I just checked same model and voice command was completely non responsive. Push the button, say something and it would trigger the search bar but not fill in what was said. So something had changed. I went into "General", down to the Siri section and saw that Siri was turned OFF. Whether this happened with tvOS 17 or not- I don't know. I usually command the Siri version on an iDevice or Mac. But maybe 17 turned it off?

My experience is a bit different, but I don't use Siri on AppleTV. Let me clarify.

I checked the Settings app as you said, and under "General" I could see that Siri was turned off. To be honest it has always been off because I dislike Siri. Anyway, I turned it on and it seems to work. I can replicate what you describe, but that's not really the search functionality I was talking about. With Siri enabled I can say a search term, and it will present video results in a sort of modal box on the bottom right corner. For example, if I say "spider-man", it shows some Spider-man movies. That's fine, but I've disabled Siri again.

I'm actually talking about the generic search functionality, not Siri. That's what I get if I select and open the Search app (gray tile icon with a magnifing glass), or if I press the side-button on the remote (maybe it works with the remote side-button because my Siri is off? Well, the app icon is also there if you want to try).

Accessing the search interface still works. However, it does not return any videos. I'm attaching a screenshot to show what I mean. You can see that I'm searching for "spider-man". The results include music albums and songs. For other search terms sometimes they include podcasts. However there are no movies, TV shows, or videos of any kind.

Up till recently, that search functionality would also return video results. Something has changed.

 

[tompave]

Ok, problem solved.

I haven't done anything, and it has started working properly again.

I didn't update tvOS, I did not change any settings. The problem just went away on its own.