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Finding something to watch

Search, Explore, and everything a film or show's page can do.

Search

Search looks for films, shows and people. Results come in rows: People, Movies and Series, plus Media Servers when SettingsMedia ServersSearch Media Servers is on. Your Recent Searches are kept underneath.

Before you type, Search shows tiles to browse: decades, genres, trending and popular films and shows, what's in cinemas, airing today, upcoming, top rated and Oscar winners.

Explore

Explore is for browsing everything TMDB knows about, not only what you have. Switch between Movies and TV Shows, pick a genre, or open Filters to narrow by sort order, year, rating, sub-genre, language, studio and where it's streaming. Unwatched hides what you've seen. Explore is hidden in Kids Mode.

A film or show's page

Sintel's page on Apple TV with Play, Watch, Favourite and Watchlist buttons.
A film's page on Apple TVSintel · Blender Foundation · CC BY 3.0

The main button changes with what you've done: Play, Resume, Rewatch or Rewatching. Beside it:

  • Restart plays from the beginning when you're partway through.
  • Shuffle (shows) plays a random episode.
  • Watch marks a film as watched; tap again to undo.
  • Favourite and Watchlist save it to the lists you've chosen in Tracking.
  • Drop stops a show you've given up on from appearing in Continue Watching.
  • Request asks for it through Seerr, if you've connected one and it isn't on your server.

On iPhone and iPad the same buttons are icons; a short message confirms each one.

Choosing a version

When there's more than one copy to play (a 4K and an HD file, say), Strand plays the best one unless you've turned off SettingsPlaybackAuto-select First Source. Holding the Play button does the opposite of tapping it: it shows the list when Auto-select is on, and skips it when it's off.

Episodes

Long-press an episode (right-click on the Mac) for Choose Source…, Show Description, Watch without Tracking, Mark Watched, Season Watched, All Episodes Up to Here Watched and Clear Progress.

Further down: trailers and clips under Videos, Similar Titles, and the rest of a collection when the film belongs to one.