Apple TV Continue Watching seems to work intermittently and now is back to not keeping track of which episode I'm on. I've tried all the suggested solutions and it still doesn't work. This is not acceptable customer service. I'm tired of spending my time trying to fix problems from untested changes or created and not addressed by the creator of the product. It seems to be a far worse problem with Apple products than Android. Very irresponsible of Apple to alienate their customers. For now I've deleted almost everything from Continue Watching to make managing this manually a bit easier, but I'm really close to going back to Android.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Continue Watching
- Thread starter Susan K
- Start date
-
- Tags
- apple tv
- Sort by reaction score
I understand your frustration with ATV and its flakey CONTINUE WATCHING feature but not sure what your threat of " going back to android" means. ATV is the only streaming box and service that has ANY functioning CONTINUE WATCHING feature that somewhat aggregates across the streamers ( except for Netflix who refuses to cooperate ). I don think that there are ANY other options available so as weak and flakey as Apple TV's feature is there just isn't any other way to aggregate your shows across the jumble of platforms. BTW: someone is missing a golden opportunity if they did develop a functioning cross platform aggregator that you could manage on a desktop or even an iPad.
Issues with Continue Watching from the AppleTV app are mostly the fault of the developer of the streaming app and their implementation of the feature. So if its AppleTV+ then its totally Apples fault if its a different streaming service its the fault of its developer.
I say "mostly" the fault of the developer because it's an overly troublesome feature to integrate and maintain without too much compromise to your apps functionality.
For example if your app can play audio in the background it won't sync Continue Watching properly. If you app intentionally hides the AV players buttons for an overlay (skip intro for example) it will fail to sync. If going back to the main menu of an app causes the player to deallocate it can kill the process before the content progression is sync'd. And if you're using a customer player all bets are off, you need to manually maintain the lifecycles of the API's required for the feature, code for near instantly sync'ing progress if the user presses the home button, also sync'ing locally, service side, and Apple cloud. Most apps that use customer players the developer don't even bother with any integration.
Unfortunately I feel the feature might be at the top of your priority list and at the bottom of developers.
cjbryce
macrumors 6502a
Some of the apps "continue watching" hooks into ATV are terrible. This isn't an Apple problem.
Also, I know they'd never do it, but IMO Apple should force all apps which use their own player to offer "switch to the native Apple player as default" the various individual app's players range from OK to absolutely terrible.
Also, I know they'd never do it, but IMO Apple should force all apps which use their own player to offer "switch to the native Apple player as default" the various individual app's players range from OK to absolutely terrible.
Google TV's continue watching feature works with Netflix and Youtube TV unlike tvOS so I am not sure what you mean. It is objectively more functional and shown on the homepage (though it is full of ads).
thanks for pointing that out. I activated Google TV on my TCL and played around with it yesterday . It does have a pretty good CONTINUE WATCHING feature but DAMN that thing is cluttered with CRAP ! So far it appears that the picture and audio quality is as good as ATV so , if I can get used to the clutter , Google might be a viable option if Apple continues to let ATV die from neglect .
AustinJerry
macrumors regular
Something isn’t working right with the Apple TV app for me as well. For example, I have been watching Cape Fear. Last night, I watched episode 5 on my bedroom ATV before going to sleep. This afternoon, I opened the Apple TV app on my downstairs ATV, and episode 5 is showing as unwatched. So, I went ahead and started watching episode 6, and paused the episode half-way through to make myself some lunch. I came back and re-started episode 6, and it started at the beginning, completely losing the progress that I had made just minutes before.
In order to compensate for the app’s performance, I have to keep notes on which episodes I have watched, and where I left off if I don’t complete an episode. It is a real PITA.
In order to compensate for the app’s performance, I have to keep notes on which episodes I have watched, and where I left off if I don’t complete an episode. It is a real PITA.
these types of issues is exactly why I would like to see Apple remove the silo around ATV and other Apple devices , esp a desktop Mac , so that we can control ATV via our desktop or laptop . It should be very simple for us to keep all of our viewing history and status on the computer and be able to see exactly what /where and when we are in the middle of watching . Also use Apple AI to find shows, recap what we have watched etc. Nothing is more aggravating than trying to remember what has happened between seasons ESPECIALLY since it can be YEARS between seasons !!! Some of us cant remember yesterdays lunch much less what happened to the hero and the gang in episode 10 3 years ago !!!!
AustinJerry
macrumors regular
Agreed. I started season 2 of Sugar, but there were so many references to things that happened in Season1 that I had difficulty following along, so I stopped watching. Sometimes, I will re-watch the final episode of the previous season to refresh my memory.