The fourth generation Apple TV ships with a couple of Aerial screen saver videos pre-installed. If you didn't tell it to check automatically for new videos when you set up the Apple TV, It doesn't take long to tire of the small initial selection — but Apple's got loads more, and AppleInsider will tell you how to get them.
Here's how to change the screen saver if you'd rather not see any more of the in-air videos at all, and also how to get more Aerial videos from Apple.
- Open Settings
- Select 'General'
- Select 'Screensaver'
- Select 'Type'
- If you wish to change the screen saver, select which you want on this screen, and back out.
However, if you want more Aerial videos:
- Select 'Aerial' even if it is already selected.
- Hit the 'Menu' button once on the Siri Remote
- A new menu option, 'Download new videos' is available - select that.
- Then, select how often you want to download new Aerial videos from the Apple servers
- If you want to download all the Apple TV screensaver videos, they’re uploaded at 1920×1080 pixels at 30 frames per second — perfect for a Full HD TV. Depending on their length — usually.
- Aerial is a macOS screensaver that lets you play Aerial videos from Apple's tvOS screensaver. This includes classic Aerial videos shot over various cities and locations (New York, San Francisco, China.), Earth videos from the ISS, and the new underwater videos introduced in tvOS 13.
TUTORIAL: How to enjoy Apple TV’s Aerial screen saver on your Mac. Apple’s been regularly adding new footage to its Aerial screen saver, debuted alongside tvOS 10 two year ago, which basically downloads and plays slowed-down drone footage of the world’s biggest cities and famous locations.
There are 11 different locations for the Aerial screen saver, and 55 different videos in total. Apple says that the Aerial screensaver takes about 600 MB of a month, so be mindful.
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New videos
Aerial now includes 20 extra videos, kindly shared by Joshua Michaels & Hal Bergman:
If you enjoy these, please consider supporting them by checking the video packs they have created especially for Aerial on their website.
And by the way...
There's a brand new user interface, that makes it a lot easier to find and enjoy the videos. It's even resizable!
No more filling up your disk...
I heard you, Aerial finally includes better cache management. You can now set a limit so Aerial won't ever use more space than you want. And it can also periodically replace videos in your cache, say after a week, so things stay fresh. (It's still not perfect especially for those of you who are upgrading from 1.9.X, this will be improved a lot soon!).
You can still opt to manually download your videos, or simply grab them all. All up to you. If you allow automatic downloads, you can even specify a list of trusted WiFi networks!
On rotation, favorites, filters...
There's now an 'On rotation' feature, so you can quickly switch from watching space videos, to say, your favorites:
Mac Os Screensavers
There are many other new options, including filters to control vibrance (to adjust the colors of your non-HDR videos and make them pop a bit more), sunset and sunrise videos appearing at appropriate time, and more!
And yes, this fancy website!
How To Change Apple Tv Screensaver
But let's be clear, at the core, nothing changed. Aerial is still open source and developed on GitHub. Even this site is on GitHub, check it out here if you are curious!