The new version of iOS on AppleTV has a sidebar. Is it possible to have Channels integrate into this menu? Otherwise, how would one access Channels?
Apple provides no support for third party developers to integrate with the TV app.
Via the Home Screen, as usual. One very helpful change to the default tvOS Settings is to make the Home button take you there, as opposed to the TV app.
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Yes they do. You must ask for access to private TV API
Correct, the API is private and offered only at Apple's discretion
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That API is available for Apple partners only. You can see that the only apps that are inside there are big corporations.
Additionally, the API is not some local API that apps use, it’s a partnership with Apple the lets them sync your service’s content so that it’s available for their app and their search.
This means a centralized repository of content…like streaming services.
Channels does not have this. Your content is local to your account and device. Channels does not even have a clouded presence. So this would never even be possible.
Yes, Plex is in there, but only for their weird free content that’s provided by other companies, ie, clouded content. Your Plex personal media is not included in Apple TV services.
Could Apple change this so that apps could publish what content they have available on device and search could use that? Yes. And that actually already exists with Spotlight on iOS.
Could Apple provide a local API to let apps provide content for Up Next or mark what’s been watched? Yes absolutely. Their extensions on iOS work exactly this way for widgets and other out of app experiences.
But they don’t. They want it like this and they want specific partners. Because that’s how Apple rolls.
If they ever changed this, we would of course adopt these APIs and provide the best experience that we could on Apple TV. But they don’t.
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Why do you embrace this environment as a developer?
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