How to surf the web on Apple TV

How to surf the web on Apple TV

For reasons best known to Apple, there is no web browser available on the Apple TV. Despite the fact that the Apple TV runs a version of iOS there is not a version of Safari designed for Apple TV and there is no substitute web browser available in the TV App Store. But before you drown in disappointment, there are a few ways in which you can surf the web on your Apple TV. Read on to find out how. We'll look at three ways in which you can access your favourite websites on your TV screen, including popular TV Catchup channels, FaceBook, Google's search engine and more. Read about . This is the easiest way to surf the web on the Apple TV. It's ideal if you want to share the surfing experience with friends and family who are in the room with you, or if what you are looking at on the web would benefit from a bigger screen. Using Apple's AirPlay you can stream the screen of your iPhone or your Mac to your TV screen. You can see everything that you see on your iPhone or Mac on the TV screen. You might as well be looking at your iPhone or Mac screen, and when it comes to scrolling and typing you will be. You won't be able to use your iPhone for anything else while you are mirroring it's screen on the TV. Read more about . One issue with surfing the web on your TV screen via your iPhone and AirPlay is the fact that you have to scroll and swipe around on your iPhone so you might as well be doing your surfing on that device rather than the TV. As we said earlier, its ideal if you want other people in the room to see what you are looking at, but otherwise, were not sure what you really gain. Here's where AirBrowser comes in. AirBrowser puts a web browser on your TV screen while reserving the iPhone for controls and a keypad. You get a full desktop view of the web pages. Not all elements of web pages worked in AirBrowser. Some forms were difficult to fill in if they used multiple choice. It costs 5. AirBrowser places controls for browsing the web on your iPhone so you can swipe around the page, or type using the iPhone keyboard, but the actual web page appears on the TV screen. We did encounter a few difficulties using AirBrowser. For example when it came to signing in to use services sometimes we werent able to because where a site used a multiple choice selection tool for, say, your date of birth or title, it wasnt possible to select an option. At other times we found that we couldnt play video because it was in Flash. The browser seems to fool the site into thinking its a Mac, but of course your TV and your iPhone cant download Flash so you cant view the content. Another issue we had was when viewing iTV player. We were able to get it to play the content but we werent able to select full screen view in order for the video player to fill the TV screen. Instead we were able to increase page size by zooming in (pinch to zoom). We had more success with iTV player than any of the other TV services. On my5 we got a video playback errors. Read more about . This one is a little more complicated to set up, but essentially gives you a web browser on your Apple TV. Youll need an Apple Developer account (which is free), Xcode and a USB-C cable or an adapter. If that doesnt sound like you it probably wont be worth you reading any further. This is the closest you will get to an web browser app for the Apple TV. It's not easy to install and probably isn't worth the effort. Of course if you like tinkering with things like this, then go ahead. This would probably interest you too: