Is it purely coincidence that on the day of the iOS upgrade: my Apple TV remote has stopped working? No indication of low battery. And no light on the remote. And it won’t pair with my Apple TV device. And I can’t restart it, since those buttons do not transmit to the TV (or Apple TV device).
Apple TV 4K, tvOS 18
It’s not a coincidence. Both of mine stopped working as well. However I was able to figure out how to get them working again. I went into remotes and devices. Then went to remote. It showed that it was disconnected. To get it to reconnect I pushed the menu button and the volume up button simultaneously for a moment while standing next to the Apple TV. It showed on the screen that it was connecting and then it connected. Now both remotes are working just fine. Hopefully that will work for you as well.
It’s not a coincidence. Both of mine stopped working as well. However I was able to figure out how to get them working again. I went into remotes and devices. Then went to remote. It showed that it was disconnected. To get it to reconnect I pushed the menu button and the volume up button simultaneously for a moment while standing next to the Apple TV. It showed on the screen that it was connecting and then it connected. Now both remotes are working just fine. Hopefully that will work for you as well.
Hey Karen2015 -
Here’s a basic troubleshooting tutorial. It walks you through the process in a stepwise manner & provides one of the specific details you were looking for (eg, 5sec hold). Depending on whether you have an Apple remote or Siri remote, the button combo is a little different.
My 2¢ fwiw: Whenever I first see evidence of an efailure to communicate, I prefer to restart/reset everybody before proceeding. Just a basic power cycle reboot.
Following that premise:
-If you see the option to forget device for your remote, then go for it - it may or may not help but shouldn’t hurt.
-Same principle applies to restarting your Apple TV.
-And I would go ahead & restart my remote too (scroll to the bottom of the page I linked above).
And then proceed with pairing.
Good luck. 🙂
I didn’t have to tell it to forget the device. I did run into a little bit of an issue with the second one not connecting right away, but after about the third try it did take. I did not continue to hold the buttons down. I just held them down for a second or two each time and then waited. The first couple of times the little connecting message just went away without saying it had connected, but after the third try it did take. I don’t know what made the difference. If you try it a few times and it doesn’t take I would go for the whole unplug it and plug it back in method. Also, I should mention that I did use my phone to update both apple tv’s prior to attempting to reconnect the remotes.
Thank you sooo much to the two users who helped me with this. The solution that finally worked was to unplug the Apple TV device... not an easy thing to do when the TV itself is flush to the wall and that device is squeezed in there, behind the TV. Sigh.
Also, for anyone else having remote control issues: my iPhone remote worked fine, throughout. But my husband's iPhone remote mysteriously had no controls, ie no arrows and no center square to select apps or whatever. Had to read up on THAT and then change his "settings - accessibility - Apple TV remote" to show controls! Who knew!
I am quite sure that my technophobe husband never went in to change those settings. Just one of those things, I guess! We had both updated to iOS 18.
Thank you for your suggestions. While I can get it to the "pair your remote" message, I keep the remote right next to the Apple TV device but to no avail. Two questions: (1) when you went to the settings menu and it said the remote was disconnected... did you choose "forget that device" to clear the connection, so to speak? Or did the "connecting remote..." message come up directly. Also: (2) did you keep holding down the two keys? Or just hold the remote next to the device.
Wondering if I need to disconnect the Apple TV device or otherwise restart it...
Apple TV remote stopped working with iOS update
