Recently, I got hold of a year’s worth of Apple TV Plus thanks to my partner’s purchase of a new Mac. “Happy days,” thought I – “I can watch the handful of exclusives I’m interested in free of charge.”
Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t make it easy to watch Apple TV Plus comfortably if you’re not fully part of the Apple ecosystem.
Can I watch Apple TV Plus without Apple TV?
There are ways, yes, and it mostly involves Apple products. Macs, iPhones, and iPads all have a built-in app – though again, it’s hardly a cinematic experience.
Some TVs support it – either through Apple’s AirPlay tech, or via a native app. You can find a full list of supported TVs here, but if your TV is running Android TV, then you’re likely out of luck. There’s no Android app for phones, tablets or TVs, although that is showing the earliest signs of changing (at least for the latter).
It is possible to watch through your web browser, regardless of the platform. Simply go to tv.apple.com and log in, and Apple will begrudgingly allow you to stream it to whichever device you’re using at the time.
What about Apple TV Plus with streaming sticks?
First things first: Chromecast isn’t supported for Apple TV Plus. I know: it’s infuriating.
All isn’t lost if you want to give your television Apple TV Plus, though. Obviously you could buy an Apple TV box for it, but there are cheaper ways. Both Roku and Fire TV devices have Apple TV Plus apps, meaning you can just plug them in a spare HDMI slot and watch away.
But isn’t Fire TV built on Android?
Yes. But people have tried to make the .apk file work on other Android devices: no dice.
Is there any way to watch Apple TV Plus on Android devices?
Yes, but it’s not pretty. Much like on the computer, you can watch Apple TV through any web browser on your phone, but as you might imagine, the experience isn’t exactly a pleasant one.
That also means that if you can install Firefox to your Android TV, you might be able to watch that way – but frankly, logging in to tv.apple.com in a poorly optimised TV web browser every time you want to watch something doesn’t sound like a great experience to me.
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