I spend so much time watching TV that sometimes I feel like myApple TV remote is an extension of my hand. Some people complain about its trackpad functions, but I actually prefer its flowy, swipey (that’s a technical term, right?) usability. With one exception.
While watching amovie or TV show, I’d often find myself frustrated when trying to move forward or backward on the timeline—like after missing some dialogue or just wanting to skip ahead. Whether clicking or swiping with the trackpad, the feature is clumsy, limited to a little bit forward or a little bit back, and never quite where you want it … until I discovered precision scrubbing.
What is precision scrubbing on Apple TV?
While this is by no means a new Apple TV feature, I’m an old dog who also likes old tricks. A friend recently alerted me to the wonderful existence of the “precision scrubbing” feature with the Siri remote, which was a revelation (maybe I’m a bit too excited about this).
Precision scrubbing lets you pause what you’re watching and use the outside rim of theApple TV remote’s trackpad like a scroll wheel to “scrub” the play point forward or backward with pinpoint accuracy.
It has a fun, familiar tactile feel of an old iPod trackpad, and when activated, an easy-to-see circular icon appears on the timeline, allowing you to move it as fast or slow as your thumb moves.
How is precision scrubbing useful?
The precision scrubbing feature is just what I was missing from my Apple TV navigation. It takes a little getting used to, but once you’ve gotten a feel for it, I love how you can crawl back or forward second by second to get it just where you want it.
Alternately, I'm also prone to wanting to shoot far forward or even rewind all the way back to the beginning (my wife often joins late and wants to start over), and precision scrubbing honestly rips through both of these scenarios with speed—often with only a few rolls around the dial to slide almost the entirety of a movie or show. It’s amazing.
Oh, and as far as I can tell so far, it works across all my streaming services—fromPrime Video and Crave (where I access my HBO Max in Canada), toNetflix, Paramount+, Disney+, and even my F1 TV app.
How to use precision scrubbing
To my surprise, precision scrubbing is easy to use and doesn't require changing anysettings on your Apple TV. On a Siri remote (2nd generation or later) and with an Apple TV running tvOS 14 or later, here’s how.
- During playback, pause the video you’re watching.
- To enter precision mode, put your thumb on the outer clickpad of the remote, but don’t press the center button.
- To scrub precisely, slide your thumb around the outer rim—you’ll see the circular icon appear on the timeline.
- Scroll clockwise to go forward, and counterclockwise to rewind.
- Watch the small thumbnail preview jump frame-by-frame.
- When you’ve reached the spot you want, stop and remove your thumb from the clickpad.
- Click the play/pause button to resume.
Precision scrubbing vs. regular fast-forward and rewind
If you’re wondering what the difference is between precision scrubbing and regular forward/rewind functions on the Apple TV remote, here it is. The standard allows you to click the clickpad ring forward or backward in 10-second increments, which I have found useful; however, it often skips past where I wanted to go, forcing me to go back. I’ve always found it annoying.
Alternatively, if you hold down the outer clickpad, it allows you to then select 2x, 3x, or 4x speeds, which moves things along faster, but not nearly as fast as sliding your thumb around the clickpad in precision scrolling. Lastly, you can also pause the video and use the center pad to swipe forward or back, too. But again, this is not nearly as efficient or useful as precision scrolling.
More Apple TV Siri remote tips and features
Now that you’ve mastered the game-changing precision scrubbing features (use it wisely), the Apple TV remote has a pile of other useful and cool features you may not have heard of. Here are some of my daily favorites.
TV button
I find the TV button on the Siri remote really useful, but you have to make sure it’s set up properly. By default, pressing the TV button opens the Apple TV app, which I find annoying, especially if I accidentally hit it when using the volume buttons. But if you long-press the button, it will open the Home Screen so you can access all your apps. If you like, you can change the default so it goes to the Home Screen on a single press. Just go to Settings > Remote and Devices > TV Button and set it to “Home Screen” instead. Additionally, double-clicking the TV button brings up an iOS-type app switcher you can swipe through. A swipe up on any app quits it, too.
Grid keyboard
This feature might be worth an entire post at some point, but if you’ve ever been frustrated by the linear keyboard Apple TV gives you when you’re searching for a show or movie, you will love this. By going to Settings > General > Keyboard Layout > Grid, you’ll swap that annoying straight-line alphabet with a grid keyboard. You’re welcome.
Tell Siri what you want
Precision scrubbing is a cool feature, but you can also just press and hold the Siri button on the side of the remote and ask it to “go forward 30 seconds,” for example. You can even say things like “What did they just say?” to move back to a dialogue line you may have missed.
There are so many little tweakable settings and features on the Apple TV remote you can use, if you’re willing to do a little digging. Precision scrolling has made my daily viewing so much more enjoyable, allowing move to exactly where I want quickly and easily. Let me know what you think of the feature.
Apple TV 4K
- Operating System
- tvOS
- Resolution
- 4K
- Audio codecs
- Dolby Atmos
- RAM/storage
- 64GB or 128GB
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- Connectivity
- Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi and Ethernet
