With its big carousel of ads, Apple rots the Apple TV application a little more

Until now confined to the United States, the new presentation of the home page of the Apple TV app is now visible to all users (iOS 16.2 and tvOS 16.2 have been a big part of it). Impossible to miss the interface, it literally jumps out at you when you open the application, it’s a carousel that replaces the visual content To be continued.

No thanks for the carousel.

Now, the Apple TV app presents in large format (and even in very large format on Apple TV) trailers of new content. They can come from partner services, or from Apple TV+ of course. This novelty is extremely painful for many reasons:

• following a few seconds, the trailer starts automatically, which is a little disturbing when nothing has been requested;
• in addition to the moving images, the video makes noise since it is accompanied by its soundtrack;
• carousel content suggestions are not tailored to your tastes and may even offer you to watch something you have already seen;
• the list To be continued which brings together all the content you are currently watching only has the bare minimum in the interface, when it is these films and series that you want to see, not the stuff from Apple TV+ or Apple partners.

What a thread Reddit concentrates some of the main criticisms.

The list To be continued (Next in Canada) is sandwiched between two large cobblestones for partner content or Apple TV+.

In short, we wonder what fly stung the Apple to rot a little more “experience” of the Apple TV app – admittedly, it was already not well brought up. In any case, it fits directly into the manufacturer’s strategy. to pick the pockets of its users to make its services profitable: in the end, this carousel is nothing but disguised to rent films or subscribe to new streaming services.

There are, however, a few tweaks to reduce the impact of this nasty carousel. Unfortunately, there is no option to return to the previous display, the one that presented the content To be continued. On iOS, an icon allows you to mute the video. On tvOS, the option is available in Settings > Apps > TVthen disable Automatic playback of video sound. On the other hand, it is not possible to deactivate the automatic playback of the video.

On the Apple TV, there is also an option to change the display of the top row of the home screen. The system explains that it is possible to select the contents To be continued rather than carousel suggestions. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change anything, it’s always the partners’ trailers that are displayed. Fingers crossed, it might be a bug.