One of the underrated options of Apple TV is its beautiful screensavers that present aerial views of breathtaking areas in vivid 4K. In a mildly alarming growth, it’s been reported that the YouTube app for Apple TV has just lately been set as much as override the system screensaver and run its personal lower-quality equal.
By default, the Apple TV begins displaying a screensaver after it’s been left idle for 5 minutes. However in case you’ve bought the YouTube app open, it will as an alternative set off its personal screensaver simply earlier than that time, in response to the visible results artist and podcaster Joe Rosensteel. This seems to be a current growth, provided that an earlier model of the app that Rosensteel checked on a distinct Apple TV didn’t show the identical conduct.
It’s not clear how this began taking place or why the tvOS system permits it, however we assume Apple is investigating a approach to block it in tvOS 17.5.
For the time being that is merely annoying. The Apple TV’s screensaver is, as you’d most likely count on from an Apple creation, visually luxurious and well-designed. However the YouTube screensaver is solely a mishmash of low-quality nonetheless pictures from numerous movies. Or, worse nonetheless, in case you’ve bought one particular video open and paused, the app will loop the thumbnail artwork for that video. As Rosensteel fairly fairly observes, “A few of the worst sins of mankind exist in YouTube thumbnails, and so they’re not designed to be screensavers.” Apart from the poor high quality of the art work, most of the pictures he noticed getting used featured static textual content and logos, which isn’t ideally suited for a screensaver.
However this will likely level to extra pernicious conduct sooner or later as a result of YouTube is unlikely to be excited about working its personal screensaver for the enjoyable of it. Sooner or later, Rosensteel predicts, the corporate will attempt to leverage this actual property to run adverts or promote chosen content material. And different apps might try to horn in on the racket too.
Proper now, there’s a reasonably straightforward answer to cease this taking place. Whereas the Apple TV’s screensaver kicks off after 5 minutes by default, this may simply be set to a decrease worth. Change this to 3 minutes and it’ll pre-empt YouTube and forestall its screensaver from ever being seen. If the YouTube app ever will get intelligent sufficient to detect the system settings and undercut them by two seconds, we’ll all be in bother–however perhaps Apple will step in and have a phrase.