Apple TV and digital signage

People ask for this often, so here is the straight answer: ScreenTinker does not run on Apple TV, we are not planning to build it, and the reasons are Apple’s design decisions rather than gaps in our software.

tvOS has no web view

The ScreenTinker player is a web page. That is the whole design, and it is why the same player runs on Android, Fire TV, Raspberry Pi, Windows, ChromeOS, Samsung, LG, BrightSign and any browser — one implementation, one set of bugs, one place to fix them.

Apple does not ship a web view on tvOS. WKWebView is not in the public SDK, and Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines say web views are not supported on tvOS. An app cannot bring its own browser engine either: tvOS grants no JIT permission, so a bundled engine would crawl, and App Store rules require web-browsing apps to use Apple’s WebKit — which is not offered. Apps that ship a private web view to get around this are the ones that get rejected.

So an Apple TV player would be a second, native implementation of everything. Which we could write. It still could not show you:

• Widgets — clocks, weather, RSS, directory boards, dashboards. They are HTML.
• HTML bundles — a bundle is a web page by definition.
• YouTube — see below.
• Web pages in a zone or picture-in-picture.

“But YouTube works on Apple TV”

It does, and that is Google’s app playing Google’s video. It is a native client talking to their own backend, fetching their own streams — which they are allowed to do and nobody else is. They do not publish that player.

What Google publishes for everyone else is the iframe embed. Their terms require it to run in a web view, and the platforms they support are iOS, iPadOS and macOS. Not tvOS. Pulling a stream URL out of a watch page breaks their terms and breaks in practice the next time they change anything. And launching the YouTube app hands the screen over to it, which on a locked-down sign means the sign has stopped.

The part that has nothing to do with rendering

Suppose every gap above were closed. An Apple TV would still be a poor sign:

• You cannot install software on it freely. App Store, or TestFlight builds that expire after 90 days, or Apple’s Enterprise Program.
• Every update goes through App Review. A fix you need today ships when Apple says so.
• ⚠️ It does not come back on its own. Without Single App Mode on an MDM-supervised device, an Apple TV sleeps and does not relaunch the app after a power cut. A screen that needs somebody to find the remote is not a digital sign.

What to use instead

A Raspberry Pi costs a fraction of an Apple TV, installs in minutes, comes back by itself after a power cut, outputs whatever resolution your screen actually is — which is what LED walls need — and runs the full player with every feature in it.

If you would rather not add a box at all, a Samsung or LG commercial panel runs ScreenTinker itself, and any smart TV with a browser can open the player with no install whatsoever.

What would change our mind

One thing: Apple shipping a public web view on tvOS. Then it is the same small shell we built for Fire TV’s Vega sticks, and it would take about a week. Everything else on this page follows from that one decision, and it is not ours to make.

We would rather tell you this than sell you a version of ScreenTinker that quietly cannot show half your content.