Watch TV on your Mac

Stream shows, rent movies, and host home video with the Apple TV app

- CARRIE MARSHALL

THE APPLE TV app for Mac connects to three things: the Apple TV+ streaming service, the iTunes Store for TV shows and movies, and locally stored or shared videos you’ve added to its library.

Unlike the version for Apple TV hardware, the Apple TV app on Mac doesn’t integrate with other streaming services such as BBC iPlayer or Disney+. To use those services on your Mac, you need to access them via Safari or another web browser.

The Apple TV app can share media if the people you’re sharing with have access to the same things — for example, you can set up a SharePlay session to share an Apple TV+ show with friends or family who are Apple TV+ subscribers. Simply start a new FaceTime call with the people you want to share with, and then start watching the movie or TV show in the Apple TV app. The first time you do this, you’ll be asked if you want to use SharePlay with the Apple TV app (you do). The show or movie will then sync so that everybody sees and hears the same bits at the same time.

MORE AND LESS

If you're an Apple TV+ subscriber, the Apple TV app on Mac gains extra powers for those movies and shows: InSight enables you to find out what song is in the soundtrack and open it in Music, or see what other movies an actor has appeared in. However, the Mac version doesn’t have Enhance Dialogue, which is available in tvOS's Apple TV app. Hopefully that will come in a software update.