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tvOS updated yesterday to 11.4 on my Apple TVs, and on startup asked what room each Apple TVs is in. However, it didn't show the list of rooms I have defined in my Home app. It showed a generic list of room names. I selected one, expecting that I could access it and change its name in the Home app, but now the Apple TV is in limbo somewhere and not accessible to the Home app. And there doesn't appear to be any user interface in tvOS to bring that room selection back up.

How can I regain control of my Apple TVs in the Home app?

Addendum: here's a pattern (perhaps) that I hadn't noticed before: My Apple TV 4s did show the correct room list and allowed proper linking. The Apple TV 4Ks did not, and those are the subject of this post. They do show as Home Hubs in the iOS Home app, show up as Airplay destinations, and have all other indications that they should work.

Addendum #2: I factory reset one of the misbehaving Apple TV 4Ks and it allowed proper room selection. It also has a room selection menu in the Airplay settings. The misbehaving Apple TV 4K does not have that menu choice in Airplay to get to any Room settings, so I'll probably factory reset it too. I suspect a bug at this point, but it's not clear why it triggered for some Apple TVs but not others.

Addendum #3: Factory reset of the remaining unit corrected the problem. Why this happened to multiple 4K units and not to any Apple TV 4s is a mystery.

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    It's unfortunate that even with using an iOS device to setup a fresh Apple TV and having One Home Screen turned on, setup still requires adding lots of emails and logins and tweaking other Settings, so it's quite a long process to factory reset an Apple TV and get it back to the way it was.
    – pseudon
    Jun 3, 2018 at 17:27

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Was the Apple TV your home hub? If so then you can check and see if you see Homekit as Connected:

On your Apple TV, go to Settings > Accounts > iCloud and make sure that your Apple TV shows HomeKit as Connected. If you don’t see HomeKit, then your Apple TV isn't connected as a home hub.

Set up Apple TV as a home hub

  1. On your iOS device or Mac, set up two-factor authentication for your Apple ID. Then go to iCloud and make sure that you have iCloud Keychain turned on.
  2. On your Apple TV, go to Settings > Accounts and make sure that you're signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID as your iOS device.
  3. After you sign in to iCloud, your Apple TV automatically sets itself up as a home hub. To check the status of your home hub, go to Settings > Accounts > iCloud and look under HomeKit to see if your home hub is connected. Learn what to do if you don’t see HomeKit.
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    The Apple TVs are set up as Home hubs. They all appear in my iOS Home app, are logged in with the same Apple ID with 2-factor, and show Connected on tvOS. iCloud Keychain is on. Everything else about Home and home hubs works, just these room assignments don't populate properly, and went into limbo when I did pick something form the list.
    – pseudon
    Jun 3, 2018 at 3:07
  • I'd recommend doing a factory reset to both TVs or removing them and re-add them.
    – Melvin Jefferson
    Jun 5, 2018 at 18:54
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    I did that over the weekend, and they then showed the proper room list and were added successfully. I'm going to chalk this one up to an early 11.4 bug, with a very labor-intensive workaround.
    – pseudon
    Jun 5, 2018 at 19:01
  • Yes that's possible. But if I were you I'd wait before you update your devices to iOS 12. Let that one update twice before you update if you aren't experiencing any issues.
    – Melvin Jefferson
    Jun 5, 2018 at 21:12

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