How to Add TV Button for Apple TV on Logitech Harmony

by Rian

Logitech Harmony remains to be few semi-functional universal smart remote —that is mouthful— currently available, even though the Swiss-based company has decided to pull Harmony from production years ago. I’ve seen some new candidates since, but not all remotes offer the big database Harmony has, let alone offering both RF and IR functionality. But today’s how-to is not about RF or IR, surprisingly.

If you are trying to add Apple TV —not the streaming service or app, the device— to the Harmony, there are multiple ways to do it. One of which is to simply add “Apple TV” as you would do with any other device. But from my experience, the old listing for Apple TV doesn’t offer “TV button” or “Monitor button” as I used to call them. On Harmony, it’s called “Home button”.

Instructions

Instead of adding “Apple TV” as a device, try adding “Harmony Pro” as manufacturer, with “Apple TV”. This will give you some options, and some of the listings with “BT” in front of it, (e.g. “BT Apple TV 5”) offers Bluetooth connection back to the Apple TV. Harmony Hub then can be paired to Apple TV as “Harmony Keyboard”. Follow the Bluetooth paring as usual.

Apple has added control center to tvOS, and one of the features people have requested was to add a power button, which by the way, will only put Apple TV into sleep. Regardless, you do need that “Home Button” to bring up control center with Harmony remote or app.