The new Apple TV doesn’t feature a web browser and the developers are not allowed to create third-party browsers for tvOS. At least not officially. Forking an exisiting GitHub project posted by Steven Troughton-Smith’s, a Dutch developer jvanakker has built a native tvOS browser for Apple TV 4.

tvOSBrowser allows you to navigate pages with the Siri Remote. You can switch between cursor & scroll mode by tapping on the center of the touch area. Click the touchpad to click. Menu will navigate back. The Play/Pause button will let you input URLs.

Here’s a video showing this simplistic browser in action:

tvOSBrowser uses a private API (UIWebView), so it wouldn’t be approved on the tvOS App Store. But it can be downloaded by anyone from here.

Earlier this week the new Apple TV was hacked to enable app folders.

Related articles:

• MAME emulator running on Apple TV 4
• AirParrot 2: the ultimate companion app for Apple TV 4
• Official Plex app for Apple TV released
• How Apple is fixing what’s wrong with console gaming today

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Steve Troughton-Smith, a well-known iOS developer and hacker, discovered that HeadBoard, the tvOS UI, has “pretty complete” folder support inside. According to him, folders in tvOS work just like those in iOS – you drop an app on another app to create a folder. The folder takes the most likely category name from the apps inside but it’s also possible to give it a different name.

By “abusing lldb.“, Troughton-Smith was able to hack the tvOS and create his own folders. They can contain up to 9 apps. Pressing the play/pause button on the remote delates an app from a folder.

According to the hacker, this discovery could mean we’d see folder support before tvOS is 10.0. The current public version of tvOS is 9.0.

Related articles:

• MAME emulator running on Apple TV 4
• AirParrot 2: the ultimate companion app for Apple TV 4
• Official Plex app for Apple TV released
• How Apple is fixing what’s wrong with console gaming today

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

The post Apple TV 4 hacked to enable app folders appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

Remember that Add Site hack described by the iOS hacker David Schuetz, last fall? It was a quick trick in 5.x that enabled an Add site button on your home-screen which could be pointed to a media server and the content viewed in an Apple TV styled menu. As it turned out, the hack was revealed a bit a too late, as Apple had already patched it then in the 6.0 update. You can read more about the hack here. After a long research, Schuetz has finally found a way to make ‘Add Site’ work under Apple TV 6.x (details below), what made him wonder: Is this a prelude to wider availability of Apple TV app development? 

[…] If Apple were to open up Apple TV to general development (and they’ve certainly been fielding a lot of new applications lately), then they certainly couldn’t have done that without some kind of control in place.

That’s what I’m kind of hoping: That we’ll see, in the near future, an official way for “everyday” Apple developers to build Apple TV apps, and to distribute them via a new “Channel Store.” Maybe this will even be unveiled with the next major Apple TV update (currently rumored for April).

If Apple wanted, they could’ve completely closed down this bridge, but apparently they didn’t. Instead they made a security booth in the route which opens only to Apple’s approval. Also it is worth noting that this hack was patched even before getting exposed by the hacker. So Apple didn’t patch it to prevent its misuse but was an event already in its roadmap.

As Schuetz suggests, this might be a clue to what we can expect from Apple TV in the future. Any developer could register with Apple, upload a set of videos and start his own channel. In fact, he says that he wouldn’t be surprised to see this feature in the next Apple TV itself. With circulating rumors of a completely revamped iOS-based Apple TV 4 with a new interface, games and its own App Store, we couldn’t help but agree with him.

How to get Add Site hack working under Apple TV 6.x

After Apple patched the hack in the 6.0 software update, everyone was busy trying to find a way around this patch and to get back the Add Site button. It was found that if you add the profile in 5.3 and then update to 6.0, the profile setting would indeed be preserved. However Apple seems to check for additional icons on home-screen and hide them automatically, thereby making the provision unusable.

Schuetz is back to the rescue. He has done a deep exploration into the patch and here is the conclusion:

So the only way to make ‘Add Site’ work under Apple TV 6.x (ignoring any unfortunately-still-speculative jailbreaks) is to:

1. Retrieve the target Apple TV’s unique device identifier (udid)
2. Using your app’s Merchant ID, create the string “”
3. Get Apple to sign that string with the appropriate private key
4. Include that signature in a configuration profile that enables the Add Site application
5. Get Apple to sign the profile
6. Install the profile on the Apple TV from step 1

If you’re a developer or a coding nerd, you can see the details here.

Stick around here at Apple TV Hacks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) for more coverage on the new Apple TV.

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Some time ago we reported on a new hack discovered by an iOS hacker David Schuetz that let us put our own apps on Apple TV. By enabling an Apple TV OS feature called Add Site, Schuetz was able to add a custom site pointing at a Raspberry Pi media server which he added to the Apple TV. The hack quickly got closed as Apple disabled the Add Site feature. In a new post Schuetz explains what exactly happened and speculates on the future of his hack.

You can go through the article for the detailed explanation of what happened with the Add Site feature, here’s the conclusion:

If your ATV is on 6.x, and it doesn’t already have the Add Site profile loaded, then you can’t add it, unless you get a profile signed by Apple. And since the Apple TV program isn’t open to the public, you can’t get that profile. So, we’re pretty much stuck.

Great for Security. Lousy for DIY Apple TV hackers. Right?

Well, there is one workaround: If your ATV is on 5.2 or 5.3, you can still add the profile (you just won’t see the button), and then upgrade to 6.0, and, boom!, the Add Site application is available, and fully functional.

Unfortunately, Apple also introduced a signature test when using the Add Site feature. How to deal with this? Schuetz promised to discuss it in the next post.

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for more coverage of this topic.

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A new hack was discovered which allows custom site bookmarks to be added on pre-iOS 7 Apple TV’s. The backdoor hack comes from an iOS hacker David Schuetz who discovered a way to enable an Add Site feature which adds the ability to add custom sites to the Apple TV menu. However, it seems the hack has already been closed: it seems Apple checks for the existence of additional links placed on the Home Screen and actively disables them, so unfortunately the hack was short lived. Hopefully, Schuetz’s discovery will inspire people to figure out how to disable this check. Despite the hack being closed, here’s the details.

The hack didn’t even require a jailbreak and is compatible on version 5.x and earlier builds of Apple TV. By enabling the Add Site feature, Schuetz was able to add a custom site pointing at a Raspberry Pi Media server which he added to the Apple TV.

The process is explained in detail on this website and is shown in the below video:

Ultimately, to get this to work you have to do the following:

1. Start up a simple web server somewhere and put the .mobileconfig file there
2. Go to the AppleTV Settings app
3. Select “General” then scroll the cursor down to highlight “Send Data To Apple”
4. Press “Play” (not the normal “Select” button)
5. Enter the URL for the .mobileconfig file (don’t forget to add https://)
6. After loading, you may need to restart the AppleTV for the change to take effect

The possibilities that this opens up are endless, but it seems Apple have patched it in the 6.0 firmware. Let’s hope someone can figure out how to disable the checks Apple impose.

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