Free Apps Every Apple TV User Should Have Installed

What's the primary reason you get an Apple TV 4K player? To watch your favorite shows and movies on a suitably big screen, right? Indeed, the Apple TV player is excellent at that, providing access to the most popular services, offering high-quality picture and sound fidelity, and helping you to network all of it with your existing Apple devices. However, if that's all you're using your Apple TV player for, you're underutilizing it a bit.

Besides the bevy of premium services, Apple TV offers a variety of free apps, providing you with ways to experience many forms of entertainment, as well as maximize the potential of any content you might already have access to. With the power of an Apple TV player, your TV doesn't have to just be a TV- it can be an all-purpose device for entertainment, engagement, and interactivity. All it takes is the right software.

While it may not be a primary purveyor of Hollywood-level cinematographt, you can't deny the entertainment giant that is YouTube. With the YouTube app, you can enjoy your favorite video content from streamers, influencers, and assorted randos whenever you want. If there's something you want to watch and it's not a professional-grade production, odds are good you can find it on YouTube.

If you already have a YouTube account, you can log into it through the Apple TV app to access your subscriptions and recommendations. Plus, with voice command support on the Apple TV remote, you can quickly and easily search for videos without needing to even touch the virtual keyboard. As is the case with other versions of YouTube, the platform is free to use, though all videos are ad-supported. On the bright side, you can tune into live streams, which are ad-free.

While the entertainment-consuming populace is generally moving away from traditional cable television, that doesn't mean that live television as a whole is obsolete. If you prefer to have your TV roll on its own without you needing to manually pick something, then you'd get a lot of mileage out of a live streaming TV app like Tubi. It's all your favorite classic TV without the need for a cord.

Tubi features a hefty selection of live streaming TV channels and videos-on-demand covering all of your primetime favorites, from news and sports to shows and movies. The platform features both vintage entertainment from years past and more recent, popular shows from the biggest studios like Paramount and Lion's Gate, all free to watch. The movies and shows are ad-supported, though according to their App Store page, Tubi boasts three times fewer ads than you would get while watching traditional cable, which would still be a marked improvement.

Do you have a library card? If so and there happens to be a physical library near you, you can enjoy any and all of their video content from the comfort of your home. Gone are the days of having to drag yourself over to the physical library to rent DVDs and cassette tapes — with the Kanopy app, you can borrow and enjoy them on your own time. It's also connected to academic institutions like colleges and universities too, so students also have access to Kanopy.

The Kanopy app automatically searches for nearby libraries and, using your existing local library card, allows you to log in and browse that library's collection of movies, documentaries, and more at no cost. You can also rent out landmark films from the Criterion Collection, as well as unlimited shows and movies for your kids. All of this content is completely free to peruse- no subscriptions, no ads.

Life is hard, and in recent years, it seems more stressful than ever. Sometimes, watching traditional television can make it difficult to relax and unwind. In this case, rather than using your TV as a flashing panic box, use it to facilitate periods of rest and recuperation with the Calm app. It's meant to help users achieve a state of inner peace, whether it be between tasks at work or to lull yourself off to sleep.

Calm is a relaxation app, promoting peaceful meditation, healthy sleep, and general good vibes. You can set up meditation sessions, long or short, and have the app assist you with calming sounds and breathing exercises. The app also features Sleep Stories, narrated tales intended to calm and soothe you as you drift off to sleep. Some of these stories even have celebrity narrators like Matthew McConaughey. While there is a premium tier with additional features, the base app is free to use.

For as much content is available to view on this or that service these days, there are still many users out there that prefer to keep their content saved to hard drives. If you've got a big cache of videos on your Mac but prefer to watch them on a larger screen, there's a way for you to stream them to your Apple TV player. You just need the Infuse Video Player.

Infuse is a multifaceted video player app for your Apple TV that can handle just about any video format you throw at it, be it MP4, MKV, MOV, or whatever else. Infuse can load videos directly from your personal computer's hard drive through a Wi-Fi connection and play them in HD. If you have the premium tier, you can also pull videos from cloud storage apps like Dropbox or Google Drive, but the free version is plenty if you already have your videos handy.