There are even apps that enable the iPhone screen as a mouse in the place of an actual physical mouse that connects over Bluetooth or USB. There are several third-party remote options that enable dramatically more features and services. ConclusionĪpple’s Remote app is pretty basic, all things being equal. From there, you can pause, play, start and select any of your existing content to watch or listen. When you open the app each time, you are presented with a music icon or the TV icon which will take you to either library. Once both of these apps are enabled, you are now free to use the iPhone as a remote control. To control any media you have in Apple TV, whether purchased or your own content, head to “Settings -> Accounts -> Home Sharing.” Again, the same rule applies, as the Apple TV app must be open on the computer to work. When the system preferences menu appears, toward the bottom row of your preferences options is “Sharing.” It resembles a blue folder with a yellow warning symbol logo. To get there, you need to go to the upper-left corner of your screen and click on the “Apple” logo. Unlike previous macOS systems, the Home Sharing feature has been moved to System Preferences. If this is not an issue, then you should be able to set things up to control music, movies and TV shows with your iPhone. This step matters, as you will need to activate “Home Sharing” and that only works if all of the devices are on the same network and using the same Apple ID. So how do you do it?īefore jumping into the steps, it’s important that if you wish to go the native route, you should use the same Apple ID on all of your devices. It just behaves a little differently than before.

The good news is that using your iPhone natively as a remote isn’t gone. With the launch of macOS Catalina, Apple removed iTunes and replaced it with Apple Music and Apple TV. For better or worse, macOS Mojave was the last Mac software release to use the program everyone loves to hate, iTunes.

If this was one year ago, the native way of using your iPhone as a remote for macOS would have been completely different.

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