As soon as the App Store opened for the Apple TV, other developers caught onto this concept. Since your TV is likely the biggest screen in your house, you might as well take advantage of it by keeping stunning scenery on display. Several apps in the App Store provide this exact experience whether it’s footage from around the world or a cozy digital fireplace. Check out our picks for the top four of these apps.
Scenic Loops
Scenic Loops for $0.99 delivers the best combination of amazing scenes you can show off on your Apple TV. The app includes nine different scenes — everything from a quiet stream in a forest to what appears to be a tranquil view of the Grand Canyon. The app includes volume too so you can hear the sound effects in the background. Tip: Check out our guide on how to take screenshots on your Apple TV. The video quality and colors are truly stunning especially if you have a larger television. This isn’t surprising since they’re shot in 4K. The settings include options to adjust the sound volume or display a clock on screen, which makes the scenes look somewhat like live wallpapers on a desktop computer. Hopefully, more scenes will come in time but these will do just fine for now.
Earthlapse
Earthlapse includes videos shot directly from the International Space Station in 4K. All of the clips have outstanding footage of different parts of the Earth from outer space. You can check out an incredible view of Aurora Borealis or even fly over the United States lit up in gold at night. The app comes with a generous 18 different scenes of our home planet. It’s also customizable so you can add filters to the video, play your own music, display the time and enable automatic downloads for when new video clips are ready. This app is available for $2.99 and is nothing short of magnificent.
Fantastic Fireplace
Fantastic Fireplace is the first free app on this list, and that’s probably because all it displays is a fireplace. The video loop is of just a basic fireplace. It includes sound, but since the video loop is short, you can hear when it’s starting again if you listen carefully. Plus, Fantastic Fireplace includes the basic fireplace for free, but you can upgrade to get the bundle of four other fireplace scenes for $1.99. It’s nice to leave on your TV in the background in the winter when you have company over and the video loop is pretty smooth. For free, you might as well just keep it on your Apple TV for when the time is right.
Scenic TV
Scenic TV is another free app that automatically cycles through several scenic YouTube videos of clips licensed under Creative Commons. You don’t get any control whatsoever over which clips play on your TV or when they play, but the app comes with a terrific variety of content and never manages to get old. They take you to some of the most peaceful areas around the world — above and below seas. The amount of video is more than enough for a free app. One downside worth noting is that since the videos are from YouTube, not everyone will fill your entire 16:9 display. Note: Because Apple doesn’t have an online version of the Apple TV store yet, we can’t link directly to these apps. Instead, use the Search app on your Apple TV to search for the titles of these apps instead. The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
