Reference application: atvremote

To more easily test pyatv, the atvremote application can be used. It is bundled with pyatv and supports all the functionality implemented by the library. So it is also a good place to go to for inspiration when implementing your own application.

Discovering devices

If you want to automatically discover devices on your network, use the scan command:

$ atvremote scan
Found Apple TVs:
- Apple TV at 10.0.10.22 (hsgid: 00000000-1234-5678-9abc-def012345678)

In case you have multiple devices, they should all show up. The discovery process is performed for 3 seconds, which might be too short and sometimes a device might not show up. Either just try again or raise the discover time with the -t flag, e.g. atvremote -t 10 scan.

More details about the discovery process can be found here.

Specifying a device

You have two choices:

  • Use -a that will perform the auto discover process and pick the first discovered command
  • Run scan yourself and manually specify IP-address and HSGID for device

Using the first option is easiest but also the slowest (you have to wait three seconds every time) and also works poorly with multiple devices. You can try it out like this:

$ atvremote -a <command>

To manually specify IP-address and HSGID, just do like this:

$ atvremote --adress <IP> --hsgid <HSGID>

Using these methods are mutually exclusive, so you may only pick one.

Working with commands

Several commands are supported by the library (and thus the device). Easiest is just to use the command called commands, as it will present a list of availble commands:

$ atvremote -a commands
Remote control commands:
 - play - Press key play
 - down - Press key down
 - left - Press key left
 - right - Press key right
 - previous - Press key previous
 - topmenu - Go to top menu (long press menu)
 - set_position - Seeks in the current playing media
 - menu - Press key menu
 - up - Press key up
 - next - Press key next
 - pause - Press key play
 - select - Press key select

Metadata commands:
 - artwork - Returns artwork for what is currently playing (or None)
 - playing - Returns what is currently playing

Playing commands commands:
 - position - Current position in the playing media (seconds)
 - album - Album of the currently playing song
 - play_state - Current play state, e.g. playing or paused
 - artist - Artist of the currently playing song
 - media_type - What type of media is currently playing, e.g. video, music
 - total_time - Total play time in seconds
 - title - Title of the current media, e.g. movie or song name

You can for instance get what is currently playing with playing:

atvremote -a playing
album: None
artist: None
media_type: 1
play_state: 1
position: 0
title: None
total_time: 0

Or seek in the currently playing media:

atvremote -a set_position=123

Logging and debugging

You can enable additional debugging information by specifying either --verbose or --debug. There are also some additional developer commands that might be useful, if you also specify --developer. They will show up if you query all available commands.