Use your iPhone as a Game Controller

With Apple Arcade on the horizon, you may want to pick up a proper Bluetooth game controller for your Apple TV, but you may also find it useful to know that you can use your iPhone (or iPad) as a game controller also, via the Apple TV Remote app.

You’ll need to download the actual Apple TV Remote app for this — the built-in Control Center version doesn’t offer this capability — but once you’ve got it installed and setup, you’ll see a game controller icon at the top of the screen when you’re playing a game.

Tapping on this will put the remote into game mode, allowing you to hold it in landscape orientation and use the touch area and virtual buttons to play the game.

While we find this much more comfortable than using the Siri Remote, it’s not a replacement for a full-on game controller, and there are definitely tvOS games out there that already work better with real controllers. It remains to be seen how many Apple Arcade games will fall into this category, however, since those particular titles are supposed to be playable on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac as well.