Apple 4K+Companion App - What's better?

I’ve been Zwifting for about 3 weeks now with my Apple 4K, Companion App. I love Zwift but I’ve noticed:

  • in group rides, I lose most sounds except ambient after ~35-45 minutes
  • Companion app unresponsive - thumbs up (ride on?) does nothing, wave works. The app is incredibly unresponsive with these TINY buttons that I have a hard time hitting while I’m sweating my a** off.
  • Frequently Have to restart Apple TV because music is missing at start menu screen
  • Constant exiting-to-menu, relaunch Zwift to get my Apple Watch HR to show up.

I thought the Apple TV device was a fool-proof way to experience Zwift. Not in my experience.

Would a gaming PC/laptop provide a more bug-free, feature-rich experience? I can’t tell if the weak link is the companion app or the Apple 4K TV.

One thing that has been recommended for ATV and ZC is to force-close both after each ride. Give that a shot and see if it helps. If you’re connected by WiFi you might also try putting your router on a fixed channel.

First of all, make sure both your AppleTV tvOS and the Zwift app are both the latest and greatest. I recommend manually checking both, tvOS via the Settings and Zwift app via the App store. Even if you have everything set to auto-update, it is not instantaneous. Next, double check that your Companion app is also updated.

I haven’t been able to use my AppleTV to Zwift in a few months, but if I remember correctly, you can enable/disable the the title music in the Setting menu, along w/other sound settings. Double check these settings. But odd indeed if they are changing from session to session.

The “Thumb” aka Ride On button does not give Ride Ons. When used, it audibly issues a “Ride On” meaning if you haven’t muted the in game sounds, you would hear your rider say “Ride On” You can hit the circle around your location on the map to simultaneously give up to 5 Ride Ons to riders in close proximity. Otherwise, you can touch a dot on the map and issue a Ride On via the menu that appears.

Highly recommend putting the phone in Airplane mode so that it is forced to use WiFi. The phone also needs to be on the same WiFi network as the Apple TV. If the phone uses mobile data and/or is on a diff WiFi network, you will get flaky Companion app behavior.

Lastly, aside from making sure all the pieces are updated as I first mentioned, you should also force quit both the Zwift app on the Apple TV and the Companion app on your phone after each Zwift session. Otherwise, you may get some unexpected hiccups.

Another Apple TV 4K + Companion App user here. I have mixed experiences, but the biggest issue for me is my HR dropping signal on rides (Apple Watch connected via the Companion App) — it’s really frustrating when you’re doing your beans on a mountain and your HR drops out and you have to mess about getting it working again (see below how bad it is)

What is this witchcraft and how have I only just heard of this. I did wonder how people were doing this during my rides. I thought it was when they completed a challenge or something.

Is this via the Companion App?

Can’t help you with the Apple Watch. Don’t have one.

As for the Ride Ons…
Yes. This witchcraft :man_mage:Is via the Companion app. When riding in Zwift with the Companion app linked up, if you zoom in on your location until the ring appears around your moving dot, you can spam up to 5 Ride Ons simultaneously assuming 5 riders are close enough. Then the circle will disappear and recharge in about 10s.

Hey Lin - thank you for the hint.

I was on a group ride today and was told that this feature (clicking the ring) doesn’t actually work while in a group ride and that only the group ride leaders can spam ride-on’s in this manner.

So confusing…

Yes, oddly that feature doesn’t work in a group ride. I suppose there is a good reason for that, but only Zwift knows. Many a person, for many years have asked to have that enabled during a group ride to no avail.

If only using the Companion app during a group ride for Ride On’s, you can either touch a dot and issue one or select usernames from the Zwifters screen and give them that way.