Due to limitations with the Apple TV you are only able to pair 2 Bluetooth devices directly to the Apple TV. If you have more than 2 Bluetooth devices they must be paired through the companion app.
At present there is no way to manually switch from using the Apple TV Bluetooth to the companion app. The only way to start using the companion app Bluetooth is to attempt to pair a 3rd device through the Apple TV, at which time a dialog will appear providing the option to use the companion app.
The drawback to this approach is that once the attempt to pair the third device to the Apple TV is made, the device is committed to the Apple TV and will not be seen by the companion app, leading to “No Signal” issues.
The workaround is to remove the battery from the 3rd device and wait for it to timeout, dropping its connection to the Apple TV, at which time you can replace the battery and pair it to the companion app properly.
If a button were provided to manually choose to use the companion app for pairing then the need to remove and replace the battery in your Bluetooth device would hopefully be eliminated.
I have found that when you try to pair the third device, it asks you if you want to use the Companion. If you click “yes”, as you mention, it unfortunately connects directly to the AppleTV but gets No Signal. All you have to do, at that point, it click the button again on the Zwift Screen (e.g. click the Cadence or HR button) to unpair it and then re-pair it. Now it will show up in the selection screen with a phone icon and when you pair, it will be using the Companion. You do not need to take the battery out of the device… Just unpair thru Zwift.
That doesn’t work for me. If i pair my kickr and tickr through the atv, then try to pair my cadence meter, the dialog for the companion pops up. I clicked yes, got no signal, unpaired, repaired, but the cadence meter wasn’t discovered.
I removed the battery, waited a minute, replaced the battery, then the cadence meter was discovered.
So I tried again today to pair, unpair and re-pair the cadence sensor and it worked. Perhaps once a device has paired to the companion app once it will will work to unpair and repair in the ATV. Unfortunately I accidentally unpaired my trainer while trying to go to do a spindown. At that point everything unpaired. I switched back to using bluetooth on the ATV, re-paired the trainer and the tickr, but couldn’t switch back to using the companion bluetooth because the cadence was already associated with the companion and couldn’t be seen by the ATV. I had to turn off the bluetooth on my phone, try to pair the cadence to the ATV, choose to use the companion app in the popup dialog, unpair the cadence, and finally re-pair it to use it with the companion. If there were a button that I could use to switch over to using the companion bluetooth al lot of that hassle would have been saved.
So my request stands: Please add a button to choose to use the companion bluetooth on the Apple TV.
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