4 underrated Apple TV apps I wish more people knew about

One of the dangers of sitting down on your couch is falling into easy habits. I know that by the time I sit (or lay) down, I’m usually exhausted from a day at work, and rarely have much interest in jumping through hoops for entertainment. Don’t get me wrong — I might still be up for a thoughtful YouTube video or strategy game, but I’m not going to waste too much time choosing something.

When it comes to the Apple TV, though, it can be worth hunting around for new apps, since it’s both one of the best-supported streamers out there and one of the most powerful. If your demands aren’t too heavy, you can even treat it as a game console, no matter if Apple itself tends to treat gaming as an afterthought. You’ll see what I mean.

For the purposes of this list, I’m going to be skipping past behemoths like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max. You might actually consider Hulu underrated, but it hardly needs a spotlight from me.

Pluto TV

When it’s time for comfort viewing

This was the first app that came to mind. In a sense, there’s not that much that distinguishes Pluto from the other ad-based free TV apps out there — but it was one of the earliest, and I find it makes for a great fallback when I want a comfort show, or I can’t think of anything specific I want to watch or play. If you’re in the first camp, you’ll find channels dedicated to shows like Frasier, I Love Lucy, The Joy of Painting, or Star Trek: The Next Generation. These lineups change periodically, which can be irritating if there was a particular show you liked, but that’s pretty much unavoidable given the chaotic world of licensing deals. There’s an alternative to that I’ll get into later.

When you don’t know what you want to watch, there are genre channels dedicated to particular kinds of movies and shows, such as comedy or action. The thing I use the least is Pluto’s on-demand library. Despite it offering great picks sometimes, like The X-Files or Oscar-winning movies, it feels a little like grocery store sushi — sure, it might be excellent, but it’s not the first thing that comes to mind at the same place I get my cereal and protein powder.

Jackbox Party Pack

The best party game(s) you can play

Credit: Jackbox Games

The big challenge when you gather friends together for a party is keeping them engaged, since few people want to talk non-stop for two-plus hours. There are a variety of options out there — everything from board games to Dungeons & Dragons. But if you want something guaranteed to keep people interested, even spectators, it’s hard to go wrong with one of the Jackbox Party Packs.

Each pack contains an assortment of games for a varying number of players. The genius is that you don’t need to buy multiple controllers or pass one around — instead people play from a phone browser by joining a room code. In fact many of the games depend on you being able to keep info secret, so they just wouldn’t work if everyone had to share the same screen. A few of them, like Patently Stupid or Tee KO, depend on you being able to draw on a touchscreen with your finger.

It’s hard to pick any one pack above the others. Group tastes can be very subjective. I will say, though, that one of my favorites is Party Pack 5, since it has Mad Verse City — a game where you write improv rap lyrics, which are almost always hilarious. If there’s nothing in particular that draws your eye, you can’t go wrong with packs that have recurring games like Fibbage, Quiplash, or You Don’t Know Jack.

Plex

A must-have for local media

Over the years, Plex has expanded to provide on-demand content and Pluto-style live channels, but let’s not kid ourselves — the main reason to use Plex is streaming movies and TV shows from a local server, usually your computer. It’s an antidote to the subscription world, where even paying $20-plus per month doesn’t necessarily guarantee that your favorite movies will still be around the next time you grab the remote.

While it’s relatively easy to install and configure Plex Media Server on a computer, the tricky part is building an offline media library. Even if you’ve bought movies from companies like Apple or Amazon, those are copy-protected, so you’ll need to turn to other avenues. The ideal is ripping Blu-rays and DVDs you own, but naturally those can be expensive, and you need special conversion software for either. Some people will therefore turn to sailing the seven seas (ahem), even for titles they already legally own.

A very important tip is to keep your files and folders properly named and organized. While one of Plex’s best features is its automatic content recognition — including poster art, and theme songs for TV shows — subtitle files need to match the name of the video they’re linked to, and you may have a hard time figuring out which episode of a show you’re looking at if it doesn’t have season and episode numbers attached. A file for Twin Peaks, for instance, should look something like TV Shows/Twin Peaks/Season 3/Twin Peaks S03E08.mkv.

Criterion Channel

Not just for Film grads

Credit: Janus Films

The caricature of Criterion is that the company specializes in obscure arthouse movies, many of them foreign, and you will certainly find those — but there are also a surprising number of classics and blockbusters on the service. As I write this, for example, you can watch the likes of RoboCop, The Elephant Man, Wall Street, Hard Boiled, and Police Story. If you haven’t seen Police Story, that’s a real treat from earlier in Jackie Chan’s career.

The main attraction is watching movies that can be hard or impossible to find on other paid services, but there’s more going on. For one, the service regularly serves up themed collections, which can help you discover new titles or match a very specific mood. There’s also a 24/7 stream, and the extremely rare option of commentary tracks — you won’t find that on Netflix or Disney+. It makes sense of course, since it’s Criterion’s feature-loaded DVDs that shot the company to fame in the first place.

If I have a complaint, it’s that you can’t necessarily count on something that’s on a Criterion disc being available on streaming. You can’t watch The Rock at the moment, for example, and even though the company sells a 10-film Wes Anderson Collection, movies like The Life Aquatic and The Grand Budapest Hotel are missing. That could change at some point, but I’ll bet the company wants to keep selling discs a little while longer.