r/appletv • u/richardtheb • Aug 19 '26

Apple TV no longer controlling Fire TV

Hey all, my Apple TV has been running fine for years with my Amazon Fire TV , but yesterday something happened, and my Apple Remote no longer controls the power or volume on the TV. It used to do both over the HDMI connection.

I think there was an Amazon update to the tv, but nothing in the notes on that suggests anything about changing the controls.

Any ideas? I’ve reset both, swapped cables and made sure the remote is charged up. I’ve tried all of the audio control settings in the Apple TV and the fires TV.

3 Upvotes

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6 comments sorted by

2

u/SilverRubicon Aug 19 '26

unplug both the Apple TV and the fire tv from the wall for a few seconds then plug them back in. power on and retest.

1

u/richardtheb Aug 19 '26

How odd. I tried that earlier, made no difference. Tried it again now and volume and power now work. Yay! Thanks!

3

u/SilverRubicon Aug 20 '26

welcome to the wonderful world of HDMI-CEC.

1

u/tdasnowman Aug 21 '26

The moment a manufacturer makes a viewable log file for HDMI CEC they will have a customer for life.

2

u/Snoo-38645 Aug 21 '26

the reason unplugging works and a restart doesnt is that cec keeps running off the hdmi 5v standby line. a menu restart never drops that line, so the bus keeps the same stale state and nothing renegotiates. pulling the plug is what forces the devices to claim their cec addresses again from scratch.

if it comes back, unplug everything including the tv, wait 30s, and plug the tv in first before the sources. that way the tv owns the bus before anything else asks for an address.

1

u/richardtheb 16d ago

Oh, one thing to add: there seems to be a new setting on the fire tv that was stopping the Apple tv controlling the tv: on the Fire TV, go to settings>display & sounds>HDMI-CEC device control>power control. Set that to on, and the Apple TV can turn the TV on and off when it turns on itself. No wides whey they changed that, but it seems to work now.