If you’ve never made an app for the Apple TV, you might want to start with my previous tutorial, Getting Started with the Apple TV and TVOS: Hello world in TVML (updated for TVOS 11).
If you already have an idea what you’re doing – a couple disclaimers.
1) I’m not a software developer, but I’ve tinkered enough over the years to make a pretty decent app without too much trouble, which I think is a testament to how Apple has set up their platform. All I want to do is serve up videos and organize them, and to be able to use my own graphics. TVML makes tons of decisions for us and makes getting a customized Netflix like app up pretty quickly. For those of you who don’t like the constraints, then you can just write it in Swift and do whatever you want. There’s even a method for defining your own TVML elements yourself. That allows developers to create libraries and make things even easier for those of us who are hobbyists, part timers, or just need an app quickly and don’t want to start from scratch. These tutorials are written from my notes as I went through the process of creating the OOFTV Apple TV app.
2) This tutorial and the last one are straight from Apple’s TVML Programming guide. I thought their guide was very well written and the path it takes you through makes a lot of sense. I also used tutorials from Ray Wenderlich, who has a book on TVML. But there were a couple of things that tripped me up when I was starting out, so I’m hoping these posts will be able to expand a little more for people like me who aren’t so familiar with iOS development or programming in general.
