iPhone Remote App Via VPN to Control Apple TV

This will be a different one…

I have multiple Apple TV’s throughout the house, mainly for my kids. We have the restrictions set up on certain apps for the Apple TV so I’m constantly hearing a yell through the house, “Can I have the code please!?” When I hear that I open up the Remote app on the iPhone, hit the drop down, select the Apple TV, then I’m able to put in the code. In this scenario, I am obviously on the same WiFi network.

I’m curious if anyone out there knows how I can connect to my VPN and be able to connect to the Apple TV’s outside of being at home on the internal network. (I use a UniFi UDR.)

As I’m typing this I’m thinking that I just need to create a firewall rule to bridge between the VPN subnet and the internal network subnet. I feel like I have this setup but it’s just not working.

Thoughts?

Idk but I have zero Apple TV setup and I kept getting a horrible apple dropdown message on the iPhone THAT KEPT CRASHIN MY HECKIN PHONE ALL DAY. Oh and it happened to three other people with iPhones sitting near me in a coffee shop - it was weird af.

Sorry. I just couldn’t find anything on this today and I needed to cry a little abt it.

Yes the firewall rule should work.

If you crate a WireGuard VPN, it should just work for internal networks (no firewall changes needed). It allows me to manage a lot of things remotely. Biggest “issue” I see is mDNS doesn’t cross the VPN, so it may not work if ATV requires that to connect.

I actually hadn’t tried this, so while turning lights and plugs on and off works natively on the Home App, ‘through the cloud’, TV remote control only works on the same network? Testing by turning WiFi off an my iPad and forcing cellular, I now see the TV remote ‘Play’ button is White while on WiFi, and greyed out on cellular.

I’ve tried it with several VPNs and haven’t seen it work, I suspect due to mDNS as you mentioned. I also have a Harmony Hub and that works fine though

Yeah, my google TV’s remote works just fine over the vpn.