New in 1.5 — camera & doorbell motion alerts open full‑screen on your Apple TV, plus a live Traffic & commute card. Download free on the App Store.
Family home
A loft apartment lit by two groups of smart lights, washed in the colours of the album art currently playing
Care home
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Apple TV appOn the App Store

Theatrium for Apple TV Home Dashboard Music Visualizer Light Sync

An Apple TV app that shows your smart home, turns your music into a full-screen visualizer, and syncs your room lights to the colors on screen.

Works with Home Assistant, Apple HomeKit, or no smart home at all · no account, no analytics, no tracking

What it does

A home dashboard, a music visualizer, and room lights that follow the screen.

The Theatrium dashboard on an Apple TV

The dashboard

A beautiful, curated dashboard: every room, scene, camera, sensor and control on one calm, elegant screen, from Home Assistant or Apple HomeKit, built for the Siri Remote.

The Theatrium real-time music visualizer

The visualizer

Most music visualizers just replay video loops. Theatrium generates every scene in real time on the Apple TV, from flowing abstract fields to hand-crafted retro showpieces like a spinning Compact Disc, a click-wheel iPod and a hyper-real Mirrorball, drawing on the track's tempo, album art and title, and reshuffling each play, so the same song never looks the same twice.

See all 29 scenes →
A loft apartment lit by two groups of smart lights, washed in the colours of the album art currently playing

The light sync

Two light groups shift color with the song, following its tempo, so the whole room moves with the music. Works on Home Assistant, Apple Home or Hue.

How it connects

Home Assistant, Apple HomeKit, or just an Apple TV.

Run Theatrium on a full Home Assistant server, straight off Apple HomeKit with no server at all, or with no smart home whatsoever. It reads whatever's playing, then drives the visualizer and your lights to the track's tempo.

Works locally with Home Assistant

With a home server

Every entity you've set up, plus the extras only a server gives: history sparklines, who's-home, system metrics, and media from any connected speaker.

Works with Apple Home

No server needed

Point Theatrium straight at your Apple Home: lights, climate, cameras, locks, covers, sensors and scenes. Bring the music and visualizer with Apple Music, Spotify or Last.fm.

No smart home at all? Apple TV‑only mode still gives you the full ambient screen: weather and rain radar from your location, live webcams, markets, crypto, news, a calendar and the clock, plus the visualizer and your music. Zero setup.

See the full setup guides →
The light sync

Home lighting synchronization

Two colors, read live from the screen: Main for your overheads, Accent for your lamps. One Apple TV can light the whole house.

Main lights THEATRIUM Theatrium on Apple TV Accent lamps Smart speaker or any media player Home Assistant Main color Accent color Main color Accent color
  1. 1Your musicApple Music on this Apple TV, or Spotify, Last.fm and Plex from your phone. No server in between.
  2. 2TheatriumReads the track and its tempo, draws the visualization live on the Apple TV’s graphics chip, and pulls two colors out of what it is drawing.
  3. 3Your roomThe two colors go straight from the Apple TV to your Apple Home lights.

Theatrium reads whatever you are playing and turns it into a scene and two room colors. No server anywhere.

See the music visualizer →

Now playing

Color from the album art

The cover’s dominant swatch becomes Main; a contrasting swatch becomes Accent.

Main#3D6BE6
Accent#E8479E
In the room
Visualizer

Color from the scene

The scene’s prevailing hue becomes Main; a highlight becomes Accent.

A Theatrium visualizer scene of flowing ribbons in magenta, teal and green
On screen
Main#43D8C5
Accent#A5419F
In the room
Screen care and power use

Less power, and less wear on the panel

Apple’s tvOS, the operating system that powers Apple TV, comes with its own screen saver and sleep options. Theatrium extends these with a series of complementary features designed to reduce energy consumption and lower the risk of screen burn-in.1

  1. Pixel Shift Coming soon

    The one that works while you are still watching. The whole screen moves a pixel or two every few minutes, so a clock face or a card edge never sits on the same pixels all evening. The movement is eased and too small to notice.

    On while the dashboard is showing. Irregular timing, so the path never settles into a pattern.
  2. Dim

    The first step down. The dashboard stays on screen and readable, just quieter — useful in a dark room as well as on the panel. Any press brings it straight back.

    After 30 minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours — or off. Three depths: slight, medium, deep.
  3. Screensaver Coming soon

    The step past dimming: true black with the logo drifting, so no pixel carries a static image. Alerts still appear over it, and the rest of the panel stays dark.

    After 1, 2 or 4 hours — or off. Runs on its own clock, after dimming.
  4. Apple TV sleep

    tvOS's own last word: the Apple TV stops sending a picture and most TVs switch the panel off entirely. Nothing beats it for power or for the panel. Theatrium comes back where you left it.

    Set in tvOS Settings › General › Sleep After, from 15 minutes to never.

What the TV draws, left on

Theatrium dashboard 65 W
Dashboard, dimmed 60 W
Theatrium screensaver 58 W
tvOS Home screen 77 W
Apple Aerial screensaver 107 W

Estimated for a 65″ OLED from the measured picture level of each screen. The line marks the ~58 W the TV's own electronics draw with the panel dark; everything right of it is light on screen.2

Running quietly behind all four, ambient theming shifts the dashboard's accent and glow with the time of day — warmer through golden hour, cooler and dimmer at night. The layout never moves, but the lit parts of the picture are never quite the same from one hour to the next, and the panel works a little less in the evening.

Before you start

What you need

Hardware

Any Apple TV 4K, 1st generation (2017) onwards. The non-4K Apple TV HD is not supported. Requires tvOS 18.0 or later.

A data source

Home Assistant or Apple Home. Theatrium finds a Home Assistant server on your network and fills the address in, then you sign in by scanning a code on your phone, so there is no access token to create. A built-in Demo mode lets you explore the whole app with neither.

Lights

Smart lights already set up in Home Assistant or HomeKit. For optimal light-sync effects, we recommend creating a Main and an Accent group, or set, of lights.

Music

The visualizer and light sync follow whatever’s playing: Apple Music on this Apple TV, or Spotify, Last.fm and Plex mirrored from your phone or computer. On Home Assistant, any media_player source works too, including Music Assistant.

Plays with Apple Music Spotify Last.fm Plex

Theatrium displays the rooms, accessories and media you have already configured; it does not set up Home Assistant, HomeKit or your lights for you. Your Apple TV and your data source must be on the same local network. Theatrium is an independent app and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple, the Open Home Foundation, Spotify, Last.fm, Plex, Ring, Sonos, Signify (Philips Hue) or Google. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Everything it does

There is a good deal more than three features.

Cameras and doorbell alerts, traffic and commute, news, markets, calendar, themes, iCloud sync, Family Sharing. Twenty-two in all.

Motion & doorbell alerts

A camera sees someone and the picture opens on the TV, whatever is on screen.

Traffic

Live conditions on the roads you actually use.

Music visualizer

Scenes generated in real time on the Apple TV, locked to the tempo. See all 29 →

iCloud sync

Set it up once and your dashboard follows you to every Apple TV in the house.

See all 22 features →

Word of mouth

What people are saying

“Thank you for probably the most aesthetically pleasing app on AppleTV.”
via r/appletv
“This looks excellent and way ahead of the other options I have played with for home automation and dashboard on Apple TV.”
via r/appletv
“The app is very impressive and well thought out.”
via r/appletv
“I cared for both my elderly parents at home… Thanks for your work on this — it will make a real difference!”
via r/appletv
“I live in an RV so this is a perfect use of the ATV to feel more like a work space.”
via r/TheatriumApp
“Well, finally someone came up with a great idea, and managed to build on it.”
via r/appletv
THEATRIUM®
Theatrium app icon Apple TV · Free on the App Store

Free to download — the dashboard, the music visualizer and basic light sync cost nothing. A one-time Pro unlock (in-app purchase, no subscription) adds the extra themes, custom alerts and the richer light-sync modes.

Support, feedback and feature ideas live on r/TheatriumApp · or write to hello@theatrium.info
Want early builds before they ship? Join the TestFlight beta.