David Cordero

How to use an AppleTv box for development, without a TV

Published on 20 Oct 2020

If you ever tried to use QuickTime Movie Recording to get video output from an AppleTv that does not have a connected TV, you might have discovered that it does not work.

This is a pain in the situations when you can’t have a TV with you, for example when traveling, or when you are in home office and your family wants to watch TV.

This problem occurs because when there is no TV connected the AppleTv disables the video output, so QuickTime can’t get anything from it.

The workaround to solve this problem is connecting an HDMI Headless adapter to your AppleTv. Doing that will enable the video output and will make it work with QuickTime.