Your iPhone is about to become a better Apple TV remote

The Apple TV remote is a bit of a trigger point for us here. It's the default way to interact with an Apple TV , of course. But it's far from what we'd call a good remote control. It's not ergonomic. It's easy to lose. In fact, we recommend using something else.

But you've also been able to use your iPhone as a remote control for Apple TV — you just have to use the app. And Apple today at its WWDC conference in San Jose announced a couple improvements on this front.

First is that you'll be able to use AutoFill on iPhone and iPad to automatically sign in to Apple TV apps. Like Single Sign-On (and the upcoming Zero Sign-On ), that's all about speeding up the process and acknowledging that inputing text with a remote control is still a huge pain.

And Apple is also adding the Apple TV Remote app to Control Center on the iPhone and iPad. That means no more hunting for the app if you don't use it all that often — it'll just be in Control Center, where it probably should have bene all along.

(And speaking of remote controls, Apple TV is building in support for home control systems like Contro4 and Crestron, so you'll be able to hit things up from there — including using Siri for voice control.)