Login to YouTube on your Apple TVApple TV has a nice YouTube interface. When you login to your account, you have instant access to your favorites for example. I use it quite often. After reinstalling my Apple TV, I could no longer login to my YouTube account. It seems this was because I had connected my YouTube account to my Google account. This makes your Google username and password the only access to YouTube. Your original YouTube username and password still exist behind the scenes, but no longer allow access. Unfortunately, Apple TV only allows logging in to YouTube through a YouTube account. The solution is simple. Disconnect your YouTube account from your Google account (go to account settings after logging in to YouTube) Login to YouTube on your Apple TV using your YouTube username and password Reconnect your Google and YouTube accounts if you wish That’s all. Worked like a charm.
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Login to YouTube on your Apple TV

Apple TV has a nice YouTube interface. When you login to your account, you have instant access to your favorites for example. I use it quite often.

After reinstalling my Apple TV, I could no longer login to my YouTube account. It seems this was because I had connected my YouTube account to my Google account. This makes your Google username and password the only access to YouTube. Your original YouTube username and password still exist behind the scenes, but no longer allow access.

Unfortunately, Apple TV only allows logging in to YouTube through a YouTube account. The solution is simple.

  • Disconnect your YouTube account from your Google account (go to account settings after logging in to YouTube)
  • Login to YouTube on your Apple TV using your YouTube username and password
  • Reconnect your Google and YouTube accounts if you wish
That’s all. Worked like a charm.

Transmission 2 on Apple TV 3

Somehow my Apple TV developed some issues and had to be reinstalled from scratch. Not a problem, except that I couldn’t get rtorrent to run properly on Apple TV 3 again. Since rtorrent for Apple TV development basically seems to have stopped, I decided to look around for a different solution rather than dive into rtorrent. I found a bittorrent client I had previously tried on Apple TV, the well known application named Transmission. The newer versions come with a built in web UI, and a smart guy named lfroen is distributing binaries for Apple TV. Pretty cool!
However, I had some problems getting Transmission 2 to work. Eventually I think I figured it out. Here’s what I did, I hope it helps some of you.

This article assumes you have SSH access to your Apple TV, are comfortable with doing some command line stuff on your Apple TV. If you break or brick your Apple TV while doing this, don’t blame me. I cannot guarantee this will work, however, it’s working for me. Still here? Let’s get to work!

Step 1: Prepare

You will need:

  1. An SSH-accessible Apple TV
  2. The Transmission 2 binaries for Apple TV

Step 2: Extract

Extract the files from the archive you downloaded. This will give you 2 files and a directory.

transmission-daemon (file)
transmission-remote (file)
web (directory)

Move these to your Apple TV (I’m assuming you’ll put them in /Users/frontrow).

Step 3: Install

Make sure the permissions of the files are OK, and create the proper directory for the web folder. You can do this by executing these commands (if asked for a password, it is frontrow).

sudo chmod 755 transmission-*
sudo chown frontrow:frontrow transmission-*
mkdir /Users/frontrow/Contents
mkdir /Users/frontrow/Contents/Resources
mv web /Users/frontrow/Contents/Resources/
sudo chmod -R 775 /Users/frontrow/Contents/Resources/web

We also create 2 more directories because we’ll need them later. If you already have these somehow, feel free to skip this:

mkdir /Users/frontrow/Downloads
mkdir /Users/frontrow/Torrents

Step 4: Test

Execute this command:

/Users/frontrow/transmission-daemon -f

You should see a message similar to this

Transmission 2.XX (YYYY) started
Port Forwarding: ...

If you don’t, you did something wrong. Start again!

Quit Transmission with Ctrl-C.

Step 5: Adjust settings

When Transmission started, it created a default settings file. We’ll need to adjust that file. The file is located at:

/Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/transmission-daemon/settings.json 

You can find the various settings in Transmission’s documentation. I recommand you edit the file, and change these settings (you may need to add some settings if they are not yet present in your settings.json). Leave all other settings intact!

"download-dir": "/Users/frontrow/Movies",
"incomplete-dir": "/Users/frontrow/Downloads",
"incomplete-dir-enabled": true,
"open-file-limit": 32,
"peer-limit-global": 120,
"peer-limit-per-torrent": 30,
"rpc-whitelist": "192.168.*.*",
"rpc-whitelist-enabled": true,
"speed-limit-down": 100,
"speed-limit-down-enabled": true,
"speed-limit-up": 10,
"speed-limit-up-enabled": true,
"trash-original-torrent-files": True,
"watch-dir": "/Users/frontrow/Torrents",
"watch-dir-enabled": true

You can set the speed limits to what you prefer yourself of course. Also, Set rpc-whitelist to a mask that suits your home network, or read the Transmission documentation if you want a more complex setup.

Note that we keep incomplete files in the Downloads folder, store complete files in the Movies folder, and watch the Torrents folder for new torrents.

You can test the new settings by running the test from step 4 again. If your settings are wrong, Transmission will tell you.

If you have succesfully set the rpc-whitelist mask, you will be able to see the web interface by visiting http://appletv.local:9091

Step 6: Load automatically

Now we will make sure that your perfectly working Transmission will start whenever the Apple TV boots. Again, we need to make sure a directory exists:

mkdir /Users/frontrow/Library/LaunchAgents

And in this directory we create a LaunchAgent file:

nano -w /Users/frontrow/Library/LaunchAgents/transmission.plist

The text editor nano will open, and wait for your input. Copy and paste this:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>GroupName</key>
<string>frontrow</string>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.m0k.transmission</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/frontrow/transmission-daemon</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>ServiceDescription</key>
<string>transmission-daemon</string>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>frontrow</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Save, exit and you are done! If you reboot your Apple TV (sudo reboot), you should find Transmission up and running after the reboot.

Resources used

Priority Inbox and label:unread in Gmail

If you are an early adopter of Gmail, you may have defined a label named Unread. In the early days of Gmail, this was possible. Google later made it impossible to create this label. However, those of us who already had it kept it.

Gmail_label_unread_existsGmail_label_unread_cannot_be_c
See the full gallery on Posterous

A few months ago, label:unread lost much of its use since the search view wasn’t updated as dynamically as before. Often when clicking on my Unread label, I got the wrong result (messages that had recently been marked as read, missing newly received unread messages).

Today I decided to try label:unread with Priority Inbox. I created a section that displays label:unread. Lo and behold, it dynamically updates to show me all unread messages anywhere (except for Trash and Spam). It works like a charm.

Instructions

  • Go to Settings, Priority Inbox
  • Select a Priority Inbox section that is not in use (or one you’re willing to replace). I picked the third section.
  • Click Create section (or if you are replacing, Options), More options …
  • Select All from label, then select label Unread
  • Done!

 If you have a label:unread lurking somewhere, I recommend you try this!

 Having an instant view of all unread mail is so useful, I recommend Google somehow makes this possible for all Gmail users.

Fix iTunes 10 buttons

iTunes 10 has a non-standard position for the buttons in the top left corner of the screen (close, minimize to dock, maximize window). Fortunately there is an easy method to set them to standard behavior.

Close iTunes. Start Terminal.

To set the buttons to the standard horizontal format:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1

To set the buttons to the iTunes 10 vertical format:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean NO

These command were posted by @rudyrichter. Thanks Rudy!

Re-enable Google Voice after clicking upgrade

If you are outside the United States, you can get access to Google Phone by setting your Gmail language to English (US). It’s a simple as that. A ”Call Phone” options appears in your chat list, and when you click that you get this interface:

Google_phone_interface

It really works, you get $0.10 starting credit, and you can buy extra credit using Google Checkout. Buying credit is done by clicking on the down arrow to the right of your credit.

Googlephone_add_credit

This will take you to a Google Voice account. But be careful! Google Voice is still closed to users form outside the USA. Do not click the button labeled “Upgrade your account”.

Google-voice-upgrade

If you do, you will get the message that Google Voice is not yet available in your country, and you’ll no longer be able to buy credit for Google Phone.

Google-voice-unavailable
If you did click the button, you can re-enable Google Voice and credit buying by:
  • Installing Hotspot Shield
  • Activating Hotspot Shield
  • Visiting your Google Voice page (through Gmail or direct), and canceling your upgrade
  • You can then deactivate Hotspot Shield and resume normal use of Gmail and Google Voice

This works because Hotspot Shield has the side effect of making Google (and others) think you are US based.