Apple TV 4K screensaver stuck on LA night

I’ve run into something similar with my Apple TV 4K before, and it drove me nuts too. When the screensaver gets stuck on a single location like the LA night flyover, it usually means the device isn’t pulling new aerial videos—even if the rest of your apps stream fine. Apple’s own support pages don’t make this super clear, but buried in the “show” section of settings, there’s a weird caching issue that can happen after an update.

A couple things that finally worked for me:

Go to Settings > General > Aerial Screensaver > Show, toggle it off, back out, then turn it on again. That forces a refresh request.

Switch Aerial to Landscape or Underwater temporarily, let it run for a few minutes, then switch back.

Make sure Settings > Apps > Aerial > Download New Videos is set to Daily—sometimes it resets to “Never” after a big tvOS update.

If you use a mesh Wi-Fi setup, try connecting the Apple TV to the main node just once. Mine downloaded all videos instantly after that.

Since you’re getting 350+ Mbps fiber, it definitely should download new scenes, so this really sounds like the “show” bug that hangs the rotation. After I forced the refresh, the screensaver finally cycled to Dubai and Iceland again.

Hope one of these helps—totally get the frustration when you’ve already reset everything twice!

[Edited by Moderator]

I’ve run into something similar on my Apple TV 4K before, and it drove me nuts too. When the screensaver gets stuck on one location like the LA night aerial, it usually means the aerial video pack didn’t finish downloading, even if your connection is fast.

A couple things that helped me:

1. Check the Aerial download setting manually

Go to Settings → General → Screensaver → Aerial → Download New Videos and make sure it isn’t set to Never. Sometimes it resets after an update. Switching it to Daily forced mine to start pulling new clips again.

2. Change the Screensaver type temporarily

Switch from Aerial to another style (e.g., Photos or Apple Photos), back out, then return to Aerial. That refresh kicked it back into downloading for me.

3. Make sure the Apple TV isn’t in Low Data Mode

If your Wi-Fi network toggled this on at some point, the device won’t fetch any new screensaver videos.

4. Try a different network—just once

Even a mobile hotspot can work. I had to do this after a tvOS update because the device refused to download aerial videos on my main network, but downloaded instantly on another.

5. Sign out/in of iCloud

Weirdly, this solved it for a friend when nothing else worked.

It’s super frustrating when everything else loads fine but the screensaver won’t budge. Hope one of these gets it unstuck!

As advised above, set it to download daily. A new one comes about 2 am for me. Make sure you haven’t selected to “Hide all” in the section where you choose Aerials or it will default to only downtown LA.

In Settings - Screen Saver

Current Selection- Aerials

Under that in Screen Saver Preferences- Aerials - download frequency to Daily

Choose Aerials - Go through each theme and top right should be “Show All” (you can hide individual ones you don’t like later) Hide All will show an eye symbol with a line through it - you don’t want that!

Adjust screen saver settings on Apple TV 4K - Apple Support

Changed frequency and start times for screensaver.

The frequency says how often one new Aerial clip will be added to the on-device collection. When set to “Daily” (fastest), one new clip will be added per 24 hours, except when the device is off for a whole day.

It is not publicly documented when exactly this download will happen, but I think it is most likely to happen when the device is mostly idle and not streaming online video content (that would always take priority), but not in sleep mode (standby), so probably when the screen saver is running.

Screensaver stuck on LA night.

If the issue doesn’t improve by waiting a day, then consider switching to a photo screen saver, invoke it once, then switch back to Aerials. That is about as much you can do to reset the screen saver feature without resetting the whole device.

If you additionally want to consult with the Apple Support staff: Get support - Apple Support

Screen savers on your Apple TV - Apple Support