Maybe switch aw in the watch.app on the phone?

I am not talking about IR remote control, but HDMI-CEC control. I tried this now and the Apple TV can learn the remote, but there is a mild annoyance that the TV is showing a warning on every keypress covering half of the screen, that this keypress is not supported on the current mode. It looks like that both the tv and the Apple TV is trying to interpret the IR codes. Also I cannot teach the playback controls because I dont have all the rew/fwd, prev/next track beginning/end buttons on the remote, only play pause stop rew/fwd.

downgrade to watchOS 9

Yes, from 2D scrolling to 1D scrolling is definitely a downgrade, so I don’t update to watchOS 10, and there are a lot of other annoyances. Maybe watchOS 9 is my last as I can see the UX trends at Apple.