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tvOS 26 Adds These New Features to Your Apple TV
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I was surprised how much I like it. The Liquid Glass UI is well suited for a big screen. I would still dial it back a bit on the Control Centre. Just as in iOS, when there is too much glass, it looks garish. It works when it's spread around in UI components, not large buttons all gathered together.
The vertical posters make content navigation so much better with more content visible at once. I like how Continue Watching are smaller squares which makes distinguishing them from the rest of the content easier.
Cons:
- The Movies and TV Shows apps are still there despite not serving any purpose. And they still can't be deleted.
- Apple TV app still forces you to keep MLS and Sports in the sidebar, taking up precious menu real estate even though you may not care about sports. At least the big Messi banners are gone, though he still shows up in a tile or two throughout the TV app.
- There's still no way to sort your Watch List. I've been adding movies and TV shows to my Watch List since 2007. It's a mess and there's just no way to sort it. I'd love to be able to plan which movies or TV shows to watch in order so they appear neatly in my TV app's Home Screen. There's no way to do it other than to remove everything and add it back in reverse order.
I might have to give up on the TV app's watch list and get a third party app. Any suggestions?
The vertical posters make content navigation so much better with more content visible at once. I like how Continue Watching are smaller squares which makes distinguishing them from the rest of the content easier.
Cons:
- The Movies and TV Shows apps are still there despite not serving any purpose. And they still can't be deleted.
- Apple TV app still forces you to keep MLS and Sports in the sidebar, taking up precious menu real estate even though you may not care about sports. At least the big Messi banners are gone, though he still shows up in a tile or two throughout the TV app.
- There's still no way to sort your Watch List. I've been adding movies and TV shows to my Watch List since 2007. It's a mess and there's just no way to sort it. I'd love to be able to plan which movies or TV shows to watch in order so they appear neatly in my TV app's Home Screen. There's no way to do it other than to remove everything and add it back in reverse order.
I might have to give up on the TV app's watch list and get a third party app. Any suggestions?
Passthrough audio options incoming?
appleinsider.com
Passthrough audio is finally on the way to Apple TV
We've confirmed at WWDC that tvOS 26 is getting passthrough audio, which could allow a higher quality listening experience by disabling audio preprocessing on the Apple TV hardware, before hand-off to a sound system.
Apple can’t stop futzing around with the TV and movie graphic format. I really hope they allow users to control the local library format. They switched to horizontal emphasis with Catalina and now they’re retreating back to the past for Tahoe. It all seems very arbitrary.
The translucent UI is effective here and less intrusive to whatever you’re watching. The new aerial screensavers are a bit underwhelming. How about an interactive Snoopy screensaver instead?
I hope this is true! This would definitely enhance our Dolby Atmos setup!Passthrough audio options incoming?
Passthrough audio is finally on the way to Apple TV
We've confirmed at WWDC that tvOS 26 is getting passthrough audio, which could allow a higher quality listening experience by disabling audio preprocessing on the Apple TV hardware, before hand-off to a sound system.
Same… some you can find somewhat easily, but some I actually created in Photoshop. If it reverts back to vertical posters for your local library, I will cry.
Not only that…Apple has also continuously changed the pixel proportions for the horizontal graphic box that holds the art. That’s why so many of the movies sold by Apple have such huge margins around the image and text. It prevents the image/text from being cropped every time they arbitrarily change the pixel proportion of the box.
The India screensavers are not exclusive to tvOS 26. I have had them on my 3rd gen Apple TV 4K for at least a month now.
Most of times there are reasons for it even if users whine always. Maybe it is not the case, the critical part is latency, so if it is a tech reason maybe it is due to cpu and or wi-fi speed
After specifically saying yesterday that I was looking forward to what TVOS had to offer and then being completely disappointed again, I'm seriously considering buying a new streaming box that I can use with my Samsung Phone. Now I have a Sony TV and it is compatible with Android TV, and maybe I need to buy a new speaker and get rid of the home pod, but how can a company just ignore one of it's services for so long and then a site like this basically says "The updates for TVOS is usually minor..." meaning basically no one knows what exactly was updated because maybe no one cares. Maybe I'm overreacting to this, but I like watching TV, and I also like listening to music on the TV, and Apple continues to ignore this one aspect of it's business. Also, as someone who has a Samsung phone but has an Apple TV, maybe I need to switch anyway. Now I might need to find something that supports multi-view for the MLB App. I think the Amazon Fire cube does.
My latest-gen Apple TV isn't showing the 26 beta update in the Settings app--it claims my current installation of 18.5 is the latest available, though I've turned on the option for receiving beta updates.
It did (thankfully)
The landscape posters were a sin against cinema (see what i did there)
The only thing I ever use my Apple TV for is to watch a handful of exclusive content in TV+. It’s easier to navigate my other TV apps within the TV OS interface. I’ve always found that Apple TV is something Apple spends so little time on.
Did it in the Computers app, where you access your locally stored files? Haven’t seen any screenshots of that.
I think the item selection indicator is too subtle. Could just be my visually challenged self, but when navigating movies/shows, etc., I often struggle to see which one is currently selected. I wish it put an outline around the item for better visibility.
It's weird that they mention MacOS in the same sentence, since that can do full lossless already since last year I think? Also does not explicitly talk about the issues that the passthrough currently has: You can do passthrough, but it cuts the height channels on everything but those Streaming Codecs...Passthrough audio options incoming?
Passthrough audio is finally on the way to Apple TV
We've confirmed at WWDC that tvOS 26 is getting passthrough audio, which could allow a higher quality listening experience by disabling audio preprocessing on the Apple TV hardware, before hand-off to a sound system.
Edit: Some more discussion about it on appleinsider in the comment section over there.
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Feels like they're paving the ground for exactly this.
Honestly, all the pieces are there (or nearly there) for the ATV to be an incredible console.
The Game app is moving fast in the direction of being a console OS. And its possible integrations with all your other apple devices would be a huge competitive edge.
Of course there's a big hurdle to get people to even think of it as a console. Especially devs.
I suppose the ATV still has a bit of uphill to get people to think of it as a TV interface. Seems like so many people are still sleeping on the fact that the best possible TV experience you can have is to shut everything off on your smart TV and plug one of these in. Travel with it, upgrade your tv without needing to relearn a new one, don't worry about privacy or ads, etc, etc.
Seems like you're only just starting to see sites like Ars Technica say "hey the AppleTV is probably what you're looking for".
If Apple did a big marketing push, at the same time they leant into it as a top-tier console competitor, AND they made it even easier for Mac/iOS devs to publish on all three platforms at once...
Seems like it could hit the promise it has had all these years.
They should just allow any iPad or iPhone game that supports controller to work on Apple TV just like they do on iPad with iPhone apps.
Not sure if this update includes this or not but profiles need to segregate more than just your Apple ID stuff when you switch.