Apple held its annual WWDC press conference last night, and while iOS, MacOS and iPadOS stole the limelight, tvOS was barely acknowledged.
Despite that, Apple has officially confirmed that tvOS 27 will launch this year, and it looks to be a bigger upgrade than we were expecting.
The focus this year is speed, which means your ageing Apple TV box – need we remind you that Apple last refreshed its Award-winning streaming box in 2022 – is about to get more responsive.
Apple claims that app opening speeds are expected to improve by 30 per cent, and animations are set to become smoother too. Control Centre is also becoming more responsive and connecting to other Apple devices, be that streaming content to your TV from an iPhone or outputting TV audio to HomePods, will also be faster.
Two key audio apps are getting upgrades as part of tvOS 27 as well. Apple Music receives a major boost in the form of Hi-Res Lossless (24-bit/192kHz) support and faster playback, and the Podcasts app is getting a full redesign for both audio and video podcasts playback.
General updates come in the form of better Apple HomeKit integration (ideal for smart home users), reduced app file sizes, support for smart downloads, and the ability to view Apple Care coverage in the settings app.
The upcoming tvOS 27 update is expected to launch later this year – Apple tends to launch its updates in September to coincide with the annual hardware launch event – and it will be supported on the second and third generation Apple TV 4K boxes.
This marks the end of support for the Apple TV HD from 2015, as well as the first-generation Apple TV 4K from 2017.
While it's encouraging to see Apple release an update that improves general performance on the current-generation Apple TV 4K, we hope that this new version of tvOS is laying the groundwork for the much-rumoured fourth-generation Apple TV 4K. The update is expected to launch later this year with the new Siri AI features coming with iOS 27.
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