InSight Comes to Apple TV+ in tvOS 18 Beta 3
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While it’s rare for Apple’s tvOS betas to offer exciting new features, the third time’s a charm for tvOS 18. This week’s beta brings the promised InSight feature to at least some Apple TV+ shows.
InSight was one of the features that Apple showed off during the Audio & Home portion of its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote last month. It’s similar to Amazon Prime’s X-Ray feature, allowing you to see the actors and music featured in an Apple TV+ original film or series. However, it doesn’t just give you the cast for the episode as a whole but zeroes in on the actors and music in whatever scene you’re watching.
However, Apple has one significant advantage over Amazon’s X-Ray, since it has a whole ecosystem of devices to play with. As a result, InSight doesn’t just work on your TV screen — you can pull up the same information in the iPhone Remote app.
That’s a great feature if you’re watching a movie with friends and family and don’t want to distract them by swiping the bottom bar. Instead, you can pull up the Remote from your iPhone Control Center and tap the “I” button on the show you’re watching to get more information. If the show has InSights, you’ll see an “Insight” button between the usual “Info” and “Up Next” controls.
Tapping on that will give you the same InSight information you’d see on the big screen. From there, you can browse through the list of actors, selecting each one to see more of their works across all the streaming services attached to your TV app.
For the song, you’ll get an Apple Music link with a button to add it directly to a “Saved Songs” playlist—a great way to collect your favorite music from shows to listen to later.
For now, InSight will be exclusive to Apple TV+ originals, although it’s not clear if Apple plans to roll it out to the entire catalog. As things currently stand, it’s not available for every show, but that could just be a matter of time.
Although InSight is new in tvOS 18 beta 3 (and the corresponding iOS and iPadOS betas), Apple has already added a few other quality-of-life features, including the ability to automatically enable subtitles when you skip back in a show or mute whatever you’re watching.
Changing your screen saver in tvOS 18 is also easier than ever. You’ll no longer need to take a trip into the Settings app; now you can swipe up when the screen saver is playing and choose between Aerial, Photos, and a new Portrait screensaver that effectively brings the iPhone and iPad Lock Screen wallpaper experience to the big screen, automatically selecting appropriate pictures of people, pets, and landscapes from your photo library, and dressing them up by cropping and resizing them and adding a clock.
Two more screensavers have yet to arrive. During its WWDC presentation, Apple showed off a new Snoopy screensaver that joins last year’s Apple Watch faces in adding fun animations of everyone’s favorite Beagle and his feathered friend, Woodstock. A Movies and TV Shows screensaver is also coming to offer highlights from your popular Apple TV+ shows.
