Netflix Gets a Fresh Look in Latest Apple TV Update
Toggle Dark Mode
Netflix’s seemingly unending price hikes aren’t without their occasional perks. Earlier this year, the streaming giant announced some significant updates to its apps for the Apple ecosystem, and it’s making good on that promise this week by turning the key on the new Apple TV design.
The first hint of what the company called its “innovative new TV experience” came in May. It was a big enough deal that the company heralded it in an online press event hosted by Chief Product Officer Eunice Kim and Chief Technology Officer Elizabeth Stone.
With Netflix becoming increasingly cluttered, the company aims to simplify its interface, allowing customers to spend more time watching shows and less time navigating the user interface to find what to watch next.
“Our redesigned TV home page is simpler, more intuitive and better represents the breadth of entertainment on Netflix today,” Kim said in the press briefing. However, all the executives could say at the time was that the new design would roll out over the next few months.
Thankfully, we haven’t had to wait too long. We saw hints of the new Netflix design rolling out from several users on Reddit earlier this week, and it looks like, as of today, it should be available for everyone.
The new design looks similar enough to Apple’s TV app in tvOS 26 that we’re wondering if Netflix was copying Apple’s homework here. However, it’s also fair to say that Apple’s built-in streaming launchpad should be considered the gold standard that it expects other companies to adopt. For example, Apple has shifted to a menu bar at the top of the screen, following a similar change that was made in iPadOS 18 last year, and Netflix has embraced the same design language.
This brings a certain consistency to the user experience, which is particularly important as Netflix is still the one app that refuses to play nice with Apple’s TV app. Earlier this year, we had a glimmer of hope that was about to change, but Netflix called it an “oops” and quickly reversed it.
Netflix’s choice to silo itself off isn’t entirely unreasonable from its own perspective, even if it’s disappointing for folks who would prefer to keep all their content under one roof. After all, Netflix is still the 800-pound gorilla in the streaming business, so it’s not like it needs Apple’s help in delivering content to its customers.
That decision effectively makes Netflix and Apple TV the two most-used apps on the set-top box for many folks, so it’s at least good to see some cohesiveness here. This week’s rollout has been relatively quiet, as Netflix already announced everything back in May, but here’s a quick recap of what you can expect:
- A new banner on the Home tab to suggest something you might want to watch based on your viewing history.
- More categories for recommendations like “Your Next Watch” and “Today’s Top Picks.”
- Recommendations that are ”more responsive to your moods,” which sounds a bit like “magic AI stuff,” but is just based on following your likes, dislikes, and searches in real-time and factoring in your broader viewing history for things like time of day and season.
- A Home Screen that’s based entirely on recommendations rather than pushing random content at you.
- A redesigned layout with new tiles for shows and the aforementioned top search bar.
- Natural language search based on generative AI.
- A “Discovery” feed that shows preview clips of Netflix shows and movies as you browse.
While the rollout is being triggered from Netflix’s back-end servers, it also requires the latest version of the Netflix tvOS app, so you’ll want to hit the App Store on your set-top box and make sure that you’re up to date.
