Is There Anything New in tvOS 27?

While Apple barely mentioned any of its new software releases during yesterday’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote, preferring to focus on overall improvements like the new Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, and child safety features, there was one platform that was even more conspicuous by its absence: the Apple TV.

In fact, the phrase “tvOS” was mentioned only once at the very beginning, when Craig Federighi simply rhymed off a list of all of Apple’s platforms, “from iOS and iPadOS, to watchOS and tvOS, visionOS and macOS.”

This at least gave us some reassurance that Apple hasn’t completely forgotten about its set-top box, but it also left us digging further to figure out what changes we can expect — if any.

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To be clear, tvOS is rarely part of the software hit parade. Over the past few years, the changes have been relatively incremental, and even when Apple did a platform play-by-play, it long ago began lumping tvOS into a broader “Home” category. The last arguably significant upgrade was three years ago in tvOS 17, when Apple gave us Continuity Camera support for FaceTime and other video calling apps and even Apple Music Sing, plus VPN support and a much-improved Control Center.

Since then, the changes have been a bit lighter. The Snoopy screensaver in tvOS 18 was delightful, but also took a while to show up, and, while tvOS 26 represented the first time since 2019 that Apple had shown us a tvOS feature overview slide, the changes were still relatively minor beneath the new Liquid Glass design.

So, it’s fair to say we weren’t expecting much from tvOS 27 this year. Still, it was surprising to see it completely omitted from the WWDC keynote. It’s also missing from Apple’s OS 27 preview page, but that’s not entirely unprecedented.

What’s Coming in tvOS 27

One possibility is that Apple is saving a bigger tvOS reveal for the fall, when it will reportedly be ready to unveil a new Apple TV 4K alongside a Siri-powered home ecosystem that’s likely to include at least one new HomePod and the much-rumored “HomePad” smart home hub.

Either way, the good news for now is that a tvOS update is coming. Apple also gave us an early hint at one feature we can expect in its accessibility features preview last month when it announced that Larger Text support will come to tvOS to make text easier for viewers with low vision to read.

Beyond that, we can only infer what else may arrive in tvOS 27 as Apple has only provided developer-focused release notes and a few oblique mentions tucked away in a massive feature-list slide briefly shown during the WWDC keynote.

Here’s what we were able to ferret out from that slide:

1. Smart downloads on Apple TV
2. AppleCare coverage details in Settings in tvOS
3. Redesigned Podcasts app for tvOS
4. Larger text sizes in tvOS
5. Smoother animations and app launches in tvOS
6. Support for 4K camera recordings in the Home app
7. Improved connectivity for Thread home accessories
8. More reliable HomeKit camera storage
9. Faster Apple Music playback start
10. Sort by completed Fitness+ workouts
11. Search within shows in Podcasts
    

Some of these are broader ecosystem changes that impact the Apple TV, such as HomeKit and Home app features, while changes listed for services like Apple Music, Fitness+, and Podcasts may not come to all platforms.

The tvOS 27 beta developer release notes also list the ability for developers to use localized asset packs to reduce the storage footprint their apps require on the set-top box, along with on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute processing for HomeKit Secure Video recordings, which, as Apple showed yesterday, will provide viewable and searchable descriptions of what’s been captured.

Farewell Apple TV HD

This may also help explain one piece of bad news in tvOS 27. While Apple hasn’t officially announced a list of supported devices, the first tvOS 27 beta that arrived yesterday sets a new bar for supported models, drawing the line at the 2021 second-generation Apple TV 4K, dropping the Apple TV HD and first-generation Apple TV 4K off the list.

To be fair, those devices were released in 2015 and 2017, so they’ve already been living on borrowed time. We were pleasantly surprised — but also a bit shocked — when tvOS 26 still supported even the 2017 model, much less the 2015 one that first ushered in the era of tvOS. Still, Apple had to leave Liquid Glass out of the mix for both of those devices, and with new AI capabilities entering the room, it’s actually kind of surprising that the 2021 Apple TV 4K, which still uses a 2018-era A12 Bionic chip, hasn’t also been voted off the island.

Still, it’s the end of an era, as tvOS 27 will mark the very first version to drop support for any Apple TV model. That’s a ten-year run of updates for a set-top box that was released in an era when the iPhone 6s was cutting-edge technology and Apple had just debuted its very first iPad Pro.