Apple announces tvOS 27 with a focus on speed

Apple today unveiled tvOS 27 for Apple TV with a focus on speed across apps. Additional features are expected to be announced with an upgraded Apple TV 4K later.

Apple TV 4K continues to receive improvements and new features through software updates. 

Following last year's Liquid Glass overhaul of the user interface, this year's focus is on speed across Apple's operating systems, including tvOS.


Faster apps, AirPlay, more
Apple TV and tvOS got very limited stage time during today's WWDC 26 keynote, but Apple did drop a few hints about tvOS 27 before the expected Apple TV 4K hardware upgrade later this year, which may enable Apple Intelligence.

On the slides and in the tvOS 27 beta we have so far discovered these changes:
Faster app launches (up to 30%, says Apple)
More responsive Control Center in tvOS
Faster AirPlay connections to Apple TV and HomePod
Hi-Res Lossless support (24-bit/192kHz) for Apple Music
Smart downloads on Apple TV
Redesigned Podcasts app for tvOS with both audio and video podcasts
Faster Apple Music playback start
Support for 4K camera recordings in Apple Home
HomeKit Secure Video recordings processed on-device (through Private Cloud Compute for descriptions, search)
Improved Thread support (Thread 1.4)
AppleCare coverage details in Settings in tvOS
Improved game controller settings
Reduced app sizes with localized (languages) app packages
New accessibility features (see below)

Apple previously announced that tvOS 27 also includes new accessibility features:
The ability to adjust text size in tvOS and apps
Auto-transcription (English) to subtitles and automatic subtitle translation (more languages)
Expanded support for 'Made for iPhone' hearing aids to make them pair and switch between devices more like AirPods
We will update the article as we discover more details in the tvOS 27 beta.


Releasing this fall
tvOS 27 is being released today as a developer beta, will later become available as a public beta, and will ship in its final version this fall alongside iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, visionOS 27 and watchOS 27.

The update is named tvOS 27 because Apple has changed its naming convention to reference the year. As a result, the company skipped directly from tvOS 18 to tvOS 26 last fall.

Here is what Apple previously added with tvOS 26, tvOS 18, tvOS 18, tvOS 17, tvOS 16, tvOS 15, tvOS 14, tvOS 13, tvOS 12 tvOS 11 and tvOS 10.