Ahead of the tvOS 18 release, Apple just made tvOS 17.6 available to all Apple TV users. As the tvOS 17 cycle seems to be nearing its end, Cupertino isn’t adding new features despite the usual “bug fixes and security improvements” release notes.
While tvOS 17 started as a big update, tvOS doesn’t get new features since January when Apple released tvOS 17.3. At that time, Apple added two features:
- Wishlists and Favorites: Apple re-added Wishlists and Favorites tabs on the iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Show apps, as they’re not available on the revamped TV app
- Apple Music: Users can now see Apple Music Collaborative Playlists on the Music app. While they can’t start a collaborative playlist from the Apple TV, they can see the collaborators of a list and who added each song.
With tvOS 17.4, Apple started working on SharePlay for Apple Music, so users could join the Now Playing queue by using a QR Code. However, the company removed references for this feature ahead of its release, and it’s now promoting this function as part of the tvOS 18 update.
However, while tvOS 17 nears its end in a mild way with tvOS 17.6, tvOS 18 looks like a big update. These are some of its main features:
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- InSight: An Amazon Prime Video-like feature that displays timely information about actors, characters, and music from Apple TV+ movies and shows onscreen in real-time. Users can select an actor to view their background and filmography page or quickly view the song that is playing in a scene and add it to an Apple Music playlist.
- Enhance Dialogue: This feature is getting smarter, leveraging machine learning and computation audio to deliver greater vocal clarity over music, action, and background noise on Apple TV 4K. In addition to HomePod speakers, users can now enjoy Enhance Dialogue when listening through built-in TV or HDMI-connected speakers, AirPods, and other Bluetooth-connected devices, and when playing supported content on iPhone and iPad;
- Automatic subtitles: Subtitles now automatically appear at just the right moments with tvOS 18, including when the language in a show or film does not match the device language when users mute, or when they skip back while watching something.
- FaceTime with Continuity Camera: Apple adds Live Captions for English in the US and Canada, so users can read what others are saying on a FaceTime call from the TV.
- Apple Fitness+: A redesigned interface helps users make the most of the library and explore the exercises they like the most.
Alongside tvOS 17.6, Apple also released iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, watchOS 10.6, macOS 14.6, and visionOS 1.3.