The Coolest tvOS 18 Features Aren’t Coming Until Later This Year
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Alongside the big iOS 18 release yesterday, Apple also pushed out tvOS 18.0 for users of its set-top box, and, as with iOS 18.0, it looks like we’ll have to wait a few weeks or months before we get everything Apple has promised for tvOS 18.
While Apple only briefly discussed the Apple TV during its June Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) presentation, it did promise a few exciting things for your living room. Among these was a collection of new screensavers, which are always a lot of fun for folks who like to use their flat-panel OLED screens as digital picture frames.
Apple highlighted three new screensavers at WWDC: Portraits, Snoopy, and TV and Movies. Portraits presents a view similar to the iPhone and iPad Lock Screen wallpapers of the same name, selecting appropriate photos and presenting them alongside the time, shown in various typefaces.
Movies and TV Shows will offer stunning visuals from popular Apple TV+ originals like Foundation, while Snoopy builds on the Apple Watch face that was added last year with a set of animated screensavers that will show the Snoopy and Woodstock acting up in fun and whimsical ways.
While the Portraits screensaver showed up in the early tvOS 18 betas, the other two were missing in action throughout the entire beta cycle and clearly haven’t made the cut for the final release. Instead, it appears that they won’t arrive until much later this year.
The bad news can be found in a new footnote on the Apple TV Page:
Snoopy and TV and Movies screen savers coming late 2024. Snoopy and Portraits screen savers available on Apple TV 4K (2nd generation and later).
Additionally, the note clarifies that when Snoopy does arrive, you’ll need a 2021 Apple TV 4K or later to enjoy everyone’s favorite beagle. The same is also true for the Portraits screensaver, which is available now but requires more processing power to generate its effects than the A10X chip in the 2017 Apple TV 4K can provide. By comparison, the 2021 model uses an A12 Bionic chip, and the latest third-generation 2022 Apple TV 4K has an A15 Bionic.
While Apple is usually more vague about its timelines, in this case, “late 2024” means we probably won’t see Snoopy and Woodstock make an appearance until tvOS 18.2 or beyond. So, it isn’t a big surprise that the new screensavers aren’t in the first tvOS 18.1 developer beta released earlier today.
What’s New in tvOS 18
The good news is that the classic aerials and photo slideshow screensavers are still available if Portraits isn’t your style. Plus, there’s plenty of other stuff to enjoy in tvOS 18.
If you’re a fan of Apple TV+ shows, the new InSight feature will let you see more information about actors and music that appear in a given scene. The best part is that you can pull this information up on your iPhone so you can check it without distracting anyone else in the room.
A new Enhance Dialogue feature will make it easier to hear what folks in a movie or TV show are saying over the background noise and should be particularly helpful in modern films, which often have overpowering sound effects in action scenes. The feature uses machine learning to bring out the speech rather than only emphasizing a specific channel, which means it should work just as well with two-channel stereo shows as it does with Dolby Atmos surround sound.
Enhance Dialogue is available for connected TVs, AirPods, and other speakers. However, Apple notes that machine learning and computational audio for the second-generation HomePod isn’t coming until later this year.
With tvOS 18, you’ll also get automatic subtitles when audio is muted or even when skipping back to review a previous scene. No more need to speak up and ask Siri, “What did they say?” (Although that still works if you prefer it).
Lastly, you can now use an old iPhone as a dedicated continuity camera for your Apple TV so that anyone in your home can more easily start a FaceTime or Zoom call, and tvOS 18 also adds live captions for FaceTime callers, as long as they’re speaking in English.
