Apple has today released tvOS 26 to the public.
Our team was unfortunately unable to test tvOS 26 during the beta cycle, and thus we do not have any information as to whether this release contains any improvements or regressions for VoiceOver, braille, or low vision accessibility. We are starting this post in hopes that it will serve as a place for the community to share and discuss any and all information related to the tvOS 26 release.
tvOS 26 Release Notes
This update introduces a stunning new design with Liquid Glass, brings cinematic poster art to the Apple TV app, adds support for iPhone as a mic for Apple Music Sing, and makes it easier to choose your profile to see personalized content recommendations. This update also includes performance and stability improvements.
Design
- Liquid Glass introduces a more expressive experience across tvOS as it refracts and reflects content in real time, and brings even more focus to what you’re watching.1
Apple TV app
- Cinematic poster art displays more movies and shows at a glance.
Apple Music
- Apple Music Sing2 adds support for iPhone as a handheld mic, amplifying your voice through TV speakers.
- Friends and family can use their iPhone to add songs to the queue, react with onscreen emoji, and take control of the microphone.3
- Lyrics Translation and Pronunciation4 help you understand the meaning behind your favorite songs and makes it easy to sing along, even if you don’t know the language.
FaceTime
- Contact Posters1 make starting a FaceTime call easier and more personal by displaying customized photos and names onscreen.
- Live Captions1 now support Cantonese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish.
Call notifications
- Incoming call notifications for phone and FaceTime audio calls help you answer them on connected HomePod speakers, or your iPhone.
Profiles
- Profiles can now be displayed when Apple TV wakes from sleep so you can quickly access your movies, shows and music.
Screen savers
- Landscapes of India offer breathtaking new screen savers.
- Aerial screen savers now include an option to let you choose which stunning views are displayed.
AirPlay
- Any AirPlay-enabled speaker can now be set as the default output for Apple TV.
- Available on Apple TV 4K (2nd generation and later).
- Available on Apple TV 4K (3rd generation).
- Available on iPhone SE (2nd generation and later) and iPhone 11 and later.
- Lyrics Translation available for select songs in the following languages: English to Chinese (simplified), English to Japanese, Korean to Chinese (simplified), Korean to English, Korean to Japanese, and Spanish to English. Lyrics Pronunciation available for select songs in the following scripts: Cantonese to Jyutping, Chinese (simplified) to Pinyin, Chinese (traditional) to Pinyin, Hindi to Romanized Hindi, Japanese to Romanized Japanese, Korean to Katakana, Korean to Romanized Korean, and Punjabi to Romanized Punjabi.
How to Update
To install tvOS 26, on Apple TV 4K or Apple TV HD, go to the Settings channel, then look for the System section near the bottom. From here, look for Software Updates under Maintenance, then select Update Software and Download and Install. Wait for your Apple TV to download the update. Don't disconnect or unplug your Apple TV until the update completes.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on all things tvOS 26 in the comments below.
Comments
my thoughts on tvOS 26
tvOS n26 is a solid update. things have ben renamed, in some cases, and is smooth and responsive. I was a beta tester, and it was stable in the betacycle. the current public release I got early, and there are no showstopping bugs in my testing. I, unfortunetly was not able to test FaceTime or Apple Music Sing 2, as I currently have no way to connect my iPhone. notifications work as intended, and profiles work well.
Reset to Daniel
This seemed like the safest 26 release to try so just installed it. So far it seems OK but not done much with it so far.
Noticed a couple of very small things. When it restarted some of the user profile buttons seemed to come up unlabelled. So I just got "button" then my wife's name, then "button". I moved left and right a few times and eventually found myself.
The other thing is it had lost Irish Siri Voice 2 and was now speaking very very slowly as Daniel (shudder). Was easy enough to fix though, just had to re-download it. Not sure it has changed any other VO settings but i can't quite remember what I did.
Other than that, not noticed a difference yet but will see when I actually come to use it.
not much new
as I have been using tvOS 26, not a heck of a lot has changed from a VoiceOver perspective. the unlabeled buttons in profiles is a bug to report. the Irish voice another bug I will report as soon as I can. my television itself is not working, do to a fried power cord.
a bit better than recent versions of TV OS 18
Over all, I'm not noticing too many differences in the new Apple TV update. I disabled the profiles setting since I'm the only 1 who ever uses my Apple TV boxes. Immediately after the update, it was usingSamantha, but I was able to get my buddy Nathan back easily enough. The movies app is allowing me to navagate through my wish list again; can't decide if that's a good thing or not. I haven't really tested much of anything else yet as the main thing I use my Apple TV for these days seems to be YouTube. However, it seems stable and responsive, which is all I can ask for. Unless I'm missing something, which is entirely possible, it seems that the updated/improved version of American Siri voice 4 isn't available to use with voiceover, but that's true on my iPhone 16 and Apple Watch as well. Kind-a wondering if that would change if I do end up getting the Apple Watch ultra 3, but I guess it doesn't really matter since I'd probably stick with using Nathan anyway.
The only minor issue I've found, and it's been a very long-standing issue, is that on the Apple TV in my bedroom, it's not allowing me to use my music library as the screen saver. Supposedly, it's still syncing, but it's been saying that for literal years now. I don't want to completely reset it for something so minor, but it is very weird and frustrating.
VoiceOver Volume plus profiles
I've noticed that since the update, VoiceOver volume has got much louder. In the previous version, I could go into the Audio Ducking section in VoiceOver and change the volume from there, even though it has nothing to do with ducking itself. But this no longer makes a difference. I've not tried the rotor option yet - think I need to put the remote control back into stupid mode before I can do that but will give it a go when I have a moment.
Also, I noticed the switch profile screen came up again when I turned it on, which it never used to do before. In this case the buttons were labelled correctly so I'm guessing maybe it was just a bit slow after updating the OS last time. I will have a look for the setting that turns off this behaviour as mentioned above as it is a bit annoying.
The other thing I need to check is that the system-wide AD setting still works. I started to watch series 2 of High Potential on Disney+ and it had no AD whereas the previous series did. I'm guessing this is just a Disney thing. I didn't have the energy to debug it yesterday though.
VoiceOver volume and AD
I turned on the annoying touch pad remote option and I was then able to change VoiceOver speech volume using the rotor. It just doesn't seem to work from the Audio Ducking screen any more. Not sure if that is a bug or if it was never supposed to work there. I wonder, though, if there is any way to do this without using the touch pad?
Also, AD seems OK - think Disney+ just weren't bothered with the second series.
Minor bug / annoyances
Within the TV app on TVOS 26 when scrolling through the list of movies and other categories Voiceover doesn't read the titles of programmes and films, just the genre.
This is quite annoying as you've got to enter into each item description to find out what it is, which is super time consuming when just browsing for something to watch.
Weirdly this is not present in all categories and in the top 100 movies for instance it can just randomly be one or two items in the list that aren't being read out, so no real consistency.
Not sure if anyone else has problems browsing categories in the main Apple TV app?