Intro I am reporting multiple persistent UI animation issues observed in tvOS 26 (Beta 6). These issues have been reproducible across multiple tvOS releases. They are subtle but noticeable, and they affect the overall polish and perceived quality of the system. I am happy to provide high-quality video captures for each of the issues described below. ⸻ Bug #1: App launch animation stutter/jump Summary: The zoom-in animation from a Springboard icon to full-screen app stutters or jumps at the moment the app becomes full screen. Steps to reproduce: 1. On Springboard, select any app icon. 2. Observe the zoom-in animation. Expected result: Smooth, continuous zoom without frame drops or jumps. Actual result: Animation visibly stutters/jumps at the full-screen transition. Possible cause: Timing issue in Core Animation interpolation or abrupt view hierarchy switch. ⸻ Bug #2: Text rendering weight change (“jump”) during transitions Summary: Text inside apps changes visual weight mid-transition from scaled preview to full screen. Steps to reproduce: 1. From Springboard or App Switcher, launch an app with visible text. 2. Observe text during the zoom animation — initially slightly bolder, then thinner once full screen. Also occurs in: • Top Shelf banners in the Dock • App Switcher → full-screen transitions Expected result: Consistent text rendering throughout the transition. Actual result: Visible “pop” in text weight/anti-aliasing during transition. Possible cause: Different rasterization/anti-aliasing mode between preview snapshot (CALayer.contents) and live CoreText/UIKit rendering. ⸻ Bug #3: Focus shadow jumps instead of interpolating smoothly Summary: Shadows around focused UI elements (icons, buttons) change abruptly during focus transitions. Steps to reproduce: 1. Navigate between focusable UI elements on Springboard or in apps. 2. Observe the shadow effects. Expected result: Shadows interpolate smoothly (offset, opacity, radius) during focus transitions. Actual result: Shadows “jump” abruptly, breaking animation smoothness. Possible cause: UIFocusEngine not interpolating shadow parameters consistently. ⸻ Bug #4: Abrupt jumps when swiping horizontally between content items Summary: In horizontally scrollable poster/content rows, focus snaps abruptly instead of scrolling smoothly. Steps to reproduce: 1. In the TV app or any app with horizontal poster rows, swipe left/right. 2. Observe the transition between focused items. Expected result: Smooth horizontal navigation with continuous motion. Actual result: Occasional abrupt snapping/jumping between items. ⸻ Impact While none of these bugs block core functionality, they degrade the premium feel and visual polish of tvOS. They are persistent across releases and occur in core system UI, so they are visible to all users. Note I can provide video recordings for each bug to assist engineering in reproducing and analyzing the issues.

One thing I've noticed on tvOS 26 is that if you try to set the AVPlayerViewController customInfoViewControllers property while the Content Tabs are on screen, your app will crash. *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'UIViewControllerHierarchyInconsistency', reason: 'trying to add child view controller that is already presented: <AVInfoPanelViewController: 0x1030cdc00>' *** First throw call stack: (0x18a7167bc 0x189a77510 0x18a7166a8 0x1ab425658 0x1b2ee9d54 0x1b2efcd60 0x1b2eaf3f0 0x1080f744c 0x107e021a8 0x107e01b3c 0x18de41c14 0x18de41ba8 0x18de48d28 0x18ad9e358 0x101fac5f0 0x101fc6228 0x101fe7278 0x101fbc6fc 0x101fbc63c 0x18a67a2e0 0x18a679418 0x18a673b34 0x1937e4d5c 0x1abb36588 0x1abb3ae80 0x1aae9dec4 0x108610174 0x1086100e4 0x108615140 0x189abd4d0) I've logged a feedback (FB19554461) but it's getting awfully late in the dev cycle. So I've been trying to think of a workaround. The problem is that customInfoViewControllers is pretty declarative in nature. There are no properties or delegate methods I am aware of that let me know when they are displaying or not. One trick I came up with was seeing if my custom info view controller's view was "visible" or not - I put that in quotes because it turns out it can be visible even when I think it's not, as when the transport bar is scrolled to the top my custom VC still has its top pixels showing, so it gets a viewDidAppear call. So, I tried to see if my view controllers view is completely visible, ie based on the results of the GGRect contains method. And that works! But the problem is it only accounts for my own custom info view controllers, and not the standard one that Apple provides. I can't think of a way at all to know whether that is showing. Any ideas?

Hello everyone, Following the WWDC 2025 announcement of tvOS 26 and the introduction of the new Liquid Glass effect, Apple published a press release mentioning that Liquid Glass is "available on Apple TV 4K (2nd generation and later)". This seems to exclude both the Apple TV HD and the 1st generation Apple TV 4K, even though both devices remain compatible with tvOS 26. Source: Apple Newsroom ( https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-tv-brings-a-beautiful-redesign-and-enhanced-home-entertainment-experience ) I’m wondering: Will using UIGlassEffect or glassEffect(_:in:) on these older devices cause a crash? If not, will the effect fall back to a simple blur, or render as fully transparent? Is there an API or recommended way to detect whether the Liquid Glass effect is supported on the current device? Thanks in advance for your insights!

NavigationLinks do not display correctly in tvOS 26. When using a Button, the correct behavior of vertically placing an Image or AsyncImage above one or two Text fields occurs. However, when using NavigationLink the image and text(s) are laid out horizontally. Attempting to fix this using a VStack prevents the text from sliding down as the NavigationLink receives focus. Using the hoverEffect modifier does not help. Using a Button (correct behavior): Using a NavigationLink without VStack: Using a NavigationLink with VStack:

The following code shows that a selected button in a list gots blurred if a glass effect is applied to the list. This happens if the button style is plain or glass. It does not happen if the button style is bordered. Is this a wanted documented behavior or is this a bug? struct ContentView: View { @State private var items = [ "Item 1", "Item 2", "Item 3", "Item 4"] var body: some View { ZStack { Image(systemName: "globe") .resizable() List(items, id: \.self) { item in Button(action: {}, label: { Text(item) }) } .padding() .glassEffect(in: Rectangle()) } } }

Hello ! I manage to displays tips on tvOS no issue. However when I want to add actions, they are not visible. Is there something specific to do here ? I just provided the actions attributes to my tips. The documentation does not say anything more. Thanks!

HealthKit is currently not supported on macOS nor tvOS, despite being supported by visionOS. Support for macOS was last asked about[1] here in 2018. My goal is to display interactive data visualisations over workouts collected in HealthKit on macOS. Will this be possible to do in the near future using HealthKit directly? If not, can I somehow read the information from an iPhone and display it on the mac? Cheers, Rodrigo [1] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/94937

I have been using tvOS 18 and Xcode 26 all summer without issue but since updating the tv to the latest tvOS 26 beta I am now unable to attach to debug builds. When using the Run button in Xcode the build completes, the tv screen goes black and then I see a warning in Xcode: Launching "App Name" is taking longer than expected. Do you want to continue to wait? LLDB is likely reading from device memory to resolve symbols. If I continue to wait after around 5 mins, in the Xcode console, I see: warning: libobjc.A.dylib is being read from process memory. This indicates that LLDB could not find the on-disk shared cache for this device. This will likely reduce debugging performance. But the process on the tv hangs indefinately. Hitting stop in Xcode disconnects the debugger but the app then finishes launching successfully on the TV. Trying to use "Debug > Attach to process > [App Name]" once it is running also just hangs the app and waits until stopped. When stopping the hung debugger I see an Xcode error with the following: Could not attach to pid : “1222” Domain: IDEDebugSessionErrorDomain Code: 3 Failure Reason: internal error User Info: { DVTErrorCreationDateKey = "2025-09-01 09:51:54 +0000"; DVTRadarComponentKey = 855031; IDERunOperationFailingWorker = DBGLLDBLauncher; RawUnderlyingErrorMessage = "Xcode has killed the LLDB RPC server to allow the debugger to detach from your process. You may need to manually terminate your process."; } -- Event Metadata: com.apple.dt.IDERunOperationWorkerFinished : { "device_identifier" = "00008110-000240CE1A87801E"; "device_isCoreDevice" = 1; "device_isWireless" = 1; "device_model" = "AppleTV14,1"; "device_osBuild" = "26.0 (23J5348a)"; "device_osBuild_monotonic" = 2309534800; "device_os_variant" = 1; "device_platform" = "com.apple.platform.appletvos"; "device_platform_family" = 4; "device_reality" = 1; "device_thinningType" = "AppleTV14,1"; "device_transport" = 2; "launchSession_schemeCommand" = Run; "launchSession_schemeCommand_enum" = 1; "launchSession_targetArch" = arm64; "launchSession_targetArch_enum" = 6; "operation_duration_ms" = 76122; "operation_errorCode" = 3; "operation_errorDomain" = IDEDebugSessionErrorDomain; "operation_errorWorker" = DBGLLDBLauncher; "operation_error_reportable" = 1; "operation_name" = IDERunOperationWorkerGroup; "param_consoleMode" = 0; "param_debugger_attachToExtensions" = 0; "param_debugger_attachToXPC" = 1; "param_debugger_type" = 3; "param_destination_isProxy" = 0; "param_destination_platform" = "com.apple.platform.appletvos"; "param_diag_MainThreadChecker_stopOnIssue" = 0; "param_diag_MallocStackLogging_enableDuringAttach" = 0; "param_diag_MallocStackLogging_enableForXPC" = 0; "param_diag_allowLocationSimulation" = 0; "param_diag_checker_mtc_enable" = 0; "param_diag_checker_tpc_enable" = 0; "param_diag_gpu_frameCapture_enable" = 0; "param_diag_gpu_shaderValidation_enable" = 0; "param_diag_gpu_validation_enable" = 1; "param_diag_guardMalloc_enable" = 0; "param_diag_memoryGraphOnResourceException" = 0; "param_diag_queueDebugging_enable" = 1; "param_diag_runtimeProfile_generate" = 0; "param_diag_sanitizer_asan_enable" = 0; "param_diag_sanitizer_tsan_enable" = 0; "param_diag_sanitizer_tsan_stopOnIssue" = 0; "param_diag_sanitizer_ubsan_enable" = 0; "param_diag_sanitizer_ubsan_stopOnIssue" = 0; "param_diag_showNonLocalizedStrings" = 0; "param_diag_viewDebugging_enabled" = 1; "param_diag_viewDebugging_insertDylibOnLaunch" = 1; "param_install_style" = 2; "param_launcher_UID" = 2; "param_launcher_allowDeviceSensorReplayData" = 0; "param_launcher_kind" = 0; "param_launcher_style" = 99; "param_launcher_substyle" = 256; "param_lldbVersion_component_idx_1" = 0; "param_lldbVersion_monotonic" = 170300300002; "param_runnable_appExtensionHostRunMode" = 0; "param_testing_launchedForTesting" = 0; "param_testing_suppressSimulatorApp" = 0; "param_testing_usingCLI" = 0; "sdk_canonicalName" = "appletvos26.0"; "sdk_osVersion" = "26.0"; "sdk_platformID" = 3; "sdk_variant" = appletvos; "sdk_version_monotonic" = 2309534400; } -- System Information macOS Version 26.0 (Build 25A5349a) Xcode 26.0 (24208.14) (Build 17A5305k) Timestamp: 2025-09-01T10:51:54+01:00 I have another AppleTV still running on tvOS 18 and builds continue to run and attach fine there. I've tried rebooting the 26 beta AppleTV but I'm at a bit of a loss what else to try?

Now I’m testing in-app purchase for my app but I can’t find how to set up my snadbox account in tvOS. Acoording to Apple support team, the following menu item should be available in the settings; Settings &gt; Users and Accounts &gt; Sandbox Account But it’s not the case for me even I activated develope mode in tvOS already. Can anyone explain how to set up sandbox account in tvOS or how to activate the menu above? Thanks in advance.

When I display 2/3 of the poster on tvos, after setting it according to the code, some semi-transparent background can be seen in the upper left and right corners of the image when it is in focus. How can I eliminate it? struct HighPosterView: View { let media: MediaDetail @State private var isShowingDetails = false @Environment(\.isFocused) private var isFocused: Bool var body: some View { Button { isShowingDetails.toggle() } label: { HighShelfImageView(imageURL: media.posterURL) .contentShape(RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 24, style: .continuous)) .hoverEffect(.highlight) Text(media.displayTitle) .lineLimit(1) .font(.subheadline) .frame(maxWidth: 300) } .buttonStyle(.borderless) .animation(.smooth) } } struct HighShelfImageView: View { let imageURL: URL? var body: some View { KFImage.url(imageURL) .targetCache(ImageCacheManager.shelfCache) .setProcessor(ImageCacheManager.mediaListShelfProcessor) .placeholder { Color.primary.opacity(0.1) .cornerRadius(Constants.cornerRadius) } .cancelOnDisappear(true) .cacheMemoryOnly(false) .fade(duration: 0.1) .cacheOriginalImage(true) .resizable() .aspectRatio(2/3, contentMode: .fill) .clipShape(RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: Constants.cornerRadius)) } } I need to keep the image and text distributed vertically, keep customize corner, with the text pushed aside when the image is in focus.

Here is a minimal code private func createItem(from movie: Movie, showProgress: Bool, imageType: ImageType) -> TVTopShelfSectionedItem { let item = TVTopShelfSectionedItem(identifier: movie.id) // Set title for the item item.title = movie.title switch imageType { case .landscape: item.imageShape = .hdtv // HDTV shape for landscape/backdrop images if let backdropUrl = movie.backdropUrl, let url = URL(string: backdropUrl) { item.setImageURL(url, for: .screenScale2x) } case .poster: item.imageShape = .poster // Poster shape for poster images if let posterUrl = movie.posterUrl, let url = URL(string: posterUrl) { item.setImageURL(url, for: .screenScale2x) } } if showProgress { item.playbackProgress = 0.5 } return item } As you can see the progress bar is pushed to the bottom. There is no padding around it. Am I doing something wrong or this is bug in the framework?

Hi guys, after updating to tvOS 26 it is not possible to disable screensaver using AVPlayer.preventsDisplaySleepDuringVideoPlayback. We are streaming TV programs continuously and when player is in full creen we disable screensaver by setting preventsDisplaySleepDuringVideoPlayback = true When leaving player screen and navigating to Home or EPG where player continues to play in the background we set preventsDisplaySleepDuringVideoPlayback = false to enable screen saver in which case after set time screensaver activates. Disabling screensaver appears to be working only when starting the app for the first time, but when making the first transition out of the player and calling preventsDisplaySleepDuringVideoPlayback = false for the first time, then any subsequent change of preventsDisplaySleepDuringVideoPlayback to true has no effect. Result is that player is playing in full screen, but after set period (e.g. 2 minutes) screen saver activates, which is very bad user experience making TV app unusable. I tried using Xcode 26 and targetting tvOS 17 and higher. I installed Xcode 16.4 and rebuilt the app, but I see the same problem with screensaver. Xcode 16.4 and tvOS 17 target worked before. It appears to be related to tvOS 26 not to SDK itself. Is there perhaps a new API to disable screensaver? Is preventsDisplaySleepDuringVideoPlayback obsolete or could it be intention to disallow developers disabling screensaver? Do we need to notify all users to set screensaver time to higher value or Never if they want to watch TV for all day without touching remote? Not sure if it is a bug in tvOS 26 or purposely changed behavior. Does anybody know? Thanks.

In tvOS26, when using .sheetto wrap a Form, and the Formcontains a Button, the text of the button becomes obscured—as if covered by a haze—when the button is focused.

Has any one come across file corruption issues with tvOS 26? I am tracking an issue where files in my app's NSCachesDirectory are getting corrupted (not deleted) when my app is in the background. The issue is sporadic and very hard to reproduce, but is definitely a new issue with 26.

I can’t get UIScene-based state restoration to work on tvOS as it does on iOS. UISceneSession.stateRestorationActivity is always nil in UIWindowSceneDelegate.scene(_:willConnectTo:options:) despite UIWindowSceneDelegate.stateRestorationActivity(for:) being called in the previous lifecycle. The NSUserActivityType is correctly configured in the Info.plist. Has anyone encountered the same issue or knows how to get this to work? Sample Project https://github.com/antiraum/tvosSceneStateRestoration Feedback FB20451479

Hi everyone, After updating my Apple TV HD (model A1625) to tvOS 26, I’ve noticed a significant spike in CPU usage—up to 3× higher than before the update. Go from around 40% to 120% Model: Apple TV HD (A1625) tvOS Version: 26 (stable release) and beta version of 26.1, App downgrade stream due to lack of cpu power If anyone else is experiencing this, please share your findings or workarounds. Would love to hear from Apple engineers or other developers if this is a known regression or if there’s a recommended fix. Thanks!

So I normally use the below as quick reference guide: https://mar.codes/apple-colors however, what is the reason that iOS colors are not available on tvOS? Especially the system/grays that are available on iOS. What does everyone else use for alternatives to these to get close matches between their multi platform apps?

Hello, We have Video Stream app. It has HLS VOD Content. We supply 1080p, 4K Contents to users. Users were watching 1080p content before tvOS 26. Users can not watch 1080p content anymore when they update to tvOS 26. We have not changed anything at HLS playlist side and application version. This problem only occurs on Apple TV 4th Gen (A1625) tvOS 26 version. There is no problem with newer Apple TV devices. Would you help to resolve problem? Thanks in advance

Hi @DTS Engineer in tvOS 26.2 Beta is still this annoying Shadow Glitch… I have submitted an Bug-Report, but dont get an Answer… FB20049524 The Animation is not smooth and the Shadow is abruptly „jumping“… I don’t get any Response from the Apple Engineers. But this GUI Glitch makes the otherwise very high-quality tvOS GUI appear very unprofessional. Could you please help me? 🤔