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.