TvOS
operating system of the Apple TV
tvOS (formerly Apple TV Software) is an operating system created and developed by Apple for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software is based on Mac OS X. The software for the second-generation and later Apple TVs is based on the iOS operating system and has many similar frameworks, technologies, and concepts.
The second- and third-generation Apple TV have several built-in applications, but do not support third-party applications.
On September 9, 2015, Apple announced the fourth-generation Apple TV, with support for third-party applications. Apple also changed the name of the Apple TV operating system to tvOS, adopting the camel case nomenclature that they were using for its other operating systems: iOS, watchOS, and (later, in 2016) macOS.
The latest version, tvOS 27, was released on September 14, 2026.
History
On October 30, 2015, the fourth-generation Apple TV was released and shipped with tvOS 9.0. On November 9, 2015, tvOS 9.0.1 was released, primarily to address minor issues.
tvOS 9.1 was released on December 8, 2015, along with OS X 10.11.2, iOS 9.2, and watchOS 2.1. Apple also updated the Remote apps on iOS and watchOS, enabling basic remote functionality for the fourth-generation Apple TV (previously, the app only worked with earlier Apple TV models).
On November 25, 2015, Facebook debuted their SDK for tvOS, allowing applications to log into Facebook, share to Facebook, and use Facebook Analytics in the same way that iOS applications can.
The public source identifies “TvOS” as operating system of the Apple TV. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around TvOS, operating and system.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20965967. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2015, 2016 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “TvOS” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.