Sorry, folks: The fancy Apple TV redesign is for new models only

Amid all the other announcements at WWDC 2025 yesterday, tvOS 26 passed by with barely a ripple. Out of a total 92 minutes of keynote time, it was on screen for less than five (a big chunk of which was a trailer for upcoming TV+ shows and movies), and at the time of writing this, the software doesn’t even have its own tab on Apple’s OS preview page.

But this is often the way with major Apple events: there’s so much to talk about that worthwhile launches get lost in the hubbub. And tvOS 26 does have some interesting upgrades. There are user profiles to choose from when you wake the Apple TV, automatic logins for third-party apps, permanent AirPlay speaker connections, new aerial screensavers, and you can use your iPhone as a microphone and input device in Apple Music’s Sing karaoke mode.

The biggest upgrade, however, is the Liquid Glass visual redesign that’s coming, in one form or another, to all of Apple’s devices. The short way of describing this is to say that menus and buttons are transparent and shiny, with more interactive elements, but you really need to see it to grasp the impact this will have. It looks, in this reporter’s opinion at least, really nice.

Apple

(As a side note, it’s worth pointing out that Liquid Glass does not look as starkly futuristic as iOS 7 did in 2012. Rather than designing for the future, Apple appears to have designed for the present, and while this is pleasant for now, it’s debatable how well this will age.)

tvOS 26 can run on a decent range of Apple TVs: MacRumors reports that the developer beta, impressively, is compatible with all HD or 4K Apple TVs, going back to the model released in 2015. But the bad news is that the 2015 HD Apple TV, and the 1st-gen 4K model that came after it in 2017, don’t get the full range of tvOS 26 features and upgrades.

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Most importantly, as Apple quietly confirms in a footnote of its tvOS 26 press release, Liquid Glass is only available on the 2nd-gen Apple TV 4K from 2021 and the 3rd-gen 4K from 2022.

Oh, and the feature that lets you use your iPhone as a Sing input device only works on the 3rd-gen 4K model. And you need an iPhone 11 or later (or one that can run iOS 26), for that matter.

If you want the full tvOS 26 experience, in other words, it might be time to buy a new model. One may be on the way, or you can check our price comparison tool below to make sure you’re not paying a penny more than you need to.