Unlocking Superior Sound with tvOS 18 Upgrade for Enhanced Listening on Your Apple TV - Insights

Apple

How often have you been watching a movie and TV show only to miss a key piece of dialogue because it wasn’t clear or was drowned out by background noises? Now, Apple is adding a couple of helpful features to the Apple TV to ensure that you catch each piece of dialogue.

Unveiled at Apple’s WWDC 2024 on Monday, tvOS 18 introduces an option known as Enhance Dialogue. Available on the Apple TV 4K, Enhance Dialogue will use machine learning and computational audio to improve the clarity of spoken dialogue over music, actions, and background sounds. You’ll be able to hear the enhanced dialogue on an Apple TV 4K through built-in TV speakers, HDMI-connected speakers, AirPods, and other Bluetooth devices as well as with supported content on an iPhone and iPad.

Also: Forget LastPass: Apple unveils ‘Passwords’ manager app at WWDC 2024

And if you still have trouble hearing bits of dialogue, tvOS 18 is tweaking the subtitles feature. With the new OS, subtitles will automatically pop up at the right moments, such as when the language in a TV show or film doesn’t match the default device language, when you mute the sound, or when you skip back while watching something.

Newsletters

ZDNET Tech Today

ZDNET’s Tech Today newsletter is a daily briefing of the newest, most talked about stories, five days a week.

See all

The new tvOS 18 will also support the 21:9 aspect ratio when watching movies and TV shows via a projector. The 21:9 ratio has been the standard for films and many TV series for a number of years, replacing the older 16:9 ratio.

Also coming to the Apple TV app via tvOS 18, InSight is a feature that should appeal to film and TV buffs. InSight enables you to call up real-time details about actors, characters, music, and more for Apple TV+ movies and TV shows. Just select an actor on the screen to see their film background and credits. You can even view a song playing in a scene and add it to an Apple Music playlist. InSight will be accessible from the Apple TV app and from an iPhone when you use it as an Apple TV remote.

Also: Your Apple Watch is getting an upgrade - here are the coolest features in WatchOS 11

Finally, Apple Fitness+ users will find more to do with the feature on their Apple TVs. New with tvOS 18 is a personalized For You space, Explore and Library spaces, search options, and enhanced awards.

Apple’s tvOS 18 is available now as a developer’s beta . You can certainly install it but be aware that the current beta version may be unstable. Otherwise, you may want to wait for the fall when the public version launches.