Home theater fans rejoice! The Apple TV 4K's next free update will give you a much-wanted option for elite audio systems
Apple's tvOS is getting an update that will enable audio passthrough
- Passthrough audio option is coming to tvOS 26
- It's in the audio framework, but developers need to use it
- tvOS 26 is expected later this year
Apple's tvOS doesn't get quite as much attention during WWDC as the bigger-selling products such as the iPhone, and that means it usually takes a few days for some of the most interesting Apple TV news to emerge even beyond the top five tvOS 26 feature you need to know about. And that's the case this year, because an important audio change is coming in tvOS that wasn't mentioned during the event.
AppleInsider reports that there's a new reference on the Apple Developer documentation for AVFAudio that has a "passthrough" setting. AVFAudio is Apple's framework for playing, recording and processing audio on tvOS as well as iOS, macOS and watchOS.
AppleInsider has apparently checked in with Apple, and Apple has confirmed that yes, there will be passthrough in the tvOS upgrade. And that's a big change for serious audio equipment.
Why passthrough was wanted by hardcore home theater fans
When you use a streaming app on Apple TV, whether it's Apple's own Apple TV+, Netflix, Prime Video or any one of the best streaming services, the audio decoding and initial processing is handled by your Apple TV before being output to your system – so even if you have really high-end home theater hardware at the end of your HDMI, you're stuck with Apple's processed audio as your input.
Apple TV's audio processing is really good: I often burst into a grin when there's a particularly impressive bit of Atmos action. But higher-spec hardware is likely to be even better, so it's good to have the option to let that hardware handle 100% of the sound processing rather than leave it to Apple.
This isn't limited to Apple TV; the same framework handles the audio on iPhones, Macs and even Apple Watches. But of course it's on the Apple TV where it's likely to matter most, so you can pass the raw audio data to a beefy AV receiver.
For now, though, passthrough is only a possibility: it may be in the framework, but it's up to developers to implement it in their apps, or for Apple to make it selectable in the Apple TV settings; so far at least, the latter option isn't in the developer beta of tvOS 26, but would maybe be the ideal end result.
