The TV app is crashing some Apple TVs

By Oliver Haslam
published

The Apple TV app
The Apple TV app (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Aome people are seeing the Apple TV app crash.
  • It's impacting Apple TV 4K and HD.
  • tvOS 13 is impacted.

With Apple TV+ kicking off on November 1 the TV app is more important than ever. But we've seen multiple reports of people experiencing unexplained crashes on Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD boxes.

Alongside the reports we've seen, 9to5Mac has also heard talk of the same issue. Between their report and our findings we know that:

  • Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD are both affected.
  • The impacted boxes are running tvOS 13.
  • The TV app crash can be reprodued by opening it and then navigating around the interface.

One Twitter user reached out to Apple Support and was able to provide a video of the issue.

See more

We haven't seen a huge number of reports as yet but this does seem to be something impacting enough people to warrant concern. The TV app, via Apple TV, will be likely be the most popular way of watching Apple TV+ content come next month. And if people can't do that they're likely to be hugely disappointed.

Apple does currently have tvOS 13.2 available to developers although it isn't clear as yet whether that update fixes this particular issue. We'd expect to see tvOS 13.2 pushed out this week if it does indeed offer respite.

Apple TV+ will be available from November 1 and will cost $4.99 per month for the whole family. Buyers of new iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or Apple TV produts will receive a free year of Apple TV+, too.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.

3 Comments
  • Yup, I can confirm - it's happened to me. And just as it was described. All you have to do is move down through the interface, and the Apple TV app will suddenly crash. I had to reset my Apple TV 4K from scratch. It seems to have helped, but it's a major pain because I had to re-input all the login information for the apps. FWIW - I have the 32 GB version, so I don't know if this is less pronounced with the 64 GB Apple TV 4K. Supposedly the problem shows up with the lower end Apple TV as well.
  • This is an embarrassing one, the Apple TV that can't… TV. I'm sure it'll get fixed soon but Apple chose a bad app to break here.
  • Playback online is just bad also. Screen goes blank and I have to 'resume' episode, though it starts back at the beginning. This happens 4 to 8 times per episode on my PC. I'm using Firefox with more than adequate internet speed. I've yet to watch on my samsung TV to see if it crashes.
    Not a good start.