Apple Releases tvOS 10.2 Beta Four to Developers for Testing

Apple on Tuesday seeded the fourth beta of their tvOS 10.2 update to developers, coming just over a week after the third beta release. The beta offers an accelerated scrolling option that allows users to scroll through on-screen content much more quickly.

Developers with fourth-generation Apple TVs can install the new beta – Build 14W5252c – to their device either from the Apple Developer Center or as an over-the-air update on Apple TV devices that have the proper beta profile installed.

tvOS betas are a bit more involved to install than beta updates for iOS and OS X. Users must connect the Apple TV to a computer with a USB-C to USB-A cable, and install the update via iTunes or Apple Configurator. However, once a beta profile has been installed on the device, new beta releases are available over-the-air.

About tvOS 10.2

tvOS 10.2 includes includes new features, bug fixes, and improvements in the OS and SDK including:

• Accelerated Scrolling support for UIKit and TVMLKit apps
• Device Enrollment Program support
• Expanded Mobile Device Management support
• Support for the VideoToolbox framework
• Support for Apple File System (APFS)

Notes and Known Issues

Accelerated Scrolling

NOTE: Scroll views with a lot of content now have a behavior that allows users to scroll through them much more quickly. Several large swipes of the Siri remote will automatically switch into this mode. Additionally, users can swipe on the far right side of the remote to navigate specific indexes. If you see any unexpected behavior in your applications from this feature, please file a bug report.

Device Enrollment Program (DEP) / Mobile Device Management (MDM)

NOTE: Self-signed certificates installed on unsupervised devices are not trusted.

Workaround: Supervise the device and include the entire certificate trust chain in the enrollment profile, or use a certificate on your MDM server that is signed by a certificate authority in the default trust store for tvOS.

File System

NOTE: When you update to tvOS 10.2, your Apple TV will update its file system to Apple File System (APFS). This conversion preserves existing data on your device.

Top Shelf App Extension

NOTE: tvOS apps with a deployment target of tvOS 10.0 or greater that use a Top Shelf extension will now require a “Top Shelf Image Wide” (2320×720) image in the asset catalog when submitting to the App Store.

tvOS apps with a deployment target of tvOS 9.0 or greater that use a Top Shelf extension now require both a “Top Shelf Image Wide” (2320×720) and “Top Shelf Image” (1920×720) image in the asset catalog when submitting to the App Store.