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Complete Apple development guidance: Human Interface Guidelines (design) + Technical Documentation for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS
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Markdown
title: Designing For Tvos
platform: tvOS
category: foundations
url: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/designing-for-tvos
quality_score: 0.42
content_length: 2183
last_updated: 2025-07-20T03:47:34.318Z
keywords: ["designing for tvos","tvos","foundations","design","system","gestures"]
has_code_examples: false
has_images: false
is_fallback: false
Designing for tv OSPeople enjoy the vibrant content, immersive experiences, and streamlined interactions that tv OS delivers in media and games, as well as in fitness, education, and home utility apps. As you begin designing your app or game for tv OS, start by understanding the following fundamental device characteristics and patterns that distinguish the tv OS experience. Using these characteristics and patterns to inform your design decisions can help you provide an app or game that tv OS users appreciate. Display. A TV typically has a very large, high-resolution display. Ergonomics. Although people generally remain many feet away from their stationary TV — often 8 feet or more — they sometimes continue to interact with content as they move around the room. Inputs. People can use a remote, a game controller, their voice, and apps running on their other devices to interact with Apple TV.App interactions. People can get deeply immersed in a single experience — often lasting hours — but they also appreciate using a picture-in-picture view to simultaneously follow an alternative app or video. System features. Apple TV users expect their apps and games to integrate well with the following system experiences. Integrating with the TV app Share Play Top Shelf TV provider accounts Best practices Great tv OS experiences integrate the platform and device capabilities that people value most. To help your experience feel at home in tv OS, prioritize the following ways to incorporate these features and capabilities. Support powerful, delightful interactions through the fluid, familiar gestures people make with the Siri Remote. Embrace the tv OS focus system, letting it gently highlight and expand onscreen items as people move among them, helping them know what to do and where they are at all times. Deliver beautiful, edge-to-edge artwork, subtle and fluid animations, and engaging audio, wrapping people in a rich, cinematic experience that’s clear, legible, and captivating from across the room. Enhance multiuser support by making sign-in easy and infrequent, handling shared sign-in, and automatically switching profiles when people change the current viewer.