Release Notes

28 September 2026

A maintenance release. The dashboard gets more photographs and picks them in random order, the Top Shelf card gets a line about rain and a photograph that changes from day to day, and a number of things that were wrong are now right.

The Plus screen

• Clearer wording on the Plus screen, in every language, and the two addresses at the bottom (the privacy policy and Apple’s terms) are now large enough to read from the sofa.

The dashboard

• Many more photographs. The library has grown for every kind of weather, most noticeably for snow, clear days, partly cloudy nights and grey skies at sunrise and sunset. The dashboard now picks them in random order, so it no longer opens on the same photograph every time. They ship with the app, so no photograph is downloaded while the dashboard runs.
• The dimmed dashboard is properly dark. After half an hour without a press the display dims. The screen behind it could faintly show through; it no longer does.
• The photo dashboard starts clean. While the first photograph was being prepared, the screen behind it could show through for a moment. Fixed.
• With Reduce Motion switched on, photographs change without a fade. The dashboard’s slow gradient and its dimming are held still as well.
• A television that slept all night comes back to the dashboard, not to the word “Dashboard” on an empty screen. Leaving the tab and returning used to be the only way to get it back.

About us

• The bottom of the About us screen can now be reached with the remote. The list of photographers and the note on liability sat below the last item that could be selected, so they could not be scrolled into view. You can now move down onto them.

Top Shelf

• The card above the app now says whether the next twelve hours stay dry, and when they do not, how likely rain is. One line, beside the high and low.
• The photograph behind the card changes from day to day. It is picked per day from the same library as the dashboard and appears the next time the app redraws the card. Within a day it changes only with the weather or the time of day, so the row above your apps looks settled rather than restless.

When the weather cannot be refreshed

• The whole Weather tab shows its age, not only the top block. Older readings used to be greyed out in the hero alone, while the hourly strip and the week below it looked current.
• A section with nothing to show now says so rather than leaving an empty gap where a forecast should be.
• A spell without a network no longer uses up the retries that were meant for a service that is genuinely failing.

25 September 2026

Initial release. A weather app built for the television rather than shrunk to fit one. Everything below works from the sofa, with the remote, from across the room.

Forecasts

• Current conditions, hour by hour and day by day. The next 24 hours and today’s outlook are free; HelioPeak Weather Plus opens 48 hours of hourly detail and the full 7-day forecast.
• Minute-by-minute precipitation where Apple Weather offers it, so you can see whether the shower passes before you leave.
• Official weather warnings shown unmodified, with the issuing agency named and a link to the full alert.
• A details screen for UV, humidity, pressure, visibility, dew point, moon phase, sunrise and sunset, and the length of the day.

The ambient dashboard

• A full-screen weather display that keeps the television awake while it is on screen. The clock, the conditions and a 24-hour precipitation strip, all readable from the other side of the room.
• Photographs with Plus. A bundled library chosen to match the current conditions and the time of day. No photograph is downloaded and nothing is tracked; the photographs ship with the app.
• Designed not to burn your screen. The display shifts by a few pixels over time, dims after thirty minutes without a press, changes to a darker presentation at night, and stops by itself after a couple of hours. All of it is explained in Settings and adjustable.

Top Shelf

• Your first city on the Apple TV Home Screen. The shelf above the app row shows the temperature, the conditions and the hours ahead, with the same photograph the dashboard would use.
• Three things have to be true for it to appear. You need HelioPeak Weather Plus. The app has to sit in the top row of the Home Screen, which you arrange yourself by holding Select on the icon and dragging it up. And the app has to be the highlighted one in that row, because tvOS only shows the Top Shelf of whichever app you are standing on. Move the app out of the top row and the shelf is gone until you move it back.
• It updates when the app does. The card is redrawn when the app starts after being closed, and whenever it updates the forecast for your first favourite while that city is the one selected on the Weather tab, and tvOS decides when to show it. There is no way for an app to force a refresh.

For solar owners

• A sun outlook for the days ahead: how much daylight, and how much of it is likely to be clear. Made for the people who already use HelioPeak to follow their panels.

Language and accessibility

• Six languages. English, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish, switchable inside the app, independently of what the Apple TV is set to.
• Metric or imperial, your choice, independent of the television’s region.
• VoiceOver throughout, and every screen reachable with the remote alone.

Privacy

• No account, ever. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to sign in to.
• Your locations stay on the device. No coordinate and no place name is ever sent to us, not in analytics and not in a crash report. Location is optional: you can skip it and search for any city by name.
• Anonymous usage counts only, and only daily totals. The privacy policy says exactly what leaves the device.

Requirements

• Apple TV 4K (2021 or later) with tvOS 27.
• Free to download. HelioPeak Weather Plus is an optional yearly subscription with a one-week free trial, and it is shared with your family through Family Sharing.