iOS 27 beta 4 adds a new Automatic Downloads feature to the Apple TV app that pre-loads your next episodes so you’re never caught without something to watch. The feature also appears to be what Apple was referring to when it listed “Smart downloads on Apple TV” on a WWDC slide, a description that left everyone guessing whether it meant video downloads or something App Store-related.
The feature lives in the TV section of Settings > App TV and is a single toggle. Apple’s own description is straightforward: “The next 2 episodes of shows you start in Continue Watching will automatically download, then delete once you finish.” Enable it and you don’t have to think about it again. The episodes appear, you watch them, they disappear.
How to Enable Automatic Downloads
- Open Settings
- Scroll down to Apps
- Tap TV
- Toggle on Automatic Downloads
The two-episode buffer is a sensible limit, enough to cover a commute or a flight with spotty Wi-Fi without consuming your entire storage on a long-running show, and the auto-delete on completion keeps the storage impact clean.
What Else Changed in iOS 27 Beta 4
Automatic Downloads is the headline addition, but everything new in beta 4 covers a handful of other changes worth knowing about:
- Zoom Photos to Fill: A new toggle in the Photos section of Settings that slightly zooms photos which nearly match the screen’s aspect ratio. It’s on by default.
- Wallpaper cutout removed: The animated wallpaper cutout effect added in beta 3, which showed a cutout of your wallpaper subject on the Home Screen when swiping, is gone.
- Siri preview length: A new setting in the Siri section of Settings lets you adjust how many lines of preview text appear in the Siri app, up to five lines or none at all.
- Always Show Request: A new Accessibility toggle that keeps a transcription of what you said to Siri visible on screen.
- Faster AirPlay: Quicker connections to Apple TV and HomePod.
- Spotlight improvements: More relevant suggestions in search results.
- Web audio fix: Web audio no longer interrupts system audio playback.
- iPadOS Home Screen: Undo and redo now works for Home Screen edits.
iOS 27 Beta 4 also contains code references pointing to dual batteries in the forthcoming iPhone Ultra. The presence of multi-battery code strings in the beta software doesn’t confirm the feature, but it’s a meaningful suggest that Apple is at minimum testing for it.
Beta 4 arrived two weeks after beta 3, keeping to Apple’s usual cadence. The first iOS 27 public beta went out on July 13, so this developer build will likely roll out as public beta 2 sometime next week.
Earlier in the beta cycle, Apple also added the ability to push Apple TV software updates directly from an iPhone, without requiring the Apple TV to be on first. Combined with Automatic Downloads, Apple has used iOS 27 to turn the iPhone into a proper remote management hub for Apple TV in a way it never quite was before.
