Apple TV Remote App Returns to iOS After Five-Year Absence

Published by Robert Granstone on June 20, 2026June 20, 2026

What You Need to Know

Apple TV Remote app restored to App Store after five-year removal in 2020.
Siri AI launches as standalone app with chat interface, voice, and web search capabilities.
Siri AI unavailable in EU at launch; Apple working on compliance path.
Pass Designer app enables developers to build and preview Apple Wallet passes for iOS and watchOS.

Apple’s biggest software week of the year produced five new apps, but the one that cuts deepest against Apple’s own history is the one getting the least attention: the Apple TV Remote app is back, five years after Apple quietly pulled it from the App Store in 2020.

The return of the Remote app ships pre-installed with iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, accessible through the App Library or by searching and dragging it to the Home Screen. It is a small thing, but Apple removing then restoring a first-party utility over five years is an odd arc, and the Apple TV 4K ecosystem has had a complicated stretch in that same window.

The headline announcement is Siri AI, a ground-up rebuild arriving as a dedicated standalone app for the first time. It works like a chat interface, supports typing or voice, syncs conversation history across devices via iCloud, and can handle web search, document evaluation, math, multi-stop Maps directions, photo editing, and email drafting in a user’s own writing style. Access currently requires joining a waitlist even for developers running the beta. One region that will not be joining any waitlist at launch: the EU, where Apple says it is working on a path forward but has not committed to a timeline.

For developers and businesses

Pass Designer is a new Mac app that lets developers build and preview Apple Wallet passes with real-time rendering that matches what users actually see on iOS and watchOS. It supports semantic tags for boarding passes and event tickets, which feed structured data into Siri Suggestions, Calendar, and Maps.

watchOS 27 consolidates what were three separate Find My apps (Find Devices, Find People, Find Items) into a single map-centric interface, with Precision Finding for a paired iPhone, AirPods Pro 3, or AirTag 2. The redesign also adds more flexible location-sharing controls.

The one app already shipping is Claris FileMaker Go 2026, released June 10 by Apple’s subsidiary Claris International. It adds iOS and iPadOS 26 support and brings Google Gemini into FileMaker’s AI model roster alongside Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cohere.

Source: Apple Unveiled These Five New Apps Last Week (macrumors.com)