Develop a tvOS app based on an iOS app code base

Since 2015 it’s possible to develop your own apps for the Apple TV, that uses tvOS as operating system. The proces of developing apps for tvOS is similar to iOS, but there are some differences that are good to know before starting. For example, users can’t touch anywhere on the screen like iOS, because apps are running on the TV.

When you reuse the iOS code, future code changes are directly made in both the iOS app and the tvOS app. That gives you as a developer a big advantage, because you don’t have to make code changes twice.

This talk will focus on adding a tvOS app to your workspace that already contains an iOS app. How to improve the user experience on TV using a focus guide? What type of views are easy to reuse when you already have an iOS app? And how to implement UI testing to your application to validate nothing on the tvOS did broke because of a change for iOS.

This talk is based on experience gained with developing the Videoland app for tvOS.