Apple TV - tvOS26 Is bringing Passthrough Audio: Will Plex Update?

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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At WWDC this week, Apple announced Audio Passthrough coming to its AppleTV platform.

Per Apple’s official documentation, app makers will need to update it within their own apps.

Does Plex have plans to update their tvOS app to support this? Would be huge for those of us who have been stuck using an nVidia Shield.

Can someone from the Plex team chime in here?

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I can’t see how you would not do this. In my mind it’s a case of when, not if.

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  1. We don’t know what “passthrough” means, it may not mean what you think.
  2. 7 years ago, in 2018, with tvOS12, apple added API support for Atmos. Plex apps still do not have this.

If this is important to you, you might want to look elsewhere.

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According to the documentation I think it does mean what he thinks it means. Apple is adding a new option to the audio output to allow for passthrough audio via the HDMI (the AVAudioContentSource now has a new function called passthrough. This function tells the Apple TV which type of audio content is coming into the device and up until xOS26, there was no passthrough option, which according to the documentation tells the xOS device to pass the audio out unprocessed via the output. I say xOS because this variable is present in all OS26 versions, not just tvOS, which has huge benefits to iOS and ipadOS too). Whether or not Plex will add support for it though is a matter of time to see.

With regards to your second point though, that one is a bit different. The reason why Plex apps do not support that is because Atmos support in the API today is only available via certain audio containers. Atmos can presently be supported if the audio container is in a specific compressed format, which is really only used by streaming services like Netflix due to needing to be conservative on bandwidth. Atmos isn’t supported in any of the uncompressed containers (such as Dolby TrueHD). By providing this new function (and if Plex adopts it), we may finally be able to have the one thing on Shield that isn’t present on the Apple TV today in terms of audio and video output.

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Thank you! I’m glad you understand that this update is new.

The question is how do we get the plex team to acknowledge this and implement it?

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Don’t hold your breath. They can’t bother to make their new app look or feel like a native app. It’s unfortunate the investors put them in that position.

If anyone can make passthrough happen first, it will be Infuse.

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I really hope that they do update as I really want to move to the Apple TV as my main driver.

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Please please do this!

I’ve almost switched to Nvidia Shield several times , just to get Atmos.

I have 3 apple Tv’s in my house plex on all 3.. music and movies

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This is a must have update. Plex needs to understand that users want what they pay for and that’s up to date software for the hardware the software runs on.

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@Craig_Holliday Would it be possible to comment on this?

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I did follow up with this and have not heard a definitive answer on this.
If Apple does provide support for passthrough then yes we will be implementing it.

Despite popular belief, we are actively looking at supporting Atmos and providing better support for Dolby Vision.
I can’t speak for anything before I joined but these features are on my radar.

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Thanks for chiming in @Craig_Holliday . The official documentation from Apple is found here:

I really hope this will allow for delivery of DTS MA (X) and DTHD (+ Atmos) via bitstream; allowing users to decode with their compatible AVRs / Soundbars. Fingers crossed.

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Would love to have confirmation from the dev team that they are working with the beta to incorporate this near public launch. Thanks, Craig!

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Unrealistic expectation

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Hoping as the beta cycle continues we get more clarity on how much work this will be to implement. Shield is too old in 2025

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7 years ago, in 2018, with tvOS12, apple added API support for Atmos. Plex apps still do not have this.

If you want this feature this decade, look at Infuse and follow their development.

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Do you have a beta version for TVOS26 that we can try until the final version of the TV OS launches?

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Could you expand on support for Atmos? Would this include TrueHD?

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I can get plex to play atmos if I remux the video to mp4 using ffmpeg. It wasn’t working before but looks like ffmpeg did something to fix it. Hoping atmos gets supported at some point.

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I mean in theory Plex should have already been testing and developing to the new pass through feature while it’s been in beta to have day 0 support for it in the plex app on ATV with tvOS 26

I’ve used ShieldTV solely for the audio pass through for years and I’d love to move my all apple house to ATVs next.

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