This Apple TV app is what British cordcutters have been waiting for

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Tv Launcher Promo Graphic
Tv Launcher Promo Graphic (Image credit: Adam Foot)

What you need to know

  • TV Launcher is a new app for streaming live TV on an Apple TV.
  • The new app puts live TV content from multiple channels into one place.
  • More than 90 live channels are supported.

Cordcutting is something that a whole ton of people are doing right now, not least because satellite and cable prices are increasingly astronomical. A new Apple TV app aims to make that easier for those in the UK by making it less irritating to watch live TV from the many different apps offered by TV channels.

TV Launcher is a new Apple TV app that takes the live TV we all want to watch and puts it into one place. Now, I know what you're thinking — the TV app already does that. However, the TV app only surfaces content that is available on-demand. Live TV is out of scope, which is where TV Launcher comes in. The app shows you what's on before you even have to open the relevant app.

The Apple TV app makes it easy to track the programs you're watching but if you're still wanting to watch live, you know the score. Open the app, find the channels list, look for the channel you want to watch and then press play. TV Launcher takes away that pain by allowing you to open any of the supported streaming apps directly to the channel.

What's more, TV Launcher supports the Top Shelf feature of tvOS 15 so it will push content into the very top portion of the Apple TV's interface.

Supported channels include BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, My5, UKTV Play, NOW (Sky), Discovery+, and STV Player so all the biggest players are present and correct, and you can select the channels you watch most and mark them as favorites. You can even hide the ones you don't want to watch, too.

All of that and more is available via the TV Launcher app and you can download it from the App Store right now. At $2.99 — or more accurately, £2.49 — it's a bargain, too.

If you want to enjoy TV Launcher in style, be sure to check out our list of the best Apple TV deals on the market today.

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Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.