Apple adds new Categories section to the Apple TV App Store

Apple TV App Store Categories

Good news for Apple TV owners looking for better ways to discover new apps on the App Store. After adding Top Charts, Apple has added a new Categories section to the App Store as well. As of now, the Categories section appears to be a bit limited, so far listing only Games and Entertainment. Eventually, however, we imagine that the Categories section will become even more fleshed out like it is on iOS.

Apple TV App Store Categories 2

One of the big complaints about the Apple TV App Store is it lack of discoverability. At launch, the only sections available to App Store users were Featured, Purchases, and Search. This forced users to know the name of the app that they were looking for, or the app had to be featured. Now, with the addition of Top Charts and Categories, it will be easier for users to discover new apps.

The fact that only the Entertainment and Games sections are showing up leads me to believe that Apple has certain threshold requirements before categories are established for a given section. Since Entertainment and Games are by far the most prolific categories, it makes sense that those two categories would show up first. As other categories become filled, those should begin appearing in the Categories section as well.

Just for disclosure, I’m running tvOS 9.1 beta on my Apple TV, but this is an update that should roll out to all users regardless of the tvOS software, just like Top Charts did. If you don’t yet see the new Categories section, try force quitting the App Store app, or rebooting your Apple TV. Even if you do that, it still may take a while for Categories to fully propagate. Are you seeing a new Categories section on your Apple TV?