Apple Starts Rolling Out Web Previews for tvOS App Links ⇥ macstories.net

Once again today, Federico Viticci at MacStories:¹

Apple has begun rolling out web links and iTunes web previews for Apple TV apps. The change, first noticed by Jeff Scott and which we were able to confirm via Safari on OS X, allows users to link to tvOS apps in a web browser, which will show an iTunes Preview with screenshots, app description, and other information.

This seemingly minor feature addition – after all, users have been able to share links and open iTunes web previews for iOS and Mac apps for years – is a notable improvement for the tvOS app ecosystem. When third-party Apple TV apps launched last year, Apple didn’t offer the ability to link to apps directly, which considerably limited a developer’s options to link to their apps from websites and social media accounts.

The craziest part for me is that those pages currently have zero functionality beyond being a preview of the app. There’s no way for someone to download the app, of course, because the Apple TV doesn’t have a web view. You can’t AirDrop the link to your Apple TV, either, nor can you take any action on the page.

I bet that changes at WWDC.