Eric Zeman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- With tvOS 17, you can access an Apple TV VPN setting.
- You’ll be able to use pretty much any third-party VPN service with the streaming box.
- This will allow you to spoof streaming services to think you are in a different country.
Today, during the keynote of WWDC 2023, Apple announced a slew of new updates and products, including the Apple Vision Pro, its first XR headset. During this event, it only spent a few minutes talking about tvOS, mostly focusing on its upcoming ability to make FaceTime calls.
In the press release announcing this feature, though, Apple had some interesting news to share. Apparently, with tvOS 17, there will be an Apple TV VPN feature. Essentially, this will allow you to connect a third-party VPN service directly to your Apple TV streaming box.
In the press release, Apple describes the focus of this feature as to enable “enterprise and education users wanting to access content on their private networks.” This, in turn, will allow “Apple TV to be a great office and conference room solution in even more places.”
While that’s all well and good, let’s be real: what’s really exciting about this news is being able to alter your location virtually. This will allow for streaming of content that normally would be geo-restricted for your area. Doing this is as easy as changing the location of your preferred VPN node when connecting.
Unfortunately, the press release doesn’t go over how this will work. Will you download an app from your favorite VPN provider via the Apple TV App Store? Or will you need to enter VPN credentials manually into the settings of the Apple TV? Either way, you should be able to bypass country restrictions once tvOS 17 lands on your device.
