Sky Glass update brings easy ad-skipping and Apple AirPlay support just in time for the Christmas binge season
Long-requested features come to Sky’s TV platform.
Every second not spent wrapping presents, burning turkey or ferrying in-laws from one dinner to another over the Christmas period counts — so the last thing you want to be doing with those rare moments of downtime is to be stuck watching adverts. A new update rolling out now to Sky Glass TVs and Sky Stream set top boxes banishes adverts to the darkest corners of streaming hell, all at the tap of a button.
For a £5 a month fee, the Sky Entertainment OS for Glass and Stream devices gets upgraded with a ‘Skip Ads’ button that will jump straight past adverts and into the next bit of programming you actually want to watch. Sky offered something similar before, but adverts had to be manually scrolled through — this all-but cuts them out entirely.
Entertainment OS refresh
It’s not the only new feature coming to Sky’s devices. Equally long-awaited is the addition of Apple AirPlay, which lets iPhone, iPad and Mac owners beam content wirelessly to Sky Glass and Sky Stream devices, whether that’s photo albums, web pages or playlists. If you’re an Amazon user, the Amazon Music app gets a HD streaming upgrade, boosting the quality of tracks played through Sky’s devices.
A few other interface tweaks join the update. A Netflix-style ‘Next Episode’ button will appear at the end of shows in a series, letting you jump to the next installment with a single button press, and new episodes will now autoplay after a countdown timer counts down.
If you’ve got a favourite star and don’t want to miss anything they’re in, you can now add individual actors — and everything they appear in — to your ‘Playlist’ section, letting you keep track of their new and upcoming roles. Profiles can now be customised further too with celebrity avatars, including the stars of A League of Their Own and Brassic.
It’s a meaty update for Sky subscribers then — and it’s not a bad time to jump onboard as a newcomer, either. A new Sky Essential TV package starts at just £15 a month, and grants access to access to Sky Atlantic, Netflix Standard with Ads and discovery+, as well as free to air channels like BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and Sky Arts.