Good news for Apple TV 4K owners: Amazon's redesigned interface for Prime Video has made it to the Apple TV app, making it look much fresher and more importantly, making it much easier to find the good stuff. Moving from Apple's typically pretty interface to the Amazon page was a bit jarring and felt rather like travelling back in time, but the new design works really well.
I really like the new look. It's been a long time coming and it's been a huge project – 18 months of work, Amazon says – because Prime isn't just one app. It's on Apple TV and Fire TV Stick 4K, Android TV, PS5, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, Roku and all the best TVs. That's a lot of different use cases and a lot of different screen sizes to cater for. Yes, it looks like Netflix, Disney+ or Apple TV+. But that's good, because you'll feel right at home straight away.
What's new in Prime Video for Apple TV?
The navigation, which was never Prime Video's strong point, is vastly improved. You've got a simple column of icons at the left for search, home, the Prime Video Store and so on, and there's a Netflix-style top 10 carousel so you can see what's trending.
The biggest and most useful difference for me is that it's now so much easier to see what's actually included in your Prime Video subscription and what'll cost extra. You'll see a blue tick in the description of shows and movies that won't cost you extra to see, and there's a shopping bag icon for anything that requires rental or purchase. I reckon that'll save me about twenty swears a week. There's still a lot of promoted content and third-party channels that Amazon wants you to sign up for, but it's not as overwhelming as it was before.
Amazon hasn't thrown any babies out with the bathwater, though. The brilliant X-Ray feature, which answers those "who's he again? What else was he in?" questions, is still here and so are your multiple profiles. But there is one downside for Apple TV users, and that's the lack of support for older models: the 2012, third-gen Apple TV isn't getting the new interface, although it'll still have full access to the Prime Video service.
The new Amazon app should be in your tvOS App Store today.
