Sky is reworking the software that runs its Sky Glass TVs and Sky Stream boxes, and the changes go deeper than a fresh coat of paint. The redesigned Sky OS, which is also coming to the Sky Go app, was shown to the press at Sky’s headquarters, with What Hi-Fi? publishing its first look on 2 October 2026. As of October 2026 the new software is in a customer trial rather than on general release, and Sky says it will be rolled out by the end of 2026.
Three things stand out: a new way of getting around, a bigger role for recordings, and an AI voice assistant that can actually hold a conversation about what you watch.
A navigation bar on top
The most obvious change is a navigation bar running along the top of the screen, a look What Hi-Fi? likened to Apple’s Liquid Glass design. It carries five destinations:
- Home, now opening with a carousel of curated new shows and films that plays a short trailer when you select one
- TV Guide, where channels are shown by their logos instead of plain text, and the first click goes straight to full-screen video with no picture-in-picture step
- My Library, which replaces the old Playlist section and holds your watchlist and recordings
- Sport
- My Account
On the far left sits a shortcut provisionally called Recents. It gathers what you are currently watching, what you have saved and the channels you opened most recently, so you no longer have to dig down the home page to pick up where you left off.
Recordings move to the front
Recording has always been part of Sky’s offer, but the update makes it far more visible. Recents greets you with the shows you have set to record, and choosing a programme in the TV Guide brings up three options: record the series, record the show, or add it to your watchlist. That level of control helps with sport, for example letting an F1 fan capture the Grand Prix without also filling up on practice sessions. Recordings are kept separately for each profile.
Sky quotes room for up to 1,000 hours of recordings before anything has to be deleted, though tidy-minded users can still remove single episodes or whole shows. Not everything can be recorded: during the demo, the option did not appear for BBC One, whose programmes remain available through the BBC iPlayer app.
An assistant that remembers
The voice assistant has been upgraded so you can, in Sky’s words, “search naturally, ask questions about content and discover personalised recommendations”. It takes your viewing history into account: asked to “show me action movies that I haven’t watched yet”, it returned a list of matches. Follow-up questions such as whether Castaway won any awards are answered using third-party sources like Wikipedia.
Guardrails keep it on topic, so it only discusses films and TV and will decline questions about politics or what to cook for dinner. Holding the voice button on the remote now brings up a colourful animated wheel to show that the assistant is listening.
Taken together, the changes aim to cut down on clicks and make Sky’s interface feel faster and more personal. Owners of Sky Glass and Sky Stream should see them by the end of 2026, once the trial is over.
