Apple TV’s InSight feature is ready to take on Amazon Prime Video’s X-Ray

We have a new developer beta of tvOS 18, the software that runs on Apple TV devices, and with it we discover a major new feature. InSight is Apple’s answer to Amazon Prime Video’s X-Ray, which provides quick and easy access to who is in a scene and what music might be playing alongside it.

Aside from a few basic differences in the user interface, like fonts and design elements (InSight definitely looks Apple-esque, and X-Ray retains Prime Video’s less elegant motif), they work fundamentally the same way. While a movie or show is playing, you can pause or tap the button (the latter takes you straight to the info) to see thumbnails of the actors onscreen, including their real name (or stage name, we assume) and character name. Click on any of the thumbnails and you’ll get more information about the actor, as well as easy links to other movies and shows they’ve appeared in, as well as roles they’ve played in other capacities. Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein, for example, has movie and TV thumbnails, and he also has producing and writing thumbnails.

And Apple handles this very smartly. While all the related movie and TV thumbnails are the same style, where they take you depends on where the content is actually available. That could be content available on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, or Plex, or another platform that’s compatible with Apple’s TV app. (That likely means you won’t find any related content that’s only available on Netflix, which remains a barrier.)

InSight also lets you access music playing on the screen. Clicking on it doesn’t automatically open the song, but it does add it to a “Saved Songs” playlist in Apple Music. It’s very nicely done.

The InSight feature is currently only available in the tvOS 18 developer beta, so those who aren’t tech-savvy will have to wait a while before it appears in the TV app on Apple TV hardware. And there’s always the possibility that changes will be made before then.

But so far so good.