The new Apple TV 4K has 8GB of RAM, twice what the previous box had, but an app still cannot use more than 2GB of it. The system closes any tvOS app whose process allocates past that line, so the extra memory does nothing for games or apps today.
The box pairs an A19 chip with 128GB of storage and costs $299. The memory jump sits oddly with the unchanged limit, and it matters most for games, since Apple promotes the Apple TV as a games machine and a demanding title reaches 2GB quickly.
In 9to5Mac’s own test, tvOS shut an app down the moment its process asked for more than two gigabytes. Querying the developer call os_proc_available_memory gives the same answer, 2GB, which is what the third-generation box returns too.
Streaming apps, which are most of what people run on the box, need far less memory than that, so most owners will notice nothing. The people hurt are game developers. Fans who port large games to run on devices from an Apple TV to an iPhone, a group that relies on AI tools to do it, had hoped the new box would lift the ceiling, and some of their projects have already hit the 2GB wall.
One theory is that Apple is holding back part of the RAM for its Siri AI models, which the new box and the two generations before it can all run. That explanation looks thin: the heaviest Siri tasks are handed to a connected iPhone or a server, and the older boxes manage the same features with less memory. It is unclear whether the cap is deliberate or an oversight.
The cap is enforced by tvOS, not by the chip, so any change would have to arrive in a software update. When the box launched the 8GB figure itself was already a talking point.
