With incredible room-filling sound, the HomePod is an excellent companion to the Apple TV. However, the extra punch that the HomePod provides may make dialogue hard to hear at times.
In these instances, you’ll want to enable Enhance Dialogue, so you won’t miss a crucial moment. We’ll show you how easy it is to give voices a boost during your next movie night.
What Is Enhance Dialogue?
Introduced in tvOS 17, Apple’s Enhance Dialogue option emphasizes speech in video when played through a HomePod. According to Apple, the feature works by separating dialogue from background noise and bringing it forward to the center audio channel to make it more prominent.
The new feature resides within Video and Audio settings on Apple TV, where you’re able to enable it by default for all videos. Since Enhance Dialogue is available as a system-wide setting through Apple TV, you can apply it to all forms of video—movies, shows, and even live feeds.
For most apps, you’ll also see the Enhance Dialogue option in the now-playing controls area during playback as soon as you update to tvOS 17. Unfortunately, some apps that currently use their own media players—like YouTube and YouTube TV— lack the option.
Enhance Dialogue supports single or dual speaker arrangements if youset up a stereo pair with two Apple HomePods. For the most part, Enhance Dialogue works its magic without impacting overall sound quality too much, so it is worth experimenting with if you need help hearing voices in your home theater setup.
Enhance Dialogue: What You’ll Need
In order to use the new Enhance Dialogue feature, your home theater must meet a few requirements. On the hardware front, you’ll need an Apple TV 4K, and a second-generation HomePod or later currently—support for the original HomePod and HomePod mini appear to be in the works, though.
If you have the right hardware, you’ll need toupdate your Apple TVandHomePodto tvOS 17, respectively. You’ll also need tomake your HomePod the default speaker for your Apple TVbefore the option will appear.
Finally, you’ll need your Apple TV’s Siri Remote on hand to navigate to the Enhance Dialogue setting. You can find it in Settings on your Apple TV or in the now-playing controls while watching a video.
How to Enable Enhance Dialogue
Screenshot/Photo by Christopher Close – No attribution required
If you prioritize voices over power, you’ll want to enable Enhance Dialogue for all your movies and shows. You can find this option in Settings on your Apple TV.
Following the above steps, your Apple TV and HomePod duo will automatically apply the Enhance Dialogue setting to all videos by default. This makes setting up your next binge-watching session a breeze.
How to Enable Enhance Dialogue While Playing a Video
If you just want to boost voices for one movie or show, you can do that via the now-playing controls on your Apple TV. It only takes a few clicks of the Siri Remote.
After your video ends, your Apple TV and HomePod’s audio will revert to the default settings. This method is perfect if you need help hearing dialogue in only certain movies and shows.
Never Miss a Moment With Enhance Dialogue
Thanks to the Enhance Dialogue feature, you’ll never need to rewind to figure out what a character is saying again. And despite giving voices a boost, you’ll still get to take advantage of the HomePod’s stellar sound.
