Coming Soon: What’s Next on Apple TV and Apple Arcade in May 2026

It’s a new month and it’s F1 season, which means it’s time for a roundup of everything coming to Apple TV and Apple Arcade in May 2026.

This month we’re adding F1 and other sports airing on Apple TV this month, starting with tomorrow’s Miami Grand Prix, and continuing below with the Canadian Grand Prix and Friday Night Baseball at the end of the month.

Let’s dive in.

F1: The Miami Grand Prix (Tomorrow, May 3)

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Sunday will see the very first U.S.-based race of the 2026 Formula 1 season in Miami, Florida. In addition to Sunday’s race, Apple TV subscribers can watch qualifying round coverage beginning today at 3:25 PM Eastern U.S. time, with qualifying beginning at 4 PM and the race itself beginning at 4 PM Eastern Sunday.

Apple has also created a 3D view of the race track in Apple Maps, a Maps Guide of local hot spots for race attendees, an Apple Music playlist that Apple says captures the energy and excitement of F1, and many other race weekend tie-ins you can check out in this Apple press release.

Add to Your Calendar:

Apple Arcade

Apple Arcade is debuting four games this month on Thursday, May 7:

Perchang World (Release Date: May 7)

The game I’m most excited about this month is Perchang World, an update to a classic indie game first released about a decade ago. The version debuting on Apple Arcade for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV is an evolution of the original physics puzzler that requires you to use a variety of switches and platforms to guide balls through the game’s brightly-colored, playful environments. The game is narrated by British comedian James Acaster, who judging from the game’s trailer, adds a great sense of humor and fun.

Add to Your Calendar:

Ultimate 8 Ball Pool+ (Release Date: May 7)

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

If you’re a fan of pool, Ultimate 8 Ball Pool+, an Arcade adaptation of the HypGames’ App Store version will be available for Arcade subscribers on May 7 too. The game features photorealistic graphics and 3D perspectives as well as one-on-one multiplayer, tournaments, trickshot challenges, and more.

Add to Your Calendar:

Nick Jr. Replay! and Good Pizza, Great Pizza+

Next Thursday, Apple Arcade will also release Nick Jr. Replay!, a family-friendly game starring characters from Nick Jr. shows like Dora the Explorer and Blue’s Clues & You! and over 50 minigames designed to help kids with math, reading, art, and other learning skills. Finally, Good Pizza, Great Pizza+ is an adaptation of an App Store game, but without In-App Purchases. The game is a cooking simulator where your goal is to take orders, bake pizzas and get them to customers.

Apple TV Shows and Movies

Unconditional (May 8, 2026)

Unconditional promises to start May off with a bang. The brand new thriller follows Orna, whose daughter Gali is arrested for drug smuggling in Russia. The eight-episode show follows Orna as she fights for her daughter’s freedom, which pulls her into the dangerous criminal underground of Moscow.

Add to Your Calendar:

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed (May 20, 2026)

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a dark comedy/thriller starring Tatiana Maslany as a newly divorced mom who believes she witnesses a murder. Deciding to investigate what happened, Maslany’s character, Paula, is drawn into what appears to be a dangerous larger conspiracy, while also dealing with a battle over custody of her child.

Add to Your Calendar:

Star City (May 29, 2026)

Star City is Apple’s For All Mankind spinoff. Based on the same alternative history events where the Russians land on the moon before America, the show follows the story from the perspective of the Russians. The eight-episode show follows Russia’s cosmonauts, scientists, engineers, and government officials as they race to the moon.

Add to Your Calendar:

Propeller One-Way Night Coach (May 29, 2026)

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Propeller One-Way Night Coach is an Apple Original movie based on a 1997 children’s book of the same name. The film, which is John Travolta’s first directorial credit, follows Jeff, who loves airplanes, and his mother as they travel to Hollywood. Their one-way journey transforms everyday travel into an adventure filled with an unusual cast of characters.

Add to Your Calendar:

Live Sports Events

Canadian Grand Prix (May 22-24, 2026)

Source: [F1](https://www.formula1.com/en/racing/2026/canada).

Source: F1.

Round 5 of the 2026 Formula 1 season will take place against the skyline of Montreal, Canada from May 22-24. The semi-permanent 4.36 km track is on Île Notre-Dame, a man-made island in the St. Lawrence River. F1 racing on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve began in the late 70s and has a reputation of unpredictable weather that can cause chaos on the track.

Add to Your Calendar:

Friday Night Baseball

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

It’s hard to believe that Apple is in the midst of its fifth Friday Night Baseball season. In May, viewers will be treated with the following two game lineup every Friday:

  • May 8
    • Minnesota Twins at Cleveland Guardians (7:00 PM Eastern)
    • St. Louis Cardinals at San Diego Padres (9:30 PM Eastern)
  • May 15
    • Toronto Blue Jays at Detroit Tigers (6:30 PM Eastern)
    • New York Yankees at New York Mets (7:00 PM Eastern)
  • May 22
    • Houston Astros at Chicago Cubs (2:00 PM Eastern)
    • Detroit Tigers at Baltimore Orioles (7:00 PM Eastern)
  • May 29
    • Minnesota Twins at Pittsburgh Pirates (6:30 PM Eastern)
    • Philadelphia Phillies at Los Angeles Dodgers (10:00 PM Eastern)

That’s it for May. I’m personally looking forward to Perchang World and Star City the most. If you’re a Club MacStories Plus or Premier member, drop by the TV and Movies channel in Discord to chat about what you’re looking forward to from Apple TV this month, and be sure to listen to MacStories Unwind, where I’m sure Federico and I will cover some of these shows and games, along with our other media recommendations every week.

Podcast Rewind: App Gaps Filled, GameCubes Emulated, Quick Reads Released, Holidays Bridged, and Craig Hockenberry Interviewed

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week, John and Federico cover Apple’s executive transition, follow up on OpenAI’s super app, share the apps they’re looking for, and give each other suggestions on how to fill their app gaps.

On AppStories+, we round up the tools we’ve built for ourselves that fill gaps we haven’t found apps for.

NPC: Next Portable Console

This week, OnePlus makes a phone controller with only triggers, Tico 0.7.0 brings GameCube and Wii emulation to the Switch, Ayn raises prices, and Steam comes to Android via ROCKNIX.

On NPC XL, Brendon shares his experience installing ROCKNIX and Steam on the Ayn Odin 2 M

First, Last, Everything

Jonathan is joined by Craig Hockenberry, a longtime software designer and developer at The Iconfactory, known for building influential Mac and iOS apps like Twitterific, Tapestry, and Tot.

Comfort Zone

Matt has released Quick Reads, Niléane has entered her M5 (and Jonny Ive) era, and the whole gang throws their monitors away in favor of that laptop life.

On Cozy Zone, the gang tier lists the Olympic logos from 2000 through 2036. (Yes, 2036!)

MacStories Unwind

This week, Federico and John get ready for the summer with a conversation about vacation bridging, bringing your dog to the beach, and cooling off in the mountains. Then, John shares a blockbuster movie recommendation and a movie bundle deal.

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Apple Reports Q2 2026 Revenue of $111.2 Billion

Today, Apple reported its 2026 Q2 earnings, posting quarterly revenue of $111.2 billion.

Apple CEO Tim Cook had this to say of the results:

Today Apple is proud to report our best March quarter ever, with revenue of $111.2 billion and double-digit growth across every geographic segment. iPhone achieved a March quarter revenue record, fueled by such extraordinary demand for the iPhone 17 lineup. During the quarter, Services achieved yet another all-time record, and we were excited to introduce remarkable new products to our strongest lineup ever. That included the addition of the iPhone 17e and the M4-powered iPad Air, along with the launch of MacBook Neo, which is captivating customers all around the world.”

As CFO Kevan Parekh noted in Apple’s press release, today’s results include the generation of over $28 billion in operating cash flow.

Going into today’s earnings call CNBC reported that analysts expected strong iPhone growth:

Analysts expect 15% year-over-year revenue growth at Apple from $95.4 billion a year earlier. The main driver is the iPhone, with Wall Street looking for a 20% jump in annual sales, thanks largely to the popularity of the iPhone 17, which went on sale last year.

GameHub’s Desktop Beta Promises to Expand Mac Gaming→

If you follow our show NPC: Next Portable Console, you probably know about GameHub, an app from controller maker GameSir. GameHub first appeared on Android, where it has become one of the hottest recent developments in handheld gaming because it lets you play Windows PC games on Android devices. That’s not something that’s possible on iOS or iPadOS, which Apple tightly controls through the App Store, but macOS is a different story altogether, which is why GameSir is bringing GameHub to the Mac.

Currently in beta, GameHub isn’t the first to bring PC games to the Mac using a software compatibility layer, but it’s one of the more user-friendly implementations, thanks to tight integration with Steam and the Epic Games Store. In fact, GameHub itself is a fork of the Winlator open-source project. And, while it’s still early days for PC games on Android and even earlier for PC games on the Mac, GameHub’s beta is making steady progress as Russ Crandall of Retro Game Corps showed off in his most recent YouTube video:

Of the 20 games Crandall tried, none of which are otherwise available on the Mac, about 60% were playable. As on Android, some games required some tweaking to get them working, but overall, the results were impressive, especially when it comes to games like Pragmata, which has only been out for about a week.

What GameHub for Mac demonstrates is just how capable Apple silicon is. The compatibility layers built to run Windows games on Android, and now the Mac, are complex, but at its core, it’s the sheer horsepower of ARM-based processors that makes this possible, regardless of the OS they run. It also makes me wonder why Apple doesn’t turn its Game Porting Toolkit that helps developers translate PC games to the Mac into a consumer product. It’s been done before with Whisky, a SwiftUI wrapper around the Game Porting Toolkit and Wine, but that project is no longer maintained. It strikes me as a great way to expand the gaming universe on the Mac and encourage more developers to support macOS directly. Maybe we’ll hear something from Apple on the topic at WWDC in June.

In the meantime, you can visit the GameHub website and join its Discord server where you’ll find instructions on joining the beta. And, if you’re interested in learning more about how GameHub and similar solutions work on Android and Mac, a good place to start is with NPC, Episode 48, Steam Emulation on Android Gets Real.

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Cronos: The New Dawn Showcases the Mac’s MetalFX and Ray Tracing

Source: Bloober Team.

Source: Bloober Team.

Top-tier games continue to roll out on Apple’s platforms at a steady clip. Recently, Crimson Desert landed on the Mac on the same day as other platforms, and then last week, Control: Ultimate Edition added support for the iPhone and iPad, joining the Mac version that was released last year.

Today, Cronos: The New Dawn, a survival horror game by Bloober Team, joins the Mac gaming scene via Steam. In a post-apocalyptic, retro-tech setting, you play as the Traveller, who has been sent on a mysterious mission by a group called The Collective. Not long after you set out on your quest, you realize you aren’t alone. The landscape is littered with corpses that merge into mutant, zombie-like enemies that you have to fight off with a combination of weapons and melee attacks.

Cronos debuted on the Xbox, PlayStation 5, Switch, PC, and Linux last September, but I didn’t play it on any of those platforms. Instead, I dove in fresh when I got the chance to try it on the Mac, thanks to a few days’ early access. I haven’t played very far into the story yet, but despite not being a huge fan of horror games, I was immediately captivated by the game’s incredible sound design, retro tech vibe, and creepy story.

With limited time, I focused on the game’s performance on two Macs: my M1 Mac Studio connected to a 4K ASUS display and an M4 Max MacBook Pro, both on its own and connected to a BenQ 5K display I’ve been testing. As I expected, the difference between the two Macs was noticeable, showing just how far Apple silicon has come in terms of gaming. My Mac Studio may still pull its weight when it comes to productivity tasks, but the M4 Max MacBook Pro operates on an entirely different level.

Bloober Team is no stranger to Apple silicon, having released The Medium with Metal 3 support for Apple silicon in 2023. The experience shows in the studio’s incorporation of both MetalFX upscaling and hardware-accelerated ray tracing in Cronos.

By default, Cronos’ MetalFX and ray tracing settings are turned off, but both are worth trying along with frame generation because they make a big difference. After some experimentation on my M1 Max Mac Studio, I landed on a pretty consistent 70-75 FPS at 1440p with the help of MetalFX and frame generation. Hardware-accelerated ray tracing isn’t supported by Apple’s M1 family of chips, so that wasn’t an option at all.

As you’d expect, performance was much better on the M4 Max MacBook Pro, which does support hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Starting with the default settings and playing on the MacBook Pro’s display, I turned on ray tracing, MetalFX, and frame generation and got a consistent 55-65 FPS, and turning off ray tracing bumped that more consistently into the 60s. The game struggled a little bit when I connected to an external 5K display, but with a few more tweaks, it was running well, too.

What’s clear is that Cronos pushes the Mac’s hardware hard and that Apple’s latest gaming technologies make a big difference in performance. On the MacBook Pro, the fans spin up loudly soon after starting the game; plus, if you don’t have your laptop plugged in, you may be prompted to switch to Low Power Mode pretty quickly. However, the overall experience on Apple’s most recent hardware has come a long way since the M1 chipset, and with every hardware revision, more games like Cronos become viable. And whether you play it on the Mac or not, Cronos: The New Dawn is worth checking out for a creepy futuristic good time.

Cronos: The New Dawn is available on Steam and is 30% off until May 1.

Pedometer++ 8: Glimmers of an Apple Wrist Renaissance

Today, when you mention David Smith’s name, most people probably think of Widgetsmith, his runaway success that caught fire on TikTok and is still going strong today. But for me, Pedometer++ is what comes to mind first. Still a couple of years away from releasing my own apps or writing at MacStories, I was fascinated by the dynamics that made the app a success when it debuted in 2013. Part of that success was how quickly David got it onto the App Store in the wake of the iPhone 5s and its M7 coprocessor that made step counting possible.

It didn’t hurt that Pedometer++’s initial release was also free (and the core features still are), but the app’s elegant, simple design played a big part, too. Pedometer++ appealed to a wide audience who appreciated its focus and frequent updates that systematically took it from basic step counting to badges, confetti, workouts, maps, and more. It’s a great example of a developer who jumped on a new hardware feature quickly with a focused initial release and then relentlessly iterated year after year without sacrificing what made that first version a favorite of so many people.

Today’s 8.0 release is focused first and foremost on the Apple Watch, which is the other aspect of so many of David’s apps that I appreciate. Few people know the ins and outs – and frustrations – of watchOS (née WatchKit) development like David does. But despite the platform’s rudimentary beginnings, David has stuck with it, making the best watch version of Pedometer++ that was possible with each turn of the SDK and, later, OS. That’s as true with version 8.0 of the app as it has ever been.

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Remodex Is the Best Codex Remote Client for iOS (Until OpenAI Releases an Official Codex Mobile App)

Remodex for iOS.

Remodex for iOS.

Various OpenAI employees and members of the Codex team have been hinting at a native Codex app for iOS lately. While I very much hope that’s in the cards – especially if the project involves connecting to a remote Mac running the full Codex app – I wanted to highlight an indie utility I’ve been using a lot lately to access my Codex setup on my Mac Studio server from my iPhone.

The app is called Remodex, and it was created by Italian indie developer Emanuele Di Pietro. Remodex, as the name suggests, acts as a remote for the Codex CLI installed on a macOS computer, and it lets you operate your existing projects and chats with a UI that is reminiscent of the official Codex app for Mac. Even better, Remodex is not based on some hack-y workaround: it’s entirely powered by OpenAI’s official (and open-source) Codex App Server.

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