Apple keeps improving its profiles feature on Apple TV 4K, and a change in tvOS 27 related to app access offers another reason to use profiles.
tvOS 27 lets you restrict users from launching specific apps
User profiles are a common feature of every major streaming service. They ensure viewers in a shared household can keep their viewing history and recommendations separate, among other benefits.
Apple has long had a profiles feature in tvOS, but it’s gotten a lot more useful in the past year thanks to several recent upgrades.
Now tvOS 27 has introduced another improvement. Per Apple’s official release notes:
Individual app controls in Settings let you block users from launching specific apps.
This change is clearly intended for parents.
Profiles for children can already limit the types of content they’ll see in the Apple TV app. That’s a useful feature, but it won’t keep your child from opening a different app with no such restrictions.
Top comment by f.-
Is there really no way to authenticate profile switching? Because if not, what’s the point? Right now, anyone holding the Siri Remote can just select any profile and jump right in without any authentication whatsoever. A kid could easily switch to their parent’s profile and bypass app restrictions entirely.
On top of that, tvOS has had multi-user support for years now, yet major apps like YouTube still don't integrate with it natively. Why is that?
Now though, parents can open Settings and block certain apps from being launched at all when a child’s profile is active.
It’s a good step toward making profiles as full-featured as they deserve to be, and aligns with Apple’s recent focus in iOS 27 on upgrading parental controls.
On the subject of profile improvements, iOS 27.2 and iPadOS 27.2 will bring Apple’s profile system to iPhone and iPad for the first time. You can read about that change here.
Do you use profiles on your Apple TV? What new features do you hope get added? Let us know in the comments.
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