Profiles

A profile is a person. Each one gets its own watch history, Keep Watching row, favourites, personal collections, playlists, home screen arrangement, and theme. Nobody has to scroll past somebody else’s half-finished series.

Settings → Users and Profiles.

Making one

Give it a name and pick a face from the built-in set. That is the whole thing. A child does not need an email address and does not need an account.

The server starts with one profile. Rename it to your own name; nothing about it changes and its history is kept.

Who is watching

When a server has more than one profile, apps ask who is watching before showing anything. Picking a profile is not a login, and on your own network it never asks for a password.

Apps remember the choice on that device, so the Apple TV in a child’s room stops asking after the first time. Switching is always available from the top bar or the settings tab.

What follows a profile between devices

Nearly everything. Set it in a browser and your Apple TV has it, because these live with the profile rather than on the device:

• Which theme you use
• Your home screen arrangement, and which rows are hidden
• What the big banner at the top draws from
• How each library and collection sorts for you
• Whether the next episode plays automatically
• Your streaming quality preference

What stays on the device is anything only that device could know: the volume, whether it is on Wi-Fi or mobile data, and which profile it last used.

Adults with their own accounts

Two different things, often confused.

• A profile is local to your server. It is how you separate people who share a house and a TV.
• An account is how someone reaches your server from somewhere else, and how they sign in on their own phone.

On your own network, nobody needs an account. Everyone picks a profile and watches.

For an adult who also wants to watch from their own place, invite them properly. They get their own account, sign in on their own devices with their own password, and get their own profile on your server. Nobody shares a password with anybody. That is covered in Sharing your server.

A shared TV can hold several signed-in adults at once, each having paired it from their own phone, and the who-is-watching screen shows everyone’s profiles together.

Themes

Six built-in looks, chosen per person: Midnight, Nebula, Carbon, Sunset, Forest, and Royal. Set yours in ⚙ Settings → Appearance, and it applies on every screen you use.

If none of them suit, the person who runs the server can build one. Settings → General → Manage themes opens an editor for colours, and it checks contrast as you type. It will refuse to save a combination nobody could read, which is the same check the server does anyway. A custom theme becomes available to every profile on the server, so a household can have its own look.

Deleting a profile

Settings → Users and Profiles → the profile → Delete. Its watch history and personal collections go with it. Shared collections and anything in the library are untouched.

You cannot delete the last remaining profile.

Locking a profile, and limiting one

Two separate jobs with two separate controls, both in this section:

• A PIN stops other people in the house opening your profile and watching as you.
• A rating cap limits what a profile can see at all.

Both are covered in Parental controls.