With multiple accounts, each of the users gets recommendations based on their usage, access to their purchased apps in the App Store, rented or purchased movies, games in Apple Arcade, and Up Next list in Apple Music (if they subscribe to Apple Music). Access isn’t limited to family members. If you use Apple TV in an office setting and need to support additional users occasionally, you can add them for an event and delete them afterward. Setting up multiple Apple TV accounts means you watch movies and TV shows that different members of the family buy.
How to Add an Apple TV User Account
In Apple’s world, each account has its own Apple ID. You can add multiple Apple accounts to your Apple TV. If you don’t have the Home app set up in your home or you use your Apple TV in an office or conference setting, you add Apple TV user accounts on the Apple TV using the Siri Remote. Here’s how: When the process is complete, the owner of the new Apple TV user account can enter the account credentials and use the Apple TV.
How to Switch Between User Accounts
The Apple TV recognizes only one account at a time, but it’s easy to switch between multiple accounts after you set up your Apple TV to support them.
What Next?
When you have multiple accounts enabled on your Apple TV, any purchases are charged to the active account. You don’t get to choose which Apple ID makes the purchase. Instead, you or the other users must switch to the correct account before buying anything. It’s also a good idea to keep an eye on how much data you have stored on your Apple TV. The Apple TV 4K comes in two sizes: 32 GB and 64 GB. When you have two or more people using an Apple TV, you are likely to see multiple apps, image libraries, and movies download to the device. That’s not unusual, of course — it’s part of why you want to support multiple users in the first place — but multiple users are more likely to fill up the Apple TV storage faster than a single user. To save space, disable automatic downloads for the accounts you’ve just added to Apple TV. The feature automatically downloads the tvOS equivalent of any app you purchase on any of your iOS devices to your Apple TV. This is useful if you want to try new apps, but if you need to manage a limited amount of storage space, switch this off. Automatic downloads are enabled and disabled through Settings > Apps, where you toggle Automatically Install Apps off and on. If you’re short on storage space, open Settings and go to General > Manage Storage to review which apps are taking up space on your Apple TV. You can delete the ones you no longer use by tapping the trash can next to the app.
Deleting Accounts
You may want to remove an account stored on your Apple TV, particularly if you use it in a conference, classroom, or meeting room deployment where temporary access may be needed. Open Settings > Users and Accounts > Current User and select the user account you want to remove. Click [User account name] > Remove User from Apple TV.
