My wife and I both use our Apple TV, but my account is the one that set it all up.

Is there a way she can purchase content on it without needing my Apple ID password?

You mean your iTunes Store account password.

Your Apple ID password (for your iCloud, security stuff) can be set differently.

There is some family sharing options for iTunes Store stuff (apps, music, video). I have not used it much, so not sure what all the possible configurations are.

I had no idea about this and wouldn't really know how to go about it. That's a little confusing.

This should help you get started Matt: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201085

I’ll try to stop back by later this weekend to follow up.

Currently researching how YouTube Red would work with a family plan and AppleTV. I feel about as lost as you do reading this Googlely stuff 😂

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately it doesn't look like there's going to be a very good way to do this. I don't like that we'll have to select a different user to see what stuff is in their account. We'll buy a movie for our son depending on which one of us is in front of the TV at the time, and we really don't want to have to remember which account a certain film is under. That's the whole reason I like Movies Anywhere so much. We used to purchase stuff on Amazon and Google Play, but all of that is under Movies Anywhere now. The iTunes stuff is too, but just for my account...

Ahh, okay, that helps knowing the goal of all of this.

Definitely sign up for the family plan, and get all the Apple IDs buying stuff bound into that one unit. The docs make it look harder then it is I believe, let me go test it this afternoon, I’ve got a family set up as part of unifying my two Apple IDs (long term Apple fan issues, not appplicable to new folks

In my experiences on iOS and Apple TV with the Family account, I’ve not seen much disruption, even with a few items bound to different iTunes IDs under the hood.

Thanks for checking it out. It just looked like I couldn't simply go to "purchased" and see all the things bought under both accounts (from what I read in the instructions). It looked like I had to choose a profile, and that's inconvenient. We're also very dependent on Movies Anywhere for my son's movies, so if I can't get them in there that would be a problem.

In the end, I might just have to give her my password. I mean, I trust her, but I still feel weird about giving a password out to anyone Also, it's an annoying one to enter, and she wouldn't be able to do it from her phone like I do every time.

Yeah, that is indeed what the instructions say at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201085

Yep, what Tony found there should work. And the other part of it will be the billing setup, you can let your wife use her iTunes/iCloud account, and have it auto bill to your card/payment method. Only child or flagged accounts need purchase appproval, and the stores block duplicate purchases/subscriptions for all family members and starts downloading/playing instead for free.

I switch the iCloud account to change what appears under the TV.app, along with what photos and music collection is available. Comes in handy with 2 or more units in the house, especially since home screens/app installs also sync via iCloud optionally. Can let each person catch up on their own shows in different rooms/AirPods. Or at times with an iPad or iPhone too, which has come in handy.

I’ve also temporarially signed into friends AppleTV units when traveling, and it’s easy to let my password be saved, or type it in when needed, then delete the account on departure. The guest suite in my apartment complex has an Apple TV for this reason, as well as Airplay for guests staying in it.

Kinda the opposite really. I followed your original link and then located the part of Apple's instructions that he said didn't work for him: The part where the instructions say, in order to see someone else's purchased content on the Apple TV, you have to go browsing into their folder manually instead of just having the content available.

He's saying he doesn't want his son to have to browse back and forth through Mom's and Dad's content in order to find the cartoon that one of them bought for him.

Yep, and no need for him to do so. The family setup allows a child account as well. I don’t have experience with how those work, though all of this overall only applies to the content through iTunes or other Apple stuff.

If it’s another app/service offering the kids content, all of this is moot and it’s however the app handles it. Netflix and Hulu for example have their own ways of setting up multiple user profiles on one account, and it asks “who is watching”.

If my partner wants to watch a movie I bought on iTunes, or is perhaps available by our HBO subscription, they can search for it via Siri or the Search app on the home sceeen. It plays, no matter who’s iCloud profile is signed on, or which AppleTV we are using. The iCloud profile switching is the closest thing to a “who is watching” when using the TV App, so we can individually use that to track what we are watching across Hulu/iTunes/etc...

Here’s a link explaining it better and with photos of how to set it up. This might be from an older tvOS release, so the UI may not match exactly now: https://www.imore.com/how-set-multiple-accounts-your-apple-tv

I hate to say it, but that's still not what I want.

I don't want to have to switch iTunes accounts just to see the movies available. Searching for them isn't enough, I want to see the collection in front of me.

I'm very familiar with multiple account setups and child accounts in other apps, but almost all of them handle this issue the way I'm looking for Apple to handle it. With Netflix and Hulu, as you mentioned, all of the accounts have access to the exact same content, they just help each user keep track of their preferred content and watch history. The child accounts for those services merely limit the content available to a smaller subset of the total content on the service.

This is why I'm so fond of Movies Anywhere. My wife and I see the same exact movies in our lists regardless of where they were purchased. I can limit our son's account to the rating level I want (G currently, although I wish I had more control).

My entire problem could be solved if Movies Anywhere would let me add additional accounts from one service, but it looks like they only allow one at a time at the moment.

*sigh* sorry for not speaking clearly about this. Let me try one last time, been a bit stressed out again. Nowhere did I mean to imply switching accounts was mandatory to achieve what is wanted here on the AppleTV. And I still have no clue what Movies Anywhere is, sorry.

Family Sharing is the name Apple uses for sharing within Families while allowing every individual their own seperation if they wish.

Family Sharing and iTunesIt lets you bind multiple iTunes accounts together, but the bindings can be broken later. Say your child wants some seperation when they go off to college for example and they want to start paying their own way. Setting this up is useful so that you can share content between folks individual devices as a Family. You can download apps your wife may have bought/downloaded before you switched to iPhone, etc... Again, this only applies to content bought directly from Apple, be it an individual music track, a TV episode, or a movie in the iTunes Store. As well as books, apps, etc in the other stores Apple runs.

Family Sharing and iCloud Accounts. Lets you bind multiple iCloud accounts together for paying one price, and having shared and split private spaces. 2TB of storage for example applies to everyone’s individual iCloud Photo Libraries, and creates an automatic shared “Family” album which can be used to share photos to everyone on the plan. For the AppleTV, switching the iCloud account switches who’s photo library, personal music library, and other things are by default accessible on the TV.app home screen of the AppleTV.

(Similar to switching between multiple “profiles” on a single Netflix billing account with all of Netflix content available to all profiles, or one profile being limited to “kids only”. Apple has a specific under 13 account that can be set up under Family Sharing that helps let your kid have their own devices with only their kid friendly content on it).

*edit* I should add, there’s no cost for this. Only that Family Sharing also applies to the optional paid for services of iCloud too. Prior to my partner and I joining our accounts, they paid for a $0.99/monthly 200MB a month plan that grew to 20GB, and I was on a tier above that recently grew to 1TB or something. When we merged, we simply paid similar to hit 2TB for all of our online iCloud space.

From CNET:

I think we still have miscommunication here. I was already aware of everything you laid out in that post. But what you don't address is the end result that I'm looking for:

What does the collection look like?

I currently have no family plan and have an Apple TV logged in as my iCloud account. If I create the family plan and add my wife to it, what becomes of the movie collection on the Apple TV? Are all of the movies the two of us purchased visible in one collection on the screen? Because Apple's own instructions appear to indicate that they don't.

Let me try the scenario one more time: I'm watching TV with my son, and buy him Despicable Me in iTunes on the Apple TV. Another day, I'm out of the house, and my wife is watching TV with my son and he wants to watch Despicable Me 2. Currently, she'd have to call me up and either ask for my password or I could buy it on my phone. That's a pain. I'd like for her to be able to buy it.

From what I understand of the family plan, yes, she could buy it on her account and view it on the Apple TV. But the next time my son wants to watch either Despicable Me 1 or 2, we would have to remember which profile it was purchased under. That's exactly what I don't want.


As John posted, it's a way to combine the movies you bought from various services. Before I had an Apple TV, I already had movies in the other three services because I'd bought from Google and Amazon, and I'd used vudu's digitization service for some of my DVD collection.

I use it because it lets me combine all the places where I've bought movies for my son (now Google, Amazon, and iTunes), and he can see all the movies available to him. As a bonus, it only lets him see the movies in his rating level. This is probably the best part, because before (on the Roku) I'd go into the movies I'd purchased on Google Play, and mixed in with Ratatouille and A Bug's Life was Logan and Mad Max Fury Road

Yes, iTunes has different profiles, but those seem to just display disparate collections of movies purchased by each user, not a combined collection that I can filter.

Frankly, another solution would be if there were simply a PIN code on movie purchases instead of the full iCloud password. That's what I could do on the Roku and it worked fine. My wife could buy movies on the Google Play account with a four digit PIN that was easy to share and to enter. I get tired of entering my iCloud account password every time on the Apple TV...

Ok, I guess I need to update tvOS and play with this