If you have family and friends arriving this holiday season, take a moment to protect your streaming services by setting up a guest profile.
Why You Should Make a Guest Profile
I subscribe to plenty of streaming services, like Netflix and Disney+, and I’m more than happy to pass the remote to visitors to keep them entertained—especially younger family members who don’t want to sit around the dinner table discussing boring, adult topics.
I used to only have one profile on each service, with my curated watchlist, shows in progress, and no parental controls. That’s fine when it’s just me watching, but it falls down when guests come to stay.
It means that a kid could watch something inappropriate for their age, half-finished movies linger in the “Continue Watching” list, and the recommendation algorithm gets screwy after someone streams endless episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants.
That’s why I’ve learned from my mistake and now have two guest profiles: one PIN-protected for adults, the other content-locked for children. This is free and easy to achieve on most major streaming services.
How to Create a Guest Profile
The exact method to create a new profile varies per service, but you can generally find the option within your account settings.
On the likes of Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video, you can log in on the web, hover your profile picture in the top-right, and select “Add Profile” or similar. Do this process twice if necessary, enabling child protection on one (called “Junior Mode” on Disney+, for example.)
For full instructions, see our guides for Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, and Max.
The one place this gets fiddly is Apple TV+, which doesn’t support multiple profiles on a single account. While you can share your subscription with others, it involves setting up individual accounts with Apple’s Family Sharing. That’s not suitable for occasional guest use. Instead, you’re better off using Apple TV+’s parental controls to restrict access to adult-oriented content.
When the holidays are over and peace returns to your home, you can either nuke the profiles or keep them around for next year.
