Apple has started testing a feature that iPhone and iPad owners have wanted for a while: individual profiles inside the Apple TV app. The change showed up in iOS 27.2 beta 1 and iPadOS 27.2 beta 1, both released on September 16, 2026, and it means families sharing a device no longer have to share a single viewing history.
The headline feature is aimed squarely at parents. With profiles now available, they can set up a dedicated account for a child, restrict what that profile can watch based on age ratings, and keep their own “continue watching” list untouched by whatever the kids have been streaming.
It’s worth stressing this is still beta software, not the finished version of iOS 27.2 or iPadOS 27.2. Apple could tweak how the feature works before it ships widely, so what’s in the beta today isn’t necessarily what everyone gets down the line.
Setting up profiles happens through the account settings inside the Apple TV app, which is also where you switch between them once they exist. Each profile needs a name, a content rating, and a toggle indicating whether it belongs to a child. Open the app and you’re greeted with a screen showing all existing profiles, plus the option to create another.
For a child’s profile, parents get to decide which age ratings are allowed for both movies and TV shows, and the app enforces those limits automatically, hiding anything that falls outside the approved range. Just as importantly, whatever the child watches stays on their profile — it won’t bleed into the parent’s viewing progress or recommendations.
The practical upshot is simple: handing over an iPhone or iPad to your kid for a while no longer means coming back to find your watchlist scrambled with cartoons.
None of this is brand new territory for Apple. Profiles have existed on tvOS for some time, so this is really an extension of an existing system rather than a redesigned Apple TV app. But bringing it to iPhone and iPad matters because those are the devices most likely to get passed around the house for a quick episode or two, even briefly. It builds on other family-focused updates that arrived with iOS 27.
Not everyone shares their device, of course, and Apple has accounted for that too. People who use their iPhone or iPad on their own can simply turn off the profile-selection screen, skipping that extra tap every time they open the app.
As for when this actually reaches everyone, Apple hasn’t said. There’s no confirmed release date for the stable versions of iOS 27.2 or iPadOS 27.2, which means Apple TV profiles on iPhone and iPad remain a beta-only perk for now — something early testers can try, but the rest of us will have to wait for.
