Blog · August 1, 2026
How to play kid-safe music on your Apple TV
The Apple TV is usually the best speaker in the house. It's wired to the soundbar, everyone's in the room, and the album art is the size of a window. It is also the device where the least thought has gone into what the kids can play, because nobody thinks of the TV as a music player until a seven-year-old is holding the remote.
We hit this at home. Everything I'd done to keep the music sane lived on the phone, and then a kid would press the wrong thing in the living room and suddenly the whole house is listening to something I'd have to explain.
The problem is that the switch is in the wrong place
Apple does have an explicit-content toggle. The trouble is where it lives: on the account, not on the device. Turn it off and it's off everywhere, for everyone. Your Apple TV and your headphones are the same account, so you're choosing between a locked-down house and an open one. There's no "strict in the living room, normal in my AirPods."
There used to be a per-device setting for HomePod. Apple moved it to the account and people noticed, mostly by complaining about it on forums years after the fact.
And even switched on, the explicit filter only removes songs Apple has flagged. It has nothing to say about a song that's perfectly clean and just isn't something you want playing at dinner, or an album where one track is fine and the next one isn't. Flagged and unwanted are different categories.
What we did instead
Songkrate is now on Apple TV, and it's free with your subscription.
It's the same idea as the phone app, on a bigger screen. You approve songs on your iPhone, one at a time, from the whole Apple Music catalog. Those songs are what exists. On the TV your kid gets their own profile, their own albums, their own favorites, and album art big enough to browse from the couch with the Siri Remote. There's no wider catalog behind it, because there's nothing to search past the edge of what you added. Switching profiles asks for your parent PIN.
Setting it up takes about a minute:
- Search for Songkrate in the App Store on your Apple TV and install it.
- Sign in. Scan the code on screen with a phone that's already signed in, or
type your email and password.
- Pick a profile and press play.
Your profiles and approved music are already there. They live on your account, not on a particular device, so anything you approve on the phone tonight is on the TV tonight.
Two honest caveats. The Apple TV needs to be signed in to Apple Music, because that's what's actually playing the audio; without it the library still browses but songs won't start. And this is a music app, not a video app. It doesn't do anything about what your kids watch.
Why the living room turns out to be the point
I built the phone version first because that's where the problem announced itself. The TV was an afterthought, and it took a user asking for it before I took it seriously.
He was right. Music on a phone is one kid with headphones. Music on the TV is the whole family in one room, which is how most of the music I loved as a kid actually reached me, coming out of a speaker in a room where other people were doing something else. That's a better thing to hand a kid than a private feed, and it's worth making sure the speaker in the middle of the house only plays what you'd want playing.
I'm Pedro. Songkrate turns the Apple Music subscription you already pay for into a kid-safe music player. You pick every song from the full catalog, your kids get their own profiles and their own player on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, and nothing you didn't approve exists in it. No editors, no algorithm, no surprises. $4.99 a month after the free trial. Try it here.
Try it with your own kids
Songkrate turns the Apple Music you already pay for into a player that only has the songs you approved. Free trial, then $4.99/month.
Download on the App Store