Features
Parental controls
This feature locks configuration, not content. Knowing that before you turn it on saves you setting it up for a job it does not do. It is genuinely good at the job it does do.
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Open Settings › Parental controls and the first thing worth knowing is what the feature is for, because the name leads most people to expect something else.
What it locks, and what it does not
The PIN protects the screens where the app is configured. It does not filter, rate or block anything you watch.
| Locked | Not locked |
|---|---|
| The settings screen as a whole | Any channel in an enabled playlist |
| Settings › Playlists — adding, editing, deleting, disabling | The movies and shows catalogue |
| Settings › TV guide — sources and update behaviour | The programme guide |
| The parental controls screen itself | Search, favourites, recording |
So the honest description is a configuration lock. It stops a playlist being swapped for another one, stops your guide setup being undone, and stops the lock itself being switched off, which is a real and useful thing on a shared television. It is not a content filter, and it cannot become one: the app knows a stream's name and its group, and nothing whatever about what is inside it.
If you need content restriction
Restrict what gets onto the device instead of what the player shows. A playlist limited to the categories you are willing to have in the house, requested from your provider, is the only approach that actually works, and it survives the app being replaced with a different one.
Setting it up
Turn on On. Because no PIN exists yet, the app asks for one straight away under To set parental controls, create PIN, then again as Confirm PIN. Four digits, and the dialog submits on the fourth digit rather than waiting for a button.
Get the confirmation wrong and the four dots shake, the dialog resets to the first step, and you start over. No message explains what happened, so if it shakes twice, slow down rather than assuming something is broken.
The PIN is hashed with SHA‑256 before it is stored, so the digits are not written anywhere on the device. That is the right way round for security and it has one consequence you need to plan for, covered below.
Require PIN for: three that work, two that do not
Require PIN for lists five surfaces. This is the part of the screen where being told the truth saves you an evening.
| Option | State in this build |
|---|---|
| Settings | Enforced. The whole settings screen asks for the PIN before it draws anything. |
| Settings | Playlists | Enforced, when Settings is off. |
| Settings | TV Guide | Enforced, when Settings is off. |
| Group options | Stores your choice and nothing reads it. No prompt appears. |
| Channel options | The same. Nothing prompts. |
The last two are switches for the group and channel menu rows that are laid out but not yet connected; there is nothing behind them to protect, so the gate has nothing to gate. Leave them alone; turning them on changes nothing and turning them off loses you nothing.
Notice also that Settings and the two below it are deliberately exclusive. Switch Settings on and the app greys out Settings | Playlists and Settings | TV Guide, because locking the whole screen already covers both. Switch it off and the two become available again for a narrower lock.
Which to pick comes down to one question: do you want the other person changing playback settings and remote keys? Settings says no to everything. The narrower pair leaves buffer size, decoders, themes and key mappings open while protecting the two things that are painful to rebuild.
How long one entry lasts
Don't require PIN after unlocking decides how much typing the lock costs you day to day. Seven values:
- Always require — every protected screen, every time. Nothing is ever treated as unlocked.
- Until next app start — one entry covers the rest of the session.
- Until switching to not blocked channel — the unlock is dropped the moment you change channel.
- During 10 minutes, During 30 minutes, During 1 hour, During 2 hours — measured from the entry.
One property of the implementation matters more than the choice between them: the unlock is held in memory only and is never written to storage. A freshly started app process is always locked, whichever value you picked. That means During 2 hours does not survive the app being closed, and it means a timed window cannot be extended by leaving the app open in the background and coming back.
Until next app start is the sensible default for a household where the lock exists to stop accidents. Always require is the one to use when it exists to stop a person.
Picker or keyboard
PIN input method offers Picker and Keyboard. Picker takes the digits from the remote's number keys and D‑pad and keeps the on-screen keyboard out of the way; Keyboard brings up the usual text input.
On a phone or tablet the setting is ignored and you always get the keyboard, because Picker depends on a remote that is not there. The preference is stored either way, so the same backup restored onto a television will use what you chose.
The one thing to get right before you leave this screen
Write the PIN down somewhere that is not the device.
There is no recovery path, and this is not an oversight. The app has no account, contacts no server about your configuration, and stores a hash rather than the number, so there is nobody who can look it up for you and nothing on the device that could be read back. Change PIN asks for the current one first, and reaching that screen at all needs the current one, so a forgotten PIN cannot be replaced from inside the app.
With Require PIN for › Settings switched on, forgetting it locks you out of every setting permanently. Playback still works and the channels you already have keep playing, but you cannot add a playlist, fix the guide, remap a key or turn the lock off. Clearing the app's data through Android's own app settings is the only way back, and that takes your playlists, favourites and key mappings with it.
Which is the argument for doing taking a backup before you turn this on. A backup file taken beforehand turns a forgotten PIN from a rebuild into a five‑minute restore.
Turning it off
Open Settings › Parental controls, enter the PIN, and switch On off. Any active unlock is dropped at the same moment, so nothing stays open behind you.
The PIN itself is kept. Switching the feature back on later reuses it rather than asking for a new one, and Change PIN is how you replace it. It asks for the current PIN, then the new one twice. There is no row that removes the PIN outright, which is worth knowing if you were expecting the feature to reset itself completely when switched off.