Apple has made it harder to use Apple TV 4K without an iPhone, and it’s a step back

Following a recent update to Apple’s terms and conditions, people are finding that their Apple TV is now blocked in certain ways if they don’t have an iPhone, as Apple requires you to approve the terms and conditions on your phone and doesn’t offer an alternative option.

One of the great things about the Apple TV 4K – and a big part of why we’re happy to rate it as the best streaming device out there – is that it’s never been at connected to the Apple ecosystem.

You’ll need an Apple ID to use it, yes, but you’ll need some sort of account for any other streaming box; more importantly, unlike the Apple Watch, you didn’t need an iPhone to use it. And the best features aren’t locked in if you don’t have an iPhone, as is the case with the AirPods. You can log in to your services and look away, in the best quality any comparable device offers.

But it looks like that is starting to change. You can see the least aggressive version of this issue in the image at the top of this page – that’s the message I received today in the Settings app on my Apple TV 4K (2021) on one of the user accounts, asking the user to update their Apple ID by holding their iPhone or iPad close to their Apple TV before I can use a small new feature.

Interestingly, I didn’t see the same message on my own personal user account, which means I’ve probably already accepted the new terms. I say “probably” because I don’t remember doing this but I use my iPhone quite often to control my Apple TV so it probably came up and I accepted without reading it like most people do with T&C changes.

What’s going on there doesn’t stop anyone from using the Apple TV at all now as it just prompts in the background and disables a little new feature after an update, so it’s a relatively minor problem – but some people report having much bigger problems.

The user who posted the tweet below was prompted to accept the new terms and conditions every time he turned on the Apple TV with “a device running iOS 16 or later, or iPadOS 16 or later”, and seemed unable to do anything else with it do until they did. Except, as they point out, don’t do it own Apple devices other than their Apple TV.

That’s the worst-case scenario of an approach like this: An expensive device that people have paid for and rely on is rendered completely useless.

I called this new approach a step back in the headline, because the Apple TV is popular with movie buffs who don’t otherwise own Apple products. I’ve recommended it to people, and I know people who only use one because of the quality of Apple’s movie purchases and rentals. This change would be a step backwards and would mean that I could no longer recommend it so easily.

But if you already have an Apple TV and you’ve been blocked from using it like in the image above, that’s not a step back, it’s a disaster.

However, that tweet has gone pretty viral, and it has caught the attention of an Apple Security Engineer as well as the Apple Support Twitter account, which has stepped in to respond to several people in the replies to the original tweet having various issues with their Apple TV.

So it looks like Apple is paying attention to the issues this change causes, and will hopefully provide another option in the future – how long that will take is of course anyone’s guess.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment, but have not heard back at time of publication.

In the meantime, if you want more new Apple stuff, check out the