Breaking Down Why Apple TVs Are Privacy Advocates’ Go-To Streaming Device

Scharon Harding, writing at Ars Technica:

“Just disconnect your TV from the Internet and use an Apple TV box.”

That’s the common guidance you’ll hear from Ars readers for those seeking the joys of streaming without giving up too much privacy. Based on our research and the experts we’ve consulted, that advice is pretty solid, as Apple TVs offer significantly more privacy than other streaming hardware providers.

But how private are Apple TV boxes, really? Apple TVs don’t use automatic content recognition (ACR, a user-tracking technology leveraged by nearly all smart TVs and streaming devices), but could that change? And what about the software that Apple TV users do use — could those apps provide information about you to advertisers or Apple?

In this article, we’ll delve into what makes the Apple TV’s privacy stand out and examine whether users should expect the limited ads and enhanced privacy to last forever.

tvOS is perhaps Apple’s least-talked-about platform. (It surely has orders of magnitude more users than VisionOS, but VisionOS gets talked about because it’s so audacious.) But it might be their platform that’s the furthest ahead of its competition. Not because tvOS is insanely great, but it’s at least pretty good, and every other streaming TV platform seems to be in a race to make real the future TV interface from Idiocracy. It’s not just that they’re bad interfaces with deplorable privacy, it’s that they’re outright against the user.

★ Sunday, 8 June 2025