If your photos show up on the Apple TV and your partner’s never do, the reason is the default profile, and you cannot edit it. Apple’s documented way to change which account holds it is to remove that profile from the Apple TV 4K and add a different one.
Apple defines it plainly: “The default profile is the profile connected to an Apple Account that was used to set up Apple TV 4K.” Whoever ran setup got it, and it stayed with them.
What only the default profile gets
Three features are fenced off. In Apple’s wording, “Some features of Apple TV 4K are available only for the default profile, including syncing iCloud photos in the Photos app, using One Home Screen to keep your Home Screen consistent across multiple Apple TV 4K devices, and seeing Shared with You recommendations in the Apple TV app.”
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Read that in practice and it covers the screen saver and Photos library the whole room sees, the Home Screen layout that follows you between two Apple TVs, and the row of recommendations built from links people sent you. Apple limits the list to those three, so the rest of what a profile does is not fenced off this way.
Changing which account is the default
Apple gives four steps, and there is no edit button anywhere in them:
- Go to Settings on Apple TV 4K.
- Navigate to Profiles and Accounts, then select the name listed as Default.
- Select Remove Profile.
- Select Add Profile and enter a new Apple Account and password.
Decide first whether the default is worth moving at all. The honest answer for most households is that it should belong to whoever wants their photo library on the big screen, since that is the most visible of the three features and the one people notice is missing. If the complaint is only about recommendations or watch history, the default is not the problem and the next section is.
Go slowly on step three. Apple does not say what happens to purchases, subscriptions, app logins or the Home Screen layout attached to the profile you are removing, so this is not a change to make casually on a shared living room box. Have the password for the account you are adding in hand before you start, not after.
Switching profiles day to day
A profile switch is not the same as changing the default, and for most households it is the thing actually needed. Apple’s rule is that “Only one profile at a time can be active on Apple TV 4K.”
You can switch at startup from the profile screen, from Control Center by pressing and holding the TV button and navigating to the profile icon, or at Settings > Profiles and Accounts > Switch Current Profile. That gets each person their own recommendations and watch history without touching the default at all.
The Control Center route is the one to teach everyone in the house, because it takes about two seconds and does not involve leaving whatever is on screen. The startup prompt is the one people ignore and then wonder why the Apple TV is recommending someone else’s crime dramas back at them a fortnight later.
Before you assume the software is the problem
None of this is dated to tvOS 27 by Apple, and the profile pages sit in the general Apple TV guide rather than the release notes. If the box itself is the question, tvOS 27 leaves the Apple TV HD behind, and tvOS 27 for Apple TV 4K covers what the release did bring. For anyone weighing a purchase instead of a settings change, a new Apple TV with Siri AI is expected this fall.
