ATV4 always asks for password

Do you have any Restrictions or Parental controls enabled? I believe there is a bug where enabling restrictions can cause password prompts before playing purchased content. If you have restrictions then turn them off and reboot the ATV. I think there was one post where the person did a full reset to resolve the issue after turning off restrictions.

Hi

Go to itunes on an apple device bottom of page Apple ID

Sign out then Sign back in again .

Cheers

Brian

I called Apple Support today. The person didn't seem to be aware of this issue, we tried a few things like logging out of my Apple ID and back in again, restarting the Apple TV also turning the off 2 factor authentication.

None of these things worked.

We then tried erasing settings (which deleted all apps and settings) and set up as new. It then worked ok. I turned 2 factor authentication back on and it still worked ok.

A While later I discovered that Siri wasn't working, and restarted the Apple TV (hold down the menu and home buttons until the LED flashes on the Apple TV). After the restart Siri worked ok BUT the Apple TV again kept requiring the Apple ID password and once again nothing fixed it.

Clearly it's a bug, but I'm not sure if the trigger is Turning on 2 factor authentication and then restarting the Apple TV , or whether just restarting the Apple TV is the trigger.

To anyone else with this issue: do you have 2 factor authentication turned on? To those not having this problem, have you eve restarted your Apple TV, and d you have 2 factor? Is anyone not having this problem but has restrictions turned on?

Presumably it's not a common issue, so I'd really like to pinpoint the trigger so that we can report it as a bug so Apple can work on a fix. Its quite a serious problem - needing to enter a password before playing any previously purchased TV show.

I Had to log into the Manage My Apple ID page of the Apple web site. However it didn't fix the problem. I had to erase all settings. What I don't know at this stage is whether turning off 2 factor, then erasing all settings would provide a permanent solution if 2 factor is left off. Reinstalling everything and reentering all app passwords is a bit time consuming. Also I don't want to have to keep 2 factor turned off.

Another thing that I'm in the UK, I wonder whether regional settings are part of the problem?

It seems from further troubleshooting that this problem is triggered by switching on Restrictions. Unfortunately, it also persists even after turning Restrictions Off.

I've called AppleCare twice about this - the first time I reset the Apple TV to factory settings, the second time we did a Restore which re-downloaded the operating system. Both times it solved the problem until I had finished setting everything up. The first time around it seemed to start after I had restarted the Apple TV when I found that Siri wasn't working. The second time, I kept checking if it asked for the Apple ID before any changes that I made - and as soon as I turned on Restrictions the problem appeared.

I have filed a bug report to Apple through the Feedback page for Apple TV.

The feedback page is

http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html

In the meantime, I have identified the specific setting that triggers this problem. It's in Restrictions > Apps. Setting this to 9+ (I haven't tried other age settings) is the cause of the problem. Unfortunately once it's turned on, nothing resolves it except Erase All Settings. My plan now is to do an Erase All Settings and then leave the Apps set to All and see if all other restrictions work ok.

I spoke to a senior advisor this morning who will be forwarding the information to Apple's engineers.

Thanks for the work to find the trigger and for posting this and filing the bug report 🙂

I have the same problem and thanks to you guys I have a workaround.