Household viewing

Household viewing lets two or more tofa accounts share a TV. The TV stays signed in to the account that set it up, and anyone else in your household can pick themselves from Switch Profile and watch as themselves: their own Continue Watching, watchlist, watched marks and preferences. Nobody has to copy their history into a profile on someone else's account.

Accounts or profiles?#

Both put several people on one TV, but they solve different problems:

• A profile lives under one account. It shares that account's libraries and permissions. Use it for a child, or anyone who only ever watches through your account. See Profiles and parental controls.
• A household member has their own tofa account, with their own history and their own library access. Use household viewing for a partner or housemate who already has an account and wants to keep it.

What you need#

• A tofa server on version 0.10.0 or newer. Older servers don't offer household viewing.
• A TV app that supports it. The Apple TV app does today; other TV apps follow.
• A tofa account for everyone who will watch as themselves.

Household viewing doesn't share libraries. Each member still needs access to the server the TV plays from: if it is your server, share it with them first. A member without access to that server doesn't appear on the TV.

Set it up#

1. Create the household. Sign in at app.tofa.tv, open Account, then Household, and choose Create household. You become its manager.
2. Invite the others. Under Invite an existing account, enter the email address they sign in to tofa with. We don't send an email, so tell them it's waiting.
3. They join. Each person signs in at app.tofa.tv with that email address, opens Account, then Household, and chooses Join household. Joining makes them available on the household's TVs straight away.
4. Turn it on for the TV. On the TV, signed in as yourself, open Settings and choose Enable Household Viewing. There's no code to type and nothing to approve on your phone.

From then on, the TV asks who's watching when it starts, and again when it comes back after 15 minutes or more in the background. Your own profiles come first, then one tile for each household member.

A household holds up to 6 accounts, and an account belongs to one household at a time. Any member can enable a TV they're signed in on.

Switching between people#

Open Settings and choose Switch Profile to hand the TV to someone else, or to take it back. Each person's watching is saved to their own account.

While a member is watching, the TV is theirs to watch on but not to manage. Manage account, Disable Household Viewing and Sign Out are hidden until you pick yourself again.

Put a PIN on your own primary profile. It is what keeps everyone else in the room out of your account: the TV asks for it each time someone picks you, and picking you is the only way back to Sign Out and the account settings. A shared TV doesn't remember PIN unlocks between launches.

If the connection drops#

Your own tile works offline, the same as an ordinary signed-in TV. A member's session needs our cloud to stay valid, so if the TV can't reach it, members can't start or renew a session. Reconnect, and pick the member again if asked.

Hide yourself, leave, or remove a TV#

All of this lives in Account, then Household, at app.tofa.tv:

• Hide me on shared TVs takes you off the household's TVs without leaving. Allow me on shared TVs brings you back.
• Leave household removes you. You keep your account and viewing history.
• The manager can remove members, remove a TV under Shared TVs, or Dissolve household. Everyone keeps their account and history.

On the TV itself, choose Disable Household Viewing in Settings to go back to a single-account TV. Signing out of the TV turns household viewing off too.

Changes made on app.tofa.tv reach the TV within a few minutes. If someone is removed or hides themselves while watching, the TV returns to the who's watching screen.