Guide · Kiosk Mode Advanced
Lock an Apple TV to just Theatrium
Some Apple TVs shouldn't be Apple TVs at all — a holiday-let guest room, a showroom, a waiting area. tvOS has a real answer for that: Single App Mode, Apple's own kiosk capability, which locks a device to one app and switches off everything else, including the Home button. This is not a Theatrium setting — it's a tvOS/device-management feature, and this guide explains what it does, what it needs, and when Theatrium's own lighter-weight PIN lock is enough instead.
Two different tools, two different jobs. Theatrium's own Short Stay Management pack Coming soon includes a PIN that keeps a guest out of Theatrium's settings, other dashboards and the card editor — no setup beyond choosing a PIN. Kiosk Mode goes a layer deeper: it stops a guest leaving the app at all, including pressing the physical Home button. Once it ships, most hosts will only need the PIN. Read on if pressing Home and poking around tvOS itself is a real worry for your property.
What Single App Mode actually does
Once it's turned on for a device, that Apple TV boots straight into one chosen app — Theatrium — and stays there. The Home button, Siri, Control Center and every other installed app become unreachable from the remote. If the device restarts (a power cut, an update, someone unplugging it), it comes back up in the same locked state automatically. It's the same underlying capability that runs the menu board at a fast-food counter or the check-in screen at a hotel kiosk, applied to a living-room Apple TV.
What you need to set it up
This is configured through device management (MDM), not through Theatrium or the tvOS Settings app a normal user sees. In practice that means:
- The Apple TV must be supervised. For a single device, Apple's own Apple Configurator on a Mac can supervise an Apple TV over your network (older Apple TV HD models connect by USB-C), at no extra cost. For several properties, an MDM server is the practical route.
- An MDM solution to actually push the single-app profile — options aimed at small deployments include Hexnode, along with Jamf, Mosyle and SimpleMDM. Most offer a free tier for a handful of devices, which covers a single holiday let comfortably.
- Theatrium's bundle identifier, which the MDM profile targets:
info.theatrium.appletv.
Turn it on
Exactly how you get there depends on which MDM tool you pick, so this guide won't pretend to walk through a specific vendor's screens — follow theirs. In general terms: enrol the Apple TV into the MDM (via Apple Configurator or Apple Business Manager), install Theatrium, then assign an Single App Mode profile scoped to Theatrium's bundle identifier above. Apple's own reference for the underlying capability is the Apple Platform Deployment guide; Hexnode's Apple TV kiosk walkthrough is linked above as one concrete example of the process end to end.
Good to know
- It restricts the person in front of the TV, not the app itself. Theatrium still updates over the App Store and reaches your network exactly as normal — Single App Mode only removes the guest's ability to leave the app or reach tvOS Settings.
- It's reversible. Removing the MDM profile (or unenrolling the device) hands the Apple TV back to normal behavior — nothing about this is permanent or destructive.
- Pair it with Theatrium's own PIN anyway. If you ever need to temporarily lift Kiosk Mode for maintenance, the PIN still keeps a guest out of settings in the meantime.
- This is an Apple/tvOS capability, not a Theatrium one. We can't offer support for a specific MDM vendor's console — their own documentation and support team are the right place for setup questions.
This guide is general information, provided “as is” with no warranty of any kind. It describes independent third-party software that Theatrium does not control, and the steps involve installing software and changing settings on your own equipment — back up first and proceed at your own risk. Read the full disclaimer.