Got a Fire TV Stick? Now you can step away from the TV without worrying about what your child might be watching. That’s because Amazon is bringing its FreeTime Unlimited service to Fire TV sticks starting today, October 7.
FreeTime Unlimited, available on Kindles and Fire HD tablets like the all-new Fire HD 10 and Kindle Kids Edition, offers up kid-friendly videos, books, and games for a subscription fee of $3 per month for Prime subscribers and $5 per month for non-Prime subscribers. The books and games aspect of the service isn’t making its way to Fire TV Sticks, which will support just the movies and TV shows.
Kid profiles
Don’t fret, you won’t need to clutter up your Fire TV profile with a bunch of kids shows. Instead, kids get their own profile that keeps them locked in — they need a pin to leave the walled garden. You can set up to four child profiles (the have a blue background), and you can set age filters for each so the content that’s served up remains age-appropriate (FreeTime Unlimited is recommended for ages 3 through 12).
Does your kid want to watch something that’s not in FreeTime Unlimited? You can serve up movies and shows from Prime Videos — if you’re a subscriber — and it will be added to the child profile — with the age restrictions in mind. Similarly, if there’s a Fire TV app available that’s not available in FreeTime Unlimited, you can add it to the child profile so your child can use it.
Parent dashboard
Like FreeTime Unlimited on other Amazon devices, you get access to a parent dashboard that lets you set screen time restrictions by activity or bedtime, all of which turn off the Fire TV at the designated time. You can also see data like video activity and for how long the TV has been used.
Want to learn more about what your kid is watching? Tap on the title of the movie or show in the dashboard and you can see a synopsis, and you can also control access remotely, so you don’t need to be home to monitor or control your kid’s access to the TV.
Rolling out
FreeTime Unlimited is rolling out today to the second-generation Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Stick 4K, as well as first- and second-generation Fire TVs. It will soon come to select Fire TV Edtion smart TVs. Amazon said it has no plans to bring it to the Fire TV Cube at the moment.
