Child accounts

A login of their own

Nexview used to know two kinds of people: those allowed to request things and those who are not. For a family that is too coarse. Since version 0.16.0 you can create separate logins for your children, with a view of their own, categories of their own, and their own word for what they do: a child does not request, it wishes. And you decide.

This page walks through the whole thing: how a child account comes into being, what the child gets to see, how a wish turns into a request, how you check at any time what actually reaches your child, and, honestly, what this feature does not do.

The idea

A child does not request: it wishes

The distinction sounds like hair-splitting and is in fact the entire blueprint. A request is an event with consequences: it uses quota, it occupies storage, it lands with the operator, it gets downloaded. A wish is none of that. It costs nothing, reserves nothing, and the operator never sees it.

Only when you, the parent, approve does it become an ordinary request, in your name. Your quota, your storage, your usual approval path, and after that the operator decides exactly as they would for any other request.

That is not a detour, it is the reason the whole thing holds together: because the request belongs to you, quotas, storage, the blocklist and account deletion need no special case. You approve downwards, not upwards, and for everything above you remain the ordinary user you were before.

Creating one

A name and a password: nothing else

Child accounts live in your profile, under the Children tab. A child gets a username, a password (typed twice, you are choosing it for somebody else) and an age. No email address, no Plex account, no invitation. Children rarely have an email address of their own, and a login that insists on one simply was not built for them.

Then three settings that are all yours: the categories your child may see, whether trailers are allowed (they are hosted on YouTube, without the tick the button does not exist at all), and the language of the interface. The child cannot change that one.

The account is subordinate to yours: it cannot change its own password, cannot add an address, and cannot reach a single adult part of the app. Delete your account and the child accounts go with it.

Screenshot: the „New child account“ form with username, display name, age, language, password and password repeat, below it the „Allow trailers“ tick and the eight selectable categories — **One form, not a wizard.** Everything on one surface, and every hint underneath says why the field is the way it is.

Two dials

Categories and age, and why both are needed

The first dial is the category: animation, family, kids shows, adventure, fantasy, comedy, music, documentary. You tick what your child gets to see, the rest does not exist for that account. A six-year-old might get animation and family; an eleven-year-old adventure and fantasy on top.

The second dial is the age, at most 16. Inside the enabled categories Nexview only shows what is rated up to that age. Titles with no age rating at all stay hidden from children, for a six-year-old, „nobody knows anything about this one“ is not an acceptable answer.

Why not the age filter alone? Because it would leave too little behind. Age ratings on TMDB are thin: roughly a third of movies and a good four tenths of shows carry none at all. Take the same query you use for adults and sieve it afterwards, and you have built an empty app. The categories make sure something arrives in the first place, the age limit sorts within it.

The child view

An app of its own, not a stripped-down Nexview

When a child signs in it does not get the familiar interface with greyed-out buttons. It gets a different app: bright warm colours instead of the dark Nexview red, large tap targets, three destinations along the bottom, discover, search, wishes. No bell, no tickets, no watchlist, no settings.

The colour world is deliberately cut loose from the rest of Nexview. In every other application red means „careful“; in an app that offers children something, it has no business being there. Behind everything sits a collage of images from the enabled categories, the page looks like something even while nothing has loaded yet.

And the boundary is not a matter of the interface. Which routes a child account may take at all is an allowlist in the server; a call that goes around the view gets nowhere. A missing button is convenience, the lock sits behind it.

Screenshot of the child view: the animation category, at the top the section „You can watch these now“ with three titles and a green tick, below it „You can wish for these“ with further posters — **Big posters, two sections, one way back.** The navigation floats at the bottom and has exactly three destinations, this app needs no more.

The key trick

„You can watch these now“ above „You can wish for these“

Behind each category the titles do not sit as one wall but in two sections. At the top what is already in the library, with a green tick and no wish button, because wishing would be pointless. Underneath, what can be wished for.

The first attempt simply hid titles that were already there, they were available, after all. Measured against a real library, that removed about 90 % of the children's page: out of twenty animation titles, two survived. The best of them were precisely the invisible ones.

The title page follows the same rule: if the movie is already there, it says You can watch this now instead of showing the orange button. And underneath, always the same sentence, so no child walks into a false expectation: Your mum or dad decides.

Screenshot of the child view: the title page for „The Lion King“ with year, an „age 0+“ badge, a short description, a trailer button and the orange button „I want to watch this“, below it the note „Your mum or dad decides.“ — **One button, one sentence.** No quality profile, no target folder, no choice between 1080p and 4K, that is decided later, by whoever has to decide it.

The wish list

Four words instead of eight states

An adult sees eight states in Nexview, from waiting for approval through searching to deferred. A child should not have to learn which is which. So its list has exactly four answers:

Mum or dad is looking at it, the wish is with you. On its way, you approved, the rest is running. It is here! the title is in the library. Not this time, you declined.

And when you decline you can add a sentence. It then stands under the title, word for word, for the child to read. Without it the page would only say „not this time“, and a child keeps asking until somebody says why.

Screenshot of the child view: the „My wishes“ page with three entries — one green „It is here!“, one grey „Not this time“ with the parent's reason, one orange „Mum or dad is looking at it“ — **Three of the four states at a glance.** The reason sits in quotation marks under the title, it comes from a person, not from the software.

A wish, in portions

One season first. Or two episodes to try it out.

A child wishes for a series with eight seasons. Until now there were exactly two answers: all or nothing. Now there is a third, one season, or two episodes, so they can look into it first.

Such a partial release no longer closes the other children's wishes. And once the released part is done while the series is not, the child gets an I want more of this button, instead of a dead end where they do not know whether they are allowed to ask again.

Your side

Approve or decline, and what happens then

Open wishes sit at the top of the Children tab, with poster, title, year and the child's name. Two buttons: approve or decline. While a wish is waiting the bell speaks up too, and jumping from there lands you exactly where the decision is made.

Approving means Nexview files an ordinary request in your name. Every rule that applies to you anyway therefore applies by itself, blocklist, „already in the library“, profile blocks, 4K permission, quota. If your quota is full, the wish fails right there, with exactly the reason you would otherwise get.

If the operator has left the choice open, you also pick quality and target folder while approving. And if a child wishes for something somebody else has long since requested, Nexview closes the wish by itself, as settled, not as declined. The child did get what it wanted.

The sentence above the list says what you are agreeing to. „This becomes an ordinary request in your name“, with your quota and your usual approval path.

Changing things later

Children get older

Below the wishes sits one tile per child, with name and age. Four round buttons on it: preview (the eye), disable, edit and delete. Age, categories, trailers, language and password can all be adjusted at any time, only the username stays, because that is what the child signs in with.

Disabling instead of deleting is the gentle route: the account can no longer sign in but keeps every setting. Deleting is final, and does not touch titles already requested. Those run through your account.

There is no email reset for children. There is no address. If your child forgets its password, you set a new one, that is the only way, and it is on purpose.

Screenshot: the „Child accounts“ section with tiles for Lina (6 years old) and Ben (11 years old), four round buttons each, and the dashed „Add child account“ tile — **Two children, one plus sign.** Underneath sits the sentence you cannot read too often on this subject: the age limit only applies inside Nexview.

Checking

„View as Lina“: without borrowing her password

The only question that really counts in parental controls is: what actually reaches my child? Everything else is guesswork. So every child account carries a Preview: one button that opens the child view exactly as the child sees it.

And not as a reproduction. It is the same component with the same rules, only read-only: you cannot wish for anything in the preview. A rebuilt preview would drift away from the real view over time, and then you would be checking something that does not exist.

A banner at the top says whose view you are in, and a single way leads back. Anyone who wants to know what a freshly ticked category actually does sees it here in two clicks, instead of signing in as their child.

The dark app outside, the bright one inside. The frame makes it unmistakable that you are looking at somebody else's view, and the sentence beside it promises the same rules, not similar ones.

Search

Yes, but within bounds

Children search. A child that wants to type „dino“ should be allowed to, otherwise the app is boring by the third evening. So there is a search, with a big field and a big button.

It searches only inside the enabled categories, and only up to the child's age. A search that combed the whole catalogue and filtered afterwards would be a back door, and the result would give away that there is more out there.

If nothing turns up, the app says so in its own language: That is not here. Ask your mum or dad about it. Not an error, not an empty surface, a pointer to who to ask.

Screenshot of the child view: the search with the word „Dino“ in the field and four children's movies found below it, headed „You can wish for these“ — **Four hits, all within bounds.** The same split as in the categories: what is already there stands on top, what can be wished for below.

Ask first

The operator has to enable child accounts

Not every user may simply create accounts, the operator grants the permission per person, and out of the box it is off. Those without it still find the Children tab: it explains what the feature can and cannot do, and carries one button that files the request as a ticket. There is nothing else to fill in.

A hidden tab would have been the worse answer. Then nobody would know the feature exists, and the operator would get questions instead of requests.

Inside the ticket the operator grants it with one click: that sets the permission, posts a short reply and closes the case. If the permission is withdrawn later, the child accounts are disabled, not deleted.

Screenshot: the „Children“ tab without permission — two lists, „This works“ and „This does not“, below them a yellow note about where age ratings come from and the button „Request permission for child accounts“ — **The truth first, then the button.** What works, what does not, and the honest note about where the age ratings come from. Only below that sits the request.

For the operator

One tick, and a group of its own in the list

In user management every account carries the switch May create child accounts. Administrators always have it; anyone who is subordinate themselves never gets it, otherwise a fourteen-year-old would create a „child“ with no age limit and see everything through it.

The child accounts themselves sit in a group of their own at the end of the user list, each marked „child of …“ with their age. Visible, but not editable: they belong to their parent, not to the operator.

One change from before that you need to know: the old per-account age restriction disappeared from user management in 0.16.0. Anyone with a full account counts as an adult; children get a child account, and their age is maintained by their parent. Two routes to the same lock were two places for it to drift apart. Existing accounts have their age cleared on the first start after the update, child accounts keep theirs.

Screenshot of user management: Mira's expanded account with the ticked „May create child accounts“ box, below it the separate „Child accounts“ group with Lina and Ben, each marked „child of Mira“ — **One tick, that is all it is.** And underneath the operator sees what came of it, without being able to get into the accounts.

Staying honest

What child accounts do not do

They only work inside Nexview. Open the same media server directly through Plex and everything on it is visible. And the folder on the disk stays what it is. What Nexview prevents is discovering and wishing for unsuitable titles, not access to a library that is open anyway. For the ordinary case that is enough: the child browses in Nexview, and the media server has its own account restrictions. Combine the two and you have a workable safeguard. Rely on Nexview alone and you do not.

The age ratings are somebody else's data. They come from TMDB, a public movie database maintained by volunteers. They can be missing, outdated or simply wrong, and nobody can vouch for them, Nexview included. That is exactly why the preview sits so prominently inside this feature: it is the one tool that does not trust somebody else's data but shows what really arrives.

And they cost you choice. Because titles without an age rating stay hidden from children, some perfectly harmless things are missing, new releases in particular often carry no rating yet. That is the deliberate direction: when in doubt, show too little. If that feels too strict for an older child, enable one more category rather than softening the limit.

No substitute for a conversation. Child accounts are a tool that makes the choice smaller and the decision visible, no more than that. They do not replace somebody knowing what the child is watching. The wish route is built for precisely that: it forces a short look at every title instead of quietly filtering in the background.

Why this changes something

Nexview gets a good deal friendlier to families

In a lot of households it used to work like this: the child says at dinner what it wants to watch, a parent tries to remember and types it in later, or does not. Sharing an account was the alternative, with everything that comes with it.

Now the child has a place of its own. It can browse without somebody sitting next to it, and it can leave something behind that will not be forgotten. The decision still stays where it belongs, and it is a deliberate click, not a rubber stamp.

The real gain, though, is visibility: you see what your child wishes for, you see through the preview what it is being offered, and your child sees what became of its wish, including your reason when the answer is no. That is more conversation, not less.

How to

Set up in four steps

1. Get the permission. In your profile under Children there is a button, Request permission for child accounts. The operator sees the request as a ticket and grants it with one click. If you are the administrator, you have it anyway.

2. Create the account. Username, password (twice), age, and the categories that fit. Start small: adding one later is easier than taking one away. The display name is yours to choose; it is what the greeting uses.

3. Look for yourself. Use the Preview to see what actually arrives, before your child does. If a category feels too mixed, take it back out; if the page looks empty, add one.

4. Turn the notification on. Under Notifications there is a switch called Your children's wishes. It only appears once you really have an active child account. Without it you notice a wish the next time you happen to open your profile, and the child is waiting.

Worth knowing: the maximum age for a child account is 16, above that an ordinary account is the right answer. The username has to be unique on the server; if „max“ is taken, „maxi“ will do. And wishes count towards nothing: only approval turns one into a request that touches your quota and your storage.