Dhruv Bhutani has been writing about consumer technology since 2008, offering deep insights into the personal technology landscape through features and opinion pieces. He writes for XDA-Developers, where he focuses on topics like productivity, networking, self-hosting, and more. Over the years, his work has also appeared in leading publications such as Android Police, Android Authority, CNET, PCMag, and more. Outside of his professional work, Dhruv is an avid fan of horror media spanning films and literature, enjoys fitness activities, collects vinyl records, and plays the guitar.
My TV is one of the most-used screens in my home. I like playing vintage horror movies in the background while I work. But what I don’t like is that modern televisions across the board serve as advertising platforms (I’m looking at you, Google TV) or even spyware, as we recently found out with LG. I'm not a fan of that at all.
Look, Google TV is convenient with great recommendations, content discovery, and AI integrations, but it is hard to ignore just how deep the Google services and advertising rabbit hole goes. Since it’s basically impossible to switch it all off, I switched to an Apple TV 4K. I wanted a cleaner interface, but I also got much more control over how my data is used and what happens to my viewing habits. There's no going back.
Apple makes it easy to manage app tracking and data sharing
Google TV collects way more data than I'm comfortable sharing
There's no denying that Google TV is an excellent platform. And its core functionality is pretty great. For people who don't want to invest in a streamer, or just want to stick within Google's ecosystem with a Google TV box, it offers an effective way to get recommendations from all their streaming services and beyond. The problem is that this convenience comes with a strong dose of data collection.
Google's TV platform can and does collect information about watch activity, installed apps, app interactions, and even approximate location to personalize these recommendations. You can be sure that some of this information is used for advertising as well. Look, I understand why. To give you those granular recommendations and targeted ads, it needs to know more about you. But I'm tired of every device and service building a profile on me.
The Apple TV 4K takes a refreshingly different approach to privacy controls. Head to Settings, open General, then go to Privacy & Security. From there, tap Tracking to get granular control over which apps can access details about you. By default, you have to individually grant apps permission to track you.
This matters because it ensures apps must ask permission before tracking your activity across apps from other companies for advertising or sharing information with data brokers.
You can deny individual requests or disable tracking altogether. This page also lets you disable analytics sharing with Apple and app developers. Put together, this is a massive step forward in giving you nearly full control over what information you want to share.
The privacy features don't end there. Take a step back, and you can see which apps have access to specific parts of your Apple TV experience. If you gave Photos access to a specific app, it'll show up right there. You can even switch off sharing analytics with Apple itself or view any analytics data that has been recorded.
Despite all these controls, I'm under no illusion that some data still gets shared. Streaming services can't customize the experience without it. But these practical privacy controls give me a lot more control at the operating system level to reduce the impact as much as possible.
No ads, just my choice of streaming services
A faster, smoother streaming service
Privacy is the biggest reason I switched to the Apple TV 4K, but there are other reasons too. Personally, the biggest upgrade here is that there are no ads whatsoever.
Anytime I turn on my TV, I just want to open my streaming service of choice, or Plex or Jellyfin, and start watching some content. I don't need a home screen trying to push me toward a purchase, some unrelated movie being promoted, or suggestions from apps I'm not even using actively.
Apple's streamer keeps the experience focused entirely on apps. I can arrange the services I use most often. When I scroll to them, they'll show me whatever I was streaming last. That's the degree of personalization I want and get.
Beyond that, though, the hardware also helps. The Apple TV is a fairly powerful device, so navigating menus and switching between apps feels slick. Unlike most of my Google TV-based devices, which have slowed to a crawl, that hasn't been the case here. But, of course, that's all secondary to the privacy benefits.
The Apple TV makes privacy controls easy to access
When switching streamers, I wanted to make an informed decision, especially now that the recently revealed Apple TV 4K (4th gen) has been hit with a hefty price hike. But I knew Apple wasn't going to solve every privacy problem associated with streaming services. No streaming device can do that as long as Netflix keeps collecting telemetry data. But I wanted a platform that offered greater control over optional data sharing.
The Apple TV 4K delivers that. And it doesn't hide away those settings either. The settings are easy to get to, easy to understand, and easy to toggle. All of that makes the Apple TV 4K an easy choice if you want simple privacy controls.
Apple TV 4K (4th gen, 2026)
The Apple TV 4K is Apple's streaming box that offers a privacy-forward take on media streaming backed by a powerful chipset and intuitive software.