Profanity filter for Apple TV
Watch the film you already wanted to watch, with the swearing muted. CleanCut runs on your phone, follows what your Apple TV is playing, and mutes the language as it arrives, inside Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video or whichever app you opened. Free on YouTube and Plex.
“Apple TV” means two things
People searching for this want one of two answers. CleanCut works at the level of the box, so it covers both.
The Apple TV box
The puck under your television, running Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video, YouTube and the rest. Filtering here means cleaning up whichever app is playing.
Apple TV+
Apple's own subscription service, one app among many on that box. Filtering here means cleaning up that service in particular.
What an Apple TV does on its own
It has parental controls, under Settings → General → Restrictions, where you can demand a passcode for anything above a rating you choose. Streaming apps keep their own versions inside each profile.
All of that is a gate. It decides whether a film plays at all. Nothing in it reaches into a film that’s already running and does something about one line of dialogue, which is why you can block an R-rated film outright and still have no way to watch it with the language cleaned up. That gap is what people keep asking about in Apple’s own support forums.
Filtering inside the apps you already have
Most filtering services move you somewhere else. You sign in to their player, or cast from a browser tab, and watch the film there. It works, and it costs you the app you already pay for.
CleanCut leaves your setup alone. You keep watching in Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video, or whatever you would have opened anyway. Nothing is cast and nothing is re-encoded, so the stream and the picture are the ones you were already getting. The swearing just goes quiet.
Four things happen between the TV and your phone
The TV says what's playing
Your Apple TV publishes the title, whether it's playing or paused, and the exact position in the film. It's the same information your iPhone's Now Playing controls read.
CleanCut reads it
You pair once, the way a remote app pairs, and CleanCut follows that stream over your own Wi-Fi.
It finds the subtitles
From the title it works out the film or episode and fetches matching subtitles. If nothing matches what you're watching, it says so.
It mutes on the clock
Each filtered word becomes a window with a start and an end. When playback reaches one, the TV goes quiet, and comes back on the far side.
Because all of it is anchored to the TV’s own position rather than a timer, it survives what actually happens on a sofa: pausing, rewinding ten seconds, scrubbing, jumping to the next episode. If a subtitle file turns out to be out of step with the cut you’re streaming, Mic Sync listens for a few seconds through your device’s microphone and lines the two back up.
Deciding what counts as profanity
Households disagree about this, so CleanCut ships a word list you can edit. Switch off the entries you don’t mind hearing and the rest keep being muted. If you’d rather not hear the line at all, set profanity to skip and CleanCut seeks past it instead.
Changes land immediately. You can edit the list halfway through a film and the next line obeys the new setting, with nothing to restart.
CleanCut works from the dialogue, so language is what it filters. It reads subtitles rather than watching the picture.
Which apps it filters
CleanCut works with any app that uses the Apple TV’s built-in player, which is most of them.
For anything not listed, start playing it and open the Now Playing controls on your iPhone or in the Apple TV’s Control Center. A title and a moving progress bar mean the app uses the system player and CleanCut can work with it. Blank controls mean it doesn’t.
Netflix and Max are the exceptions
Nothing that works this way can filter them. Both ship their own video player on the Apple TV instead of using the system one, and those players report nothing at all: no title, no position. There’s no signal to act on.
That’s their decision, and no update on our side changes it. If Netflix is most of what your household watches, CleanCut isn’t the right buy. The full explanation is short.
What it costs, and how to start
YouTube and Plex are filtered in full at no charge, with every rule and word-list control, and on YouTube that includes skipping sponsor segments. Filtering Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video and the rest is a subscription, which also removes the ads. Billing runs through your Apple ID, there’s no CleanCut account to create, and you can try it on YouTube or Plex before paying for anything.
- Install CleanCut on the iPhone or iPad you keep near the TV, on the same Wi-Fi as the Apple TV.
- Open it, pick your Apple TV, and type in the code that appears on the television. You only do this once.
- Choose whether profanity is muted or skipped, and switch off any words you don’t mind hearing.
- Press play in whichever app you would have opened anyway. CleanCut stays open on screen while you watch, with the display dimmed right down. On Pro it keeps filtering with the phone put away.
If the Apple TV never shows a pairing code, or filtering doesn’t start, both have specific causes and specific fixes. The FAQ walks through them.