ShowHaven

Supported devices

Two sides to ShowHaven: the child's screen, which runs the ShowHaven Kids app, and your controls, which run wherever you are. Here is exactly what works today, what is in testing, and what we will tell you honestly is not supported.

Your child's screen

Works today

  • Android tablets — Android 6.0 or newer. The most common ShowHaven setup.
  • Android phones — same requirement. A hand-me-down phone on wifi makes a fine kid device.

In testing now — coming to early access

We are actively testing ShowHaven Kids on television hardware. We do not list a device as supported until we have watched shows open correctly on it, so these are labeled honestly as what they are: almost, but not yet.

  • Google TV and Android TV devices with the Google Play Store — TVs from Sony, TCL, Hisense and Philips, and streaming boxes like the Walmart onn 4K (about $20), Chromecast with Google TV, the Google TV Streamer and Nvidia Shield.
  • Amazon Fire TV — Fire TV Sticks (4K and newer), Fire TV Cube, and Fire TV Edition televisions, through the Amazon Appstore.

Not supported natively

Samsung (Tizen), LG (webOS), Roku, Vizio SmartCast and Apple TV run their own operating systems and cannot run the ShowHaven Kids app. When our TV support arrives, the honest answer for those screens will be a small streaming box on a spare HDMI port — the same ~$20 box we test on. We would rather tell you that plainly than pretend otherwise.

A simple test for any TV in your house: if it has the Google Play Store app on it, it is Android TV or Google TV underneath and will be covered by our TV support. If it has the Amazon Appstore, it is Fire TV.

Your controls

  • Android phones — the ShowHaven parent app, from Google Play. Search, approve, pair devices, get a heads-up when your child wanders, grant more time.
  • Any browser — the web parent app at showhaven.tv/app does everything the phone app does, from an iPhone, a laptop, or the computer at work. Creating your account, building the grid, pairing your child's device: all of it works from a browser alone.

An iPhone household is a first-class ShowHaven household: your controls live in the browser, your child's screen runs the Kids app, and subscribing on the web needs no Android device at all.

The streaming apps themselves

ShowHaven opens shows in the streaming apps you already pay for — Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Hulu, Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and Crave in Canada. Those apps must be installed and signed in on the child's device. ShowHaven never plays video itself and never asks for your streaming passwords.