Can you whitelist shows on Netflix, Disney+ or Prime Video?
The short answer is no. Not on any of them.
You can set a maturity rating. You can block individual titles, one at a time, on some services. You can put your child in a kids profile and lock your own profile with a PIN. What you cannot do, on any major streaming service, is hand it a list of eleven shows and have it show your child those eleven shows and nothing else.
This page explains what each service actually offers, why none of them offer a whitelist, and what to do if that is genuinely what you want. Every claim below was checked against the service's own help pages on the date at the foot of this page.
What “whitelist” means, and why the difference matters
A blocklist starts with everything allowed and removes what you name. A whitelist starts with nothing allowed and adds what you name.
Every parental control on every major streaming service is a blocklist with a rating filter in front of it. That distinction sounds academic until you count. A kids profile might narrow a catalogue to a few thousand titles. If you want your four-year-old to see six shows, a blocklist asks you to name the other few thousand — and the catalogue changes every month.
Netflix
Netflix gives you the most control of the major services, and it is still not a whitelist.
- Maturity ratings per profile. In Netflix's own wording, that profile will only see shows, movies and games with a rating at or below the level you set.
- Title restrictions. You can name specific shows or films and block them from that profile. This is the closest thing to per-title control anywhere, and it works in exactly the wrong direction — it is a blocklist.
- Kids profile. Plays only titles selected for children, and removes direct access to account settings. It also cannot have an email address attached, so a child cannot sign in with it directly.
- Profile lock. A four-digit PIN on a profile, so your child cannot switch into yours.
The part that catches people out. On an ordinary profile you can change the maturity rating from the phone app. On a Kids profile you cannot: Netflix requires a web browser both to change a Kids profile's maturity rating and to block titles on it. Profile locks are set from your account page in a browser too. So the settings a parent of a young child most needs are precisely the ones that are not in the app on the phone or on the TV.
What people suggest instead, and why it does not work. The common advice is to build a “My List” of approved shows in your child's profile. My List is a shortcut, not a restriction. Everything else in the catalogue is still one tap away, and on a TV the row below My List is whatever Netflix wants to show next.
Disney+
Disney+ calls its kids experience Junior Mode: a simplified interface carrying only content suitable for all ages. Outside it, each profile has a content rating, and anything rated above it is hidden from browsing and from search. A four-digit Profile PIN stops someone moving into another profile.
Disney+ also offers Kid-Proof Exit, an exit challenge that stops a young child wandering out of Junior Mode into another profile. It is a genuinely useful control and worth turning on. It is also not a whitelist: it governs which profile your child is in, not which shows that profile contains. Ratings remain the only mechanism, and there is no per-title approval list.
Prime Video
Prime Video has Kids profiles, which show only titles rated 12 and under and filter search results and suggestions to match. Viewing restrictions work by rating, and an Account PIN is required to get past them. Adult profiles can be PIN-locked, and you can restrict who may create new profiles — which matters, because creating a fresh profile is otherwise a way around the whole arrangement.
One hole worth knowing about, because Amazon documents it plainly and most parents never see it: downloads made on an adult's profile remain available inside the Kids profile. The rating filter covers what your child can browse. It does not cover what is already on the device.
Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock
Same shape, with differences worth knowing:
- Hulu has Kids profiles and PIN Protection, which requires a PIN to switch into any non-Kids profile. Note that a Hulu Kids profile is a switch, not a dial: it is restricted to Hulu's Kids hub, and there is no per-profile rating for you to choose. You get Hulu's definition of children's content, or you get the full catalogue.
- HBO Max (renamed back from Max) has Kids profiles with separate rating limits for films and for television, a PIN on adult profiles, and a Kid-Proof Exit with a Parent Code. Kids profiles cannot reach account or subscription settings.
- Paramount+ works differently from the rest: rather than hiding higher-rated content, it locks it behind a PIN prompt at playback. Two limits are worth knowing — you can only turn the feature on or off from desktop or mobile web, never from the app or a TV device, and Samsung and Vizio smart TVs do not support its parental controls at all.
- Peacock offers Kids, Teen and Adult profiles, maturity ratings per profile, and a PIN to enter a protected profile.
None of the four offers a per-title approval list.
Why none of them do this
Worth understanding, because it explains why waiting for them to add it is not a plan.
Their product is discovery. Every surface in a streaming app exists to show you something else — the next episode, the row below, the thumbnail that plays while you are deciding. A whitelist is the opposite of that. It is not a missing feature so much as a feature that runs against the grain of the product.
Catalogues churn. Titles arrive and leave every month under licensing deals. A whitelist would break quietly and constantly, and every break would be a support conversation about why a show vanished.
Ratings scale for them and do not scale for you. One rating setting covers a whole catalogue forever, which is cheap for a service to run. It is also exactly why it does not do what you want, because age is not taste. TV-Y covers shows you are glad your child loves and shows that reliably end your evening badly. A rating cannot tell them apart. You can.
So what actually works
If you want a true whitelist, it has to live outside the streaming app — in something you control, that opens the streaming app only to play.
That is what ShowHaven is. You approve specific shows in a parent app. Your child's device shows a screen of large artwork containing only those shows. They tap one, and it opens in Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock or HBO Max, and plays there.
We host no video and re-stream nothing. It opens the apps you already pay for, on your existing subscriptions. There is a reason it works this way and it is worth stating plainly: streaming playback is protected, and every service's terms forbid wrapping their video inside someone else's app. Any product claiming to play Netflix inside its own screen is either not doing that or is not going to last. A launcher is not a compromise around that limit. It is the honest shape of the answer.
Being straight about what this can and cannot enforce
A whitelist screen is only half of it. The other half is what happens when your child backs out of the show.
On the free tier, they can back out into the streaming app and browse it, the same as they can today. The grid is guidance, not a wall. For a young child who taps what is in front of them, that is often enough — and we would rather say so here than have you discover it.
On the Family plan on Android, leaving the approved apps brings your child straight back to their grid, and unapproved playback is caught within seconds.
Some things no app on Android can enforce, whatever it claims. Which controls apply to which kind of device is set out on our devices page, including the ones that do not work.
The honest summary
- No major streaming service offers a per-title whitelist, and the structure of their products suggests none will.
- Ratings filter by age, which is not the same as filtering by your judgement.
- Blocking titles one at a time does not scale against a catalogue that changes.
- A whitelist has to live outside the streaming app, in a screen you control.
If that is what you were looking for, ShowHaven does exactly this — free for one child, one device, fifteen shows, so you can find out whether it changes your evenings before paying for anything.
Last checked: 27 August 2026, against each service's own help pages. Streaming services change their parental controls. If you find something here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.