Profiles

Each profile keeps its own progress and watched marks, its own sort and filters on Shows, Movies and Search, and its own My list (kept on this device only). With more than one profile, Finch asks “Who’s watching?” at launch. With one, it does not ask.

Adding, renaming, removing

Open Settings, then Profiles. “Add a profile” asks for a name. Press A on a profile to switch to it, rename it, change its colour, choose its picture or remove it. A picture is the profile’s initial, one of Finch’s twelve icons, or an icon from an installed theme; if that theme is removed, the profile shows its initial again. Removing a profile removes its history from every device once they have synced. Finch keeps at least one profile.

Age limit

Press A on a profile in Settings, then Profiles, and choose “Age limit”: Off, Up to 7 (TV-Y7 / G), Up to 12 (TV-PG / PG), Up to 16 (TV-14 / PG-13) or Up to 17 (TV-MA / R, so NC-17 and 18+ stay hidden). The age counts in every country’s ratings, so a film rated 16 in Germany is hidden at Up to 12 and shown at Up to 16. Left, Right and A step through them. The profile’s menu keeps its less-used rows (Rename, Change colour, Picture, Remove PIN, Remove) under “More…”; B comes back from there. Finch compares each title’s age rating (read as an age in the country whose scheme it came in; a rating from before Finch kept that country is only trusted when its letters mean the same everywhere) with the limit and hides everything above it, everywhere: Home, Shows, Movies, Search, My list and a movie collection’s films. A title with no rating, a rating of “NR” or one Finch doesn’t recognise is hidden too, and so is anything not yet matched. Home videos in Unsorted stay, but its “See all” card (the drive browser) goes. Titles hidden from My list are kept, and come back when the limit is lifted. Ratings come from posters and descriptions, so with those off a limited profile sees only home videos. The practice library in the tutorial ignores the limit. The limit is saved with the profile, so it follows the profile to your other devices.

A PIN

A profile with an age limit can have a four-digit PIN: press A on it in Settings, then Profiles, and choose “Set a PIN…”. You type it twice on a number pad (the D-pad, A to type, X to delete; the fourth digit finishes it). With a PIN, opening Settings (from the tab bar or with the bumpers, which pass Settings by) and leaving the profile (Select, the Profile tab, or “Switch to” in Settings) ask for it first, and B cancels; leaving Settings locks it again. A profile with a PIN shows a small lock in “Who’s watching?” and on its badge. Three wrong tries in a row lock the pad for 30 seconds, and every three more for longer (1 minute, 5, 15, then an hour); the lock survives restarting Finch, and a right PIN, a new PIN or removing the PIN resets the count. When the device wakes from sleep, Settings on a profile with a PIN is closed. When the profile you last watched as has a PIN, Finch opens it at launch without asking who is watching, so starting Finch is no way round it. “Change PIN…” and “Remove PIN” (under “More…”) ask for the current one. Taking the age limit off a profile keeps its PIN (it guards nothing while the limit is Off and works again when a limit is set); “Remove PIN” deletes it.

The PIN is kept on this device only (it is not in the profile’s synced file, and problem reports leave it out), so set it on each device that needs it. A profile that arrives from another device brings its age limit and rules but not its PIN, and on a device where it has no PIN anyone can change or lift them in Settings there, so set the PIN on every device the profile is used on. If Finch had to start a fresh library and couldn’t keep the PINs (its notice says so; a library moved aside by hand keeps none), set them again. A profile with no PIN is never asked anything. The tutorial’s practice library never asks. If you forget a PIN, finch --clear-pin <name> removes it (run it from a terminal, or put it in Steam’s launch options for one start).

The PIN stops someone using Finch’s own screens, not someone who can change Finch’s launch options in Steam: --profile and --clear-pin there skip or remove it. Steam’s Family View can lock those options.

Screen time

A profile with an age limit can also have a daily limit and a bedtime. Press A on the profile in Settings, then Profiles: “Daily limit” steps through Off, then 15 minutes to 8 hours in 15-minute steps (15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 1 h, 1 h 15 and so on); Left, Right and A step it in place. A on “Bedtime” opens the bedtime picker: when it starts and when it ends, each an hour, a minute (five at a time) and, on the 12-hour clock, AM or PM, with the values before and after each one shown above and below it. Up and Down change the field that is lit (Up goes to the value above it, the earlier one), Left and Right move between the fields of both times, A saves, Y turns bedtime off and B leaves it as it was. A bedtime can cross midnight (9:30 PM to 7:00 AM), start after it (12:30 AM to 7:00 AM) or sit in the day (1:00 PM to 3:00 PM); a start and an end that are the same time aren’t saved. The picker starts at 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM on a profile without a bedtime, and a bedtime set before the end could be chosen ends at 6:00 AM. Both rows appear only while the profile has an age limit. A profile with no age limit has no screen time rules; taking the age limit off keeps what was set, and it applies again with the next limit.

Every time of day Finch shows (a bedtime, the goodbye at bedtime) is on the 12-hour clock (“9:30 PM”) or the 24-hour one (“21:30”), as Settings, then Appearance, then Clock says; it is kept on this device. Until it is chosen it follows the system’s language and region: 12-hour in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Colombia and Mexico, and when no region is set; 24-hour elsewhere. Lengths of time (“1 h 15”) read the same on both.

The daily limit counts the time a video is on the screen: playing, and also paused or buffering while the player (or its menu) is open. Browsing the library, the next-episode countdown, the sleep screen and the Deck asleep are not counted. Each profile has its own count, which starts again at midnight on the device’s clock and carries on across restarts (it is written every ten seconds and whenever Finch saves your place, so closing Finch doesn’t lose it; a sudden power-off can lose the last 30 to 40 seconds). Bedtime runs from its start until its end. The practice library in the tutorial ignores screen time.

Five minutes before the time runs out, a message says so (“5 minutes of watching left today.” or “Bedtime in 5 minutes.”), once (if you start with less than that left, it says how many minutes). When it runs out, the video pauses, Finch saves the place, stops it and shows a goodbye screen (“That’s all for today. See you tomorrow!”, or “It’s bedtime. See you at 7:00 AM!”, with the time the bedtime ends, or tomorrow when the daily limit is used up too). From then on nothing that plays will start, wherever it is asked for (an episode, a movie, Continue Watching, the next episode, a search result, an extra or the source browser): the goodbye screen shows instead and nothing loads. Browsing, My list and the rest stay open. B, or A without a PIN, goes back to where you were. Without a PIN the limit still applies, but switching to an unlimited profile and changing the limit in Settings are open to anyone, so a PIN is what makes screen time hold.

With a PIN, A on the goodbye screen says “Ask for more time”: after the PIN (with the usual wrong-try counting and lockout) you choose “15 more minutes” or “30 more minutes” and the video picks up where it stopped. After the daily limit the minutes are added to today; at bedtime they carry on from now into the night, and “Skip bedtime tonight” lifts bedtime until its end. More time is kept on this device, for that day or night only, and runs out again (with its own warning). Changing when bedtime starts or ends, or turning it off and on, takes away a skip and minutes given at bedtime.

A clock turned back doesn’t give a fresh day or end a bedtime under way: Finch remembers the latest local time it has seen on the device and goes by whichever is later. That holds the time of day too, so a clock or time zone moved back just before bedtime makes bedtime start late, by as much as it was moved (the daily limit still holds). A damaged count or rule is never read as “nothing used” or “no rule”: an unreadable count counts as used up, and an unreadable rule reads as the strictest choice. A clock moved ahead starts a fresh day’s allowance, and bedtime doesn’t apply while the clock reads a later daytime. Finch then goes by that later time even after the clock is put back, until real time catches up, and more time with the PIN is the way out. If the Deck’s clock was once set far ahead (more than a day and a half), a parent who sees that the two dates disagree can choose “Go by the Deck’s clock” after the PIN on the goodbye screen, and Finch then goes back to the real clock (the choice appears on any PIN-guarded profile’s goodbye, since the clock floor is shared by the whole Deck; a profile with only a bedtime, whose clock floor was left in the daytime, never reaches a goodbye). Nothing can fully stop moving the clock or the time zone, so keep the device’s settings out of reach too (Steam’s Family View can lock SteamOS’s settings and the launch options).

The rules are saved with the profile, so they follow it to your other devices, but the minutes watched are counted on each device on its own (set a limit and each device lets the profile watch that long). Screen time is under the same guard as the age limit: Settings is where it is changed, and with a PIN, Settings asks for it.

Switching

Press Select (View), or open the Profile tab (it shows with two or more profiles) in the tab bar, and pick the profile with A; B leaves it as it was. Settings, then Profiles, then A on the profile, then “Switch to” works too. The Home screen changes to that profile’s progress at once.

From the command line

These still work for scripts: finch --add-profile <name>, finch --remove-profile <name>, and finch --profile <name> to start as that profile without being asked (it skips the PIN question too). finch --clear-pin <name> removes a forgotten PIN and says so. Anyone who can edit Finch’s launch options in Steam can use both.