The prompt to login whenever you cast to an arbitrary TV feels like a footgun. I don't want whatever community I'm watching with to know what the algorithm thinks I like. The distance between "annoying" and "embarrassing" is directly correlated to who is in the room to observe.
The latest one in my bunch has a remote and menus and stuff, and is what I presume y'all are talking about. I've seen it referred to as CCWGTV.
"Privacy" seems easy-enough and is not so dissimilar from "privacy" on any other shared computer: Just set up profiles. One for you, one or more for kids, one for guests, or whatever makes sense.
For your own profile, set a PIN. (The included d-pad remote makes PIN entry easy-enough.)
Aaaand... done?
Mine also does old-school phone-driven Chromecast stuff just fine with zero profiles logged in -- while it is just sitting there at the profile-select screen. In this mode, it accepts Youtube and Spotify and whatever else I throw at it.
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Am I doing something wrong?
But for whatever reason when I plug in the 4K with Google it's the annoying nagbot that refuses to do anything unless I'm logged in (not to mention my password is not exactly easy to type using the remote) and then it drags in my whole YouTube history and the device is useless and nags you to hell when not logged in.
It's so much easier and less insane to just use Roku. I can throw YouTube videos at the Roku without being logged in and the device works just fine. Google seems to be constantly changing things and I have no interest in playing wack-a-mole with whatever thing they decide to change this week.
Roku's just work and they rarely change. That trust just does not exist with Google's products.