Can I get Apple TV+ for free? Yes, and here's how

Severance, Slow Horses, The Shining Girls, Prehistoric Planet – there's no shortage of great things to watch for free

Slow Horses on Apple TV+
(Image credit: Apple)

I love Apple TV+. As I wrote a few weeks back, it might not have as many shows as Netflix but "it does have plenty of quality" – and unlike Netflix it's not upping its prices or paying comedians huge sums to pick on marginalised people, so that's a big plus, too.

In recent months I've loved Apple Originals including spy drama Slow Horses, weird and spooky workplace drama Severance, time-travelling thriller The Shining Girls and many more, and I'm about to watch Prehistoric Planet with my kids.

And you can watch these things too, for free. Here's how to do it.

Apple TV+ TV show Severance

(Image credit: Apple)

How to get Apple TV+ for free

There are three options to get Apple TV+ for free:

1. The easiest, totally free way to get Apple TV+ for free is to activate the free trial that is available to everyone (opens in new tab): that's good for seven days, after which you'll pay the usual subscription of £4.99 a month if you want to continue.

2. Secondly, if you buy a new Apple product then you get Apple TV+ for free for 3 months. This includes purchases of new iPhones, iPads, iPods, Apple TVs or Macs. It's just a matter of activating it in the TV+ app.

3. The third option is to get your Apple TV+ as part of an Apple One subscription. Apple TV+ is included with every Apple One subscription: I took out my subscription to share Apple Music and iCloud storage with my family, so my Apple TV+ subscription is effectively free.

I'm about to cancel my Netflix subscription because compared to Apple TV+ it looks awfully overpriced: where Netflix has a lot of content, Apple TV+ has the content I want to watch. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by just how good it is.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written thirteen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote another seven books and a Radio 2 documentary series. When she’s not scribbling, she’s the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR (havrmusic.com (opens in new tab)).