Categories

Categories come from the provider. What you do with them is entirely yours.

Choosing what to download

When a playlist is added, Choose categories appears before anything is downloaded. You can come back to it any time: the pencil next to the playlist in Settings → Playlists, then Downloaded categories. On a television it is Downloaded categories in the playlist’s options.

Untick a category here and the app never downloads it. On a large provider this is the single biggest thing you can do for speed: a playlist told to keep two live categories asks the provider for those two instead of pulling a list of two hundred thousand streams and throwing most of it away.

Categories are managed separately for Live TV, Movies and Series.

Deleting is not hiding

A category you untick here is not downloaded. Its channels do not exist on the device, so the guide has nothing to attach to them and search cannot find them. A category you hide (below) is downloaded and simply not shown, the guide still loads for it.

Hiding, locking and ordering

Settings → Categories, with a tab each for Live TV, Movies and Series. At the top, Hide new categories: when on, categories your provider adds later stay hidden until you unhide them, which helps on a provider that keeps inventing sections. Under it, Hidden channels, a search, Hide all and Show all, and then every category.

Settings, Categories: Hide new categories on top, then every category with its buttons to rename, hide and lock it.

On a phone each category has buttons to rename, hide and lock it, and tapping it lists its channels, each with its own switch to hide it. In the lists you browse, holding a category offers the same options.

• Hide it. It disappears from the lists but its channels stay on the device.
• Lock it. It is hidden from every profile that has no PIN, and asks for the PIN in profiles that do. See Profiles, PINs and locked categories.
• Pin it to the top, or put it in the order you want: on a phone with the button in the top corner of the screen, on a television with hold OK → move, and on a computer by dragging the row with the mouse.

Locking is enforced in the database, not in the screen that lists them, so a locked category cannot leak through search, the home screen rows, continue-watching or a deep link.

Renaming

Rename a category and that name is used everywhere the app shows it, the category list, the home screen rows, the hidden list, the download panel.

• An empty field puts the provider’s name back.
• Typing the provider’s own name also counts as putting it back.

The provider’s original name is kept underneath, because a few decisions, like recognising a streaming-service row, are made on the real name rather than yours.

On a television

Categories are a column on the left of TV Channels, Movies and Series. Hold OK on one for the same options, or use Settings → Categories. Downloaded categories, in a playlist’s options under Settings → Playlists, is the television’s version of the download picker: it keeps one selection across Live TV, Movies and Series, queues what you change instead of making you wait, and tells you what a delete would restore.

Live TV opens on the folders

A playlist with at least eight visible categories opens Live TV on a folder screen. Favourites, All channels, My groups, then the categories with their counts, instead of a flat list of ten thousand channels. Pick one and you are in the ordinary list, with the category’s name in the title and a back arrow.

A playlist with fewer categories than that is not changed at all.