Refreshing and changing a source
The Playlists screen
Section titled “The Playlists screen”Settings → Playlists on a phone has three parts.
Your playlists starts with Add playlist, then every playlist on the device.
- Tap a playlist to make it the one you are watching. The box on its left adds it to the view next to the others instead, see Several playlists at once.
- The pencil opens its details: the same form you added it with, for Xtream with the account at a glance on top, and at the bottom Downloaded categories, Reload from scratch and Remove playlist. The Demo Playlist has a bin instead of a pencil, because there is nothing in it to edit.
- Holding a playlist offers to remove it. With two or more playlists, the button in the top corner selects several at once, to put them in order or remove them together.
Update all, under the list, refreshes every playlist you can see, one after another, not only the ones in view. A playlist loaded from a file and the Demo Playlist have nothing to refresh and are skipped; one that is missing its password says so instead of failing.
Settings, at the bottom, holds the rules for the automatic refresh.
On a television Settings → Playlists has the same parts the other way up: the settings first, then Add a playlist, Update all and the list. OK on a playlist opens its options: Make active, Add to view, Refresh now, Edit, Stream hosts, Downloaded categories, Reload from scratch and Remove playlist.
Automatic refresh
Section titled “Automatic refresh”Under Settings on the same screen:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Auto-refresh playlist | Picks up channels your provider adds or removes. On Android it also runs while the app is closed; on iOS when the system allows it; elsewhere every time you open the app |
| Refresh interval | 6 h, 12 h or 24 h |
| Refresh on Wi-Fi only | Applies to the automatic refresh. Update all always works |
On a television the first two are called Refresh playlists automatically and Playlist refresh interval. The same section also has Related titles in the same language only, which is about More like this, not about refreshing.
Reading the status row
Section titled “Reading the status row”Under the playlist’s name you see what it holds and when it was last updated. Under that, when there is something to say:
- A line saying what it is doing, such as Connecting…, while it updates.
- sections did not update — tap to retry, with the provider’s own reason under it. Some sections answered and others did not. Tapping retries only the ones that failed, not the whole list, and what you already had in them stays.
- Needs refresh — tap to update, a playlist that has never finished loading on this device.
- Enter password to load channels, or Enter the MAC address to load channels for a portal, a playlist that reached this device without its password, see Keep my passwords in my account.
On a television the same warning is a yellow line in the playlist’s row, and retrying is the first option when you press OK on it.
A provider that answers for Live and refuses for Movies is common, and the app deliberately keeps what it has rather than emptying a section it could not re-download.
Changing the link or the login
Section titled “Changing the link or the login”Editing a playlist’s server, username or M3U address is different from renaming it, because your favourites, history and hidden categories hang off channel numbers, and providers number their streams from 1. Point the same playlist at a different list and your favourites would land on strangers.
So the app asks one question:
| When it is right | |
|---|---|
| Keep favorites and settings | Same provider, new address or a renewed subscription. The list is the same list |
| Start clean | A different provider, or an edited list where the numbering has moved |
Nothing is guessed and nothing is matched by name, a wrong guess here puts a children’s channel in place of something else, so the app refuses to guess.
Renaming the playlist, changing its User-Agent or its spare hosts never asks anything.
Reload from scratch
Section titled “Reload from scratch”In the playlist’s details on a phone, and in its options on a television. It throws away the channels, films and series it downloaded and everything cached from them, then downloads the whole list again on the progress screen.
It keeps: your favourites, history, groups, the names you gave things, and your hidden categories.
Use it when the list itself looks wrong, duplicated channels, a section that will not come back, a category that should have disappeared weeks ago. It is not a fix for a stream that will not play.
How long a refresh takes
Section titled “How long a refresh takes”A hundred-thousand-item provider takes minutes, and most of that is writing to the database rather than downloading. It is much faster the first time a playlist is filled than on later refreshes, and much faster again if you trimmed the categories, a playlist told to keep two categories only downloads those two.