Release notes

The app shows these once after each update, under Settings → About & legal. This is the whole list, newest first. Version 1.8.0 is current.

How an update reaches your device — and how to tell which one you are running — is on Updates.

1.8.0

MAC portals: add a Stalker or Ministra portal with its address and the MAC your provider registered, on the phone or the TV. It syncs to your other devices with your favourites, hidden and renamed categories, and it plays, downloads and records like any other playlist.
Continue watching on the Android TV home screen: films and episodes you have not finished sit in the launcher row and open where you stopped. It can be switched off in Settings → System.
AirPlay on the iPhone and iPad: a button next to the cast one sends a film or a channel to an Apple TV or an AirPlay 2 television.
OLED is truly black everywhere, and the TV layout has its own Theme row.
Casting to a Chromecast works again, whether or not the app is installed on the television.
In the player and on a channel page, Chromecast and your own TVs and phones sit behind one button, the same one films and series already had. The cast button is gone from the phone home screen, and both lists scroll when you have more devices than fit on the screen.
Choosing Chromecast on a film, a series or an episode now plays that title on the television, instead of only connecting and leaving whatever played there last. Sending to a screen has the cast icon everywhere, and while a Chromecast is connected the same sheet has a button to stop casting. The casting bar at the bottom of the screen has a solid background, so it no longer blends into what is behind it.
On the television, the channel list shows the time in its top corner, over the playing channel too.
Keep playlist passwords in your account: one switch in Settings → Account & sync, on from the start for new accounts and off for everyone else until they turn it on. Every device you sign in to then has your passwords, portal MACs and TMDB and OpenSubtitles sign-ins ready, and a password you change on one device reaches the others.
Playlists update much faster and the app stays usable while they do, because the daily refresh of an Xtream playlist now saves only what changed. A bad answer from your provider can no longer empty a section.
On Android and Android TV, live channels from Xtream playlists start closer to live. A playlist can be set to Auto, MPEG-TS or HLS in its edit screen; pick HLS if live channels stutter on an unsteady connection.
Films and episodes no longer pause and start over every few minutes with some providers. Fetching films over several connections is now off; switch it on in Settings → Player if your provider limits the speed of each connection.
Channels and films can use different players. Settings → Player has a separate engine row for live, so VLC can take the channels while films stay on the default player.
When a live channel plays at only a few frames a second, the app tells you and points to the setting that usually fixes it.
Deinterlacing in Settings → Player sharpens older channels that show jagged edges on movement.
The TV layout has an interface size, from 70% to 150%, in Settings → System.
Search for an actor by name on the phone or the TV to see every film of theirs in your playlist. Needs your TMDB account.
A profile can be limited to some of your playlists in Profiles.
Downloads come to Windows and the TV layout, and on the phone a whole season can be queued at once.
Categories can be renamed on the phone and the TV.
Every playlist has Reload from scratch, which downloads the list again and keeps your favourites, history, groups and category settings. Changing a playlist’s link or login asks whether to keep those or start clean.
A playlist’s name, User-Agent, spare hosts and Reload from scratch are together in its edit screen, and password fields have a Show button.
Signing in with a code, or sending from Settings, also opens the same playlists on the new device.
A device you remove from your account can be added back after 24 hours. Its screen tells you from what time.
Multiview windows cut off by your provider reconnect behind the picture instead of freezing.
Switching live channels on the VLC engine no longer freezes for a moment at the start, and playback you paused stays paused.
On the VLC engine, your audio track, subtitles and volume boost stay chosen when you change channel.
Films that fail to start because of a hiccup at your provider are retried quietly before you see an error.
Archive recordings no longer repeat the same few seconds over and over.
On Windows and the Mac: trailers play inside the app, films with several soundtracks let you pick one, built-in subtitles show on more films, 4K films no longer keep stopping to load, and the finishing time of a film no longer drifts.
On the iPhone and iPad the picture starts without the app freezing first, and the player, multiview and guide turn with the phone.
On Samsung DeX and other external displays, the menu and channel list are no longer pushed off screen.
On NVIDIA Shield, closing a VLC channel no longer freezes the app.
Heading rows in a provider’s channel list, like ##### SPORT #####, are shown as headings and skipped when you zap.
More like this shows each title once, prefers your language, and works without a TMDB account.
Outside English, film plots and genres come in your language when TMDB has them.
Film and series cards on the phone open without stutter, and so does Settings.
Posters keep loading however long you browse, instead of stopping after a few hundred titles.
A channel that comes without a logo in your playlist shows the logo from the TV guide, and a new setting can show the guide logos on every channel.
Search on the TV is split into tabs, a search for a programme lists every channel airing it, and the keyboard no longer flickers or closes after the first letter.
On the TV, focus stays where you left it, including when scrolling through playlists in Settings, and Continue watching holds as many titles as on the phone.
Browsing channels while something plays is smoother on the phone.
The player header shows quality, frame rate and sound; seeking is steadier; switching channels no longer flashes the previous one.
In the TV guide, “Guide preview follows the cursor” works as described, and OK on a past programme opens the recording when your provider has it.
Reminders, Downloads and Recordings share one Settings section, and holding a favourite, watchlist title or group on the home screen offers to remove it.
Low latency live now only plays closer to live and no longer shrinks your buffer.
Sync is quicker and steadier: changes no longer bounce between devices, and Sync now on the TV works while a playlist is being saved.
The TV guide no longer stops part way after a dropped connection, and guides from servers that mislabel their files load again. More channels find their programme when a guide writes quality marks in small raised letters, like TVN ᴴᴰ, and versions of a channel named that way show their quality and are ordered by it.
The app is no longer busy for a minute after every start on a big playlist.
Installing an update no longer leaves a playlist saying it failed to refresh, and a refresh that runs out of storage says so.
A single odd character in a title no longer stops a whole section of your playlist from updating.
Adding your first playlist on a TV is faster.
A PIN you removed no longer comes back, and a Kids profile can no longer open the profile editor.
The app no longer gets stuck on a blank screen at start, and closing the player with Minimize no longer leaves old data on screen.
Updates appear as a banner instead of a dialog, and Maybe later keeps it quiet for three days.
Moving from monthly to yearly on Android replaces the plan instead of adding a second subscription, and if you bought Lifetime with a subscription still running, the app points you to where to cancel it.
Settings mentions Family devices to subscribers who do not have it yet.
When a Chromecast cannot be reached, you get one message instead of two.
Fixes for several crashes.

1.6.8

Several playlists at once: tick more than one in the playlist switcher and Live TV, the guide, Movies, Series, search and the home screen show them together, each category under the name of its playlist and every tile marked with where it comes from. Favorites, groups, history and reminders are kept exactly as they were whichever playlists you tick.
The app speaks Arabic, Urdu and Hindi, and in Arabic and Urdu the whole layout reads from right to left.
Apple TV stops locking up: starting a channel or a film no longer freezes the remote while the file is being opened, and the guide answers again while a preview plays under it.
On the iPhone and iPad the app no longer stalls for a few seconds every time something starts playing.
On the iPhone and iPad the app no longer freezes when the screen turns, and crashes in multiview and while syncing are fixed.
Multiview on the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV plays its channels instead of spinning on them.
Apple TV has trailers again: picking one opens it in the YouTube app, since the TV itself has no browser to play it in.
Films start sooner on providers that cap the speed of a single connection, because the beginning of the file is now fetched over several at once, and on a slow line the player no longer downloads the opening of the file twice before the picture appears. Jumping to the middle of a film picks the picture up faster too, because it no longer works its way back up to full speed after every jump.
On Android a brief server error in the middle of a film no longer stops it: the failed piece is fetched again.
Last channel: the yellow button on the remote jumps back to the channel you were watching before, and again to return. Remotes without colour buttons find it in the player settings, and a remote with its own Last key uses that.
On the phone, turning it sideways while a channel plays opens the full screen, and turning it back closes it. Off switch under Settings › Player.
Stepping through the versions of a film and pressing Back now leaves the whole chain at once instead of walking you through every version you looked at.
A leftover working folder no longer stops the channel list from refreshing.
An Xtream playlist trimmed to a few categories refreshes much faster, because only the categories you keep are downloaded.
Changing a playlist’s server or password keeps its TV guide instead of wiping it at the next refresh.
Resetting all data on the iPhone no longer restarts the app in place.
On Android and the desktop, Update now no longer leaves the app unable to save anything until it is restarted.
Fixes for a crash when a stream was stopped at the same moment the player was being released.
On NVIDIA Shield, closing a channel that plays in the VLC engine no longer freezes the app.
Downloads to a USB stick or SD card are written there now, with their subtitles, and a download says so when the drive is not connected instead of failing quietly. Recordings of past programmes are saved to the stick too.
On the iPad and on Android tablets using the TV layout, a Back button appears wherever only the remote’s Back key used to take you out.
With several playlists ticked, each guide is refreshed when it needs to be instead of all of them at once, adding a playlist downloads only its own guide, and Settings names a playlist whose guide is behind.
The Play/Pause button on a TV remote pauses and resumes again instead of springing straight back.
On the TV, a list of choices opens with the selected one fully in view even when it is the last, and the day picker in the guide opens on today with its highlight in one piece.
On the TV, pressing down in search reaches a single result under its heading instead of jumping past it to the next section.
On the desktop, signing in with Google or Apple is remembered, channels with AC-3 or E-AC-3 sound and embedded subtitles play, Premium is recognised even when the computer’s clock is wrong, and a live channel no longer freezes when the provider switches its source.
Multiview on the TV no longer slows the whole app to a crawl with several 4K channels: a tile the TV cannot decode says so instead, and every tile lets go of its stream while multiview is off screen.
Closing the player on TV Channels goes back to the channel you were watching instead of quietly starting an older one in the background.

1.6.7

Missing posters fill themselves in while you browse, and a cover your provider points at but cannot serve is replaced with the real artwork instead of an empty tile.
On the TV you can set how early a recording starts and how late it stops.
Downloads and recordings can live on a USB stick again: the folder is created even when it sits outside the app’s own storage, and a finished recording there is filed under its own title.
Closing a programme in the guide puts you back on that programme instead of the menu, and a programme with more buttons opens tall enough to show them.
On the TV the audio and subtitle tracks are written out as a list, and those buttons carry icons like the rest.
Resume on the home screen resumes, and a film opened from there has the Details it was missing.
Signing in as somebody else takes the previous profiles off the device with it.
A locked iPhone stops reporting a sync error when it cannot reach the encryption key with the screen off.
Tablets can run the TV layout, marked experimental in Settings, and every screen stands up in landscape the way iPads now require.
A provider that only serves MPEG-TS is believed on every refresh, and one whose certificate will not validate says so in plain words.
Fixes for crashes when a list shrinks while you are scrolling it, and on the desktop when a stream is torn down mid-play.
On a slow TV box, pressing the remote while the app is still opening no longer ends in an “app is not responding” dialog.

1.6.6

Changing channels on the TV keeps up with the remote: the number and the name change as you press, holding up or down rolls through the list, and what is on now comes with them.
The controls at the bottom of the player open when you press OK and stay out of the way otherwise. Starting a channel or a film shows only the banner at the top, and the focus lands on the pause button.
A guide source is listed under its own name instead of the address it happens to live at.
A download that arrives in one piece is finished instead of starting over.
On the TV, an episode row no longer changes size when the focus lands on it.

1.6.5

The app now speaks Polish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Romanian, Turkish and Indonesian.
Live TV opens on your provider’s groups and remembers the one you were in.
A Buffer size setting under Playback, for a weak device or a slow connection.
The desktop app has an Interface size setting, so more fits on the screen.
A series opens on the episode you would resume, marked in the list.
Every trailer a title has, not just the first one.
Closed captions now work on live channels on Android.
Downloads that stalled just short of the end finish on the first try.
Fixes for the remote on the TV, the guide, versions, and running in a window.

1.6.3

A PIN now belongs to a profile, not to the whole app. A profile with a PIN asks for it at start and before a locked category; a profile without one, Kids included, never sees a locked category anywhere — not in lists, not in Recently watched, not in search. Your old app PIN moved onto your adult profiles.
Forgot a profile PIN? Settings → Profiles & PIN → the profile → Forgot the PIN confirms your account and removes it. Changing or removing a PIN asks for the current one first.
Profiles can wear a picture instead of an emoji: twenty avatars — real faces, the characters of a deck of cards and cartoon friends for the kids. The picture travels with the profile to your other devices.
Every version of a film or series is listed, in your own language first. Series versions say what audio and subtitles they carry, and a series card now has Related, the creators, the network and the episode length, the way a film card does.
Sign in from another device is on the first screen now, next to Google, Apple and email, and Send your data from Settings → Devices carries your playlist passwords too, encrypted for that one device. If you keep your synced data encrypted, it hands over the key as well, so a device that was locked stops asking you to type the recovery code.
Settings → Appearance lets you switch off rows of the home screen you never use. Hiding a row keeps your history, so resume still works from the title.
When the connection to a film drops while VLC is the player, the app no longer treats it as the end of the film: it reconnects, or hands the film to the other player, and your place is kept. Zoom, Fill and Stretch work on VLC on the TV again.
Films and episodes get more time to start on a slow link, and a dropped connection or a provider out of stream slots reconnects on the same player instead of switching to VLC.
On iPhone, iPad and Apple TV a live channel whose address ends in .ts now plays. Those players cannot read a raw MPEG-TS stream at all, so a playlist saved with output=ts, or a channel that fell back to that format, used to load for ever while the same channel played on Android.
When a network hands the player a web page instead of the film, which is how some mobile carriers block a provider, the app says so and names the address, instead of bouncing between players with “VLC could not play this stream”. VLC no longer takes such a page for a finished film, so your place in it stays.
Pause a live channel and you come back behind the broadcast. The player says so now: LIVE dims, and a Go live button jumps back to the live edge.
The TV guide loads on the first try on a fresh install, a playlist you add on the phone gets its guide right away, and Keep the guide for finally frees the space it promises.
Installing an update right after the library synced no longer crashes the app on its way to the new version.
Cast to now marks a TV that cannot take the stream as Unsupported instead of letting you tap it, and a name too long for its row scrolls past instead of ending in three dots.
On the desktop app, guides and downloads from a provider that redirects you to another server work again, and closing the app or installing an update no longer leaves errors behind.

1.6.0

Films and series now come with proper details: plot, cast with photos, genre, rating, poster and trailer, in your own language. Connect a free TMDB account under Settings → Integrations and the app fills in whatever your provider leaves out.
Online subtitles run on your own OpenSubtitles account, so you get your full daily allowance instead of sharing one with everybody else.
Variants: hold a film or series, or open it, and pick another copy your provider carries — a different language, quality, lektor or subtitles — the same way channels already worked.
Search finds what you mean: words in any order, the start of a word, a name typed without Polish letters and a misspelt word (“openheimer”, “batmna”) all land on the title, with the best matches first. This works the same in channels, films, series and the global search, and searching the guide on a TV takes a blink instead of seconds.
Typos are forgiven the way the big search engines do it: a slip anywhere in a word, even in the first letter, a misspelt beginning (“barca” finds Barcelona), a word typed without its space (“spiderman”, “starwars”), and when a whole phrase matches nothing the app drops the last words until something does (“witcher season 2” shows The Witcher).
When TMDB stops accepting your key or sign-in, Settings → Integrations says so and asks you to reconnect, instead of the app asking TMDB again and again in silence.
Every version of a film or episode now says what is inside it before you play it: which audio languages it has and which subtitles it carries.
Tap an actor to see their biography and every film and series of theirs that your own playlists actually carry. Actors with hundreds of credits no longer stop at their forty best-known titles: the app finds what your provider labels by id and offers Show more for the rest.
“More like this” stays in the category of the title you opened, so a Telugu film suggests Telugu films rather than whatever is popular worldwide.
With TMDB signed in you get your watchlist on the home screen, and you can add titles to it, mark favorites and rate them from the app.
Film, series and actor screens are rebuilt on the phone and the TV, and hold OK on an episode on the TV for play, rate, mark watched and download.
Background audio is on from the start and no longer stops a few minutes after the screen goes dark.
Volume boost is one setting for everything you play, it stays where you put it, and the steps now say how much louder they make things: Off to +12 dB, twice as far as before.
Settings are grouped into Library, Playback, Account, Services and System, so a setting is where you would look for it.
Family devices covers 4 phones and 4 TVs; the screens used to say 2 TVs.

1.5.3

Picking a channel in the TV channel list keeps the highlight on the channel you picked. It used to jump back to the channel you had opened the list for earlier.
“Continue watching” and “Recently watched channels” on the TV home screen are drawn by the TV itself now, so moving between them is as smooth as the poster rows.
Home on the TV is smooth again. The poster rows are drawn by the TV itself, so holding Down no longer stutters, and rows are ready before you reach them.
Focus looks the same everywhere. Dialogs and panels show the proper highlight ring instead of a thin line, and buttons no longer get a double outline.
Going back from a title returns you to the poster you opened, and Right from the menu takes you back to where you left off.
Programme titles in the TV guide stay readable when a programme started before the left edge of the screen.
Closed captions show up as “Closed captions” in the subtitle list, and your choice is remembered per channel.
A new “Keep the guide for” setting trims how many days of programme data stay on the device, so the guide takes less space.
Update now works while the library is still syncing. Only an active recording holds it back.
Sending playlists to a TV: one code now carries all your playlists, and a used code tells you to start again on the TV instead of failing silently.
The “Starting now” reminder panel in the player can be used with the remote and closed with Back.
Downloads show how far you watched next to their size, say when they are reconnecting, and belong to the playlist they came from.
The TV picks its own time format, and the app can be moved to a USB drive set up as internal storage.
Premium now covers two TVs and two phones, and Extra devices doubles that to four of each.
A new phone can be set up from one you already use: it shows a code, the other device scans it, and your account and playlists come across. Categories are picked per playlist, the same way as for a TV.
Settings now lists your other phones and computers next to your TVs, so the categories you keep can be sent to any of them.
The TV can do it the other way round too: type the code your phone shows into Settings → Connect a device, and the TV signs that phone in and hands over its playlists and categories.
Multiview streams no longer drop every half minute, and the picture in each window keeps up.
A multiview window can switch to another version of its channel: hold OK on the TV, right-click on the computer, or hold the window on the phone, then pick Versions.
Choosing categories on the TV: Load selected, Load everything and Back now sit at the top of the screen, where the remote can reach them, instead of below a list you would have to scroll to the end.
Poster rows in Movies and Series on the TV line up again. A short title no longer pulls its column up, so the rows below stayed staggered.
Multiview keeps the picture clear. The channel name appears when you move to a window or change what is in it and then fades away, and a small speaker marks the window you are hearing.

1.5.0

The TV app moves much faster. The guide grid, the poster rows and the home rails are drawn by the TV itself now, and opening a screen takes about half the time it used to.
Focus on the TV behaves. Picking something on the side menu no longer drags you into the content, Right steps in when you want it, and Left always brings you back.
Changing channels no longer rebuilds the video, so zapping is quicker.
The TV guide refreshes noticeably faster, and while it works it tells you what it is actually doing instead of sitting on one message.
The guide stops disappearing. A channel that briefly had nothing on air could lose its guide for good, and nothing brought it back.
Subtitles you download stay downloaded. They were kept somewhere Android was free to clear.
Continuing a series resumes the episode you were watching, not the first one.
Hiding or favouriting a channel keeps your place in the list instead of throwing you back to the top.
Screen brightness returns to normal when you leave the player, so the system slider works again.
The playback notification shows a progress bar, and search now sits on the right in every tab.

1.4.16

Moving between channel details and full screen no longer restarts the stream.
Changing the default player now also applies when you return to a channel that is already playing.
Programme reminders are more reliable and open the right channel.
Live playback, catch-up and the TV guide include reliability improvements.
Sending a channel to a paired TV can now wake supported Android TV devices first.

1.4.3

New Family add-on: one Premium subscription now covers four phones and two TVs.
More live channels play. The app works out the format your provider allows, and when a channel still will not start it tells you what went wrong.
A channel that stops to buffer no longer starts over from the beginning.
Playlists can keep a backup address and switch to it when your provider goes quiet.
Adding a playlist got easier: paste any link and the app works out what it is.
Your playlists and settings can be locked with a password, and they no longer duplicate themselves across your devices.
Playlists and the TV guide refresh in the background again, even when the app is closed.
Home opens faster, and the TV app is easier to move around with the remote.

1.4.2

Device management now opens in a dedicated details screen.
Release highlights now appear once after installing each new app version.