u/MangoSuch8130

Just pushed an update and wanted to share what's new.

The big one: the website channel manager now groups categories by country/prefix automatically. So instead of scrolling through 200 entries like UK ▎SPORTS, UK ▎NEWS, UK ▎MOVIES, AR ▎SPORTS, AR ▎NEWS... they now collapse into tidy groups (UK, AR, AFR, etc.) that you can expand. Same grouping is now in the My Playlists panel too, with drag-to-reorder inside each group.

If you hid categories on the website, the app would sometimes ignore it or overwrite your settings on next launch. That's fixed — the app now checks the server first before doing anything, so whatever you set on the website is what you get on the app. Order included.

tl;dr:

• Website category list is way less overwhelming now
• App respects your website settings instead of fighting them
• Category order on the app now matches what you set on the dashboard

**Update to the update **- v1.1.38
Default mode is now Raw Provider
New installs (and installs without a saved preference) will now default to raw provider mode instead of app-managed. This means channels and categories show exactly as your provider organises them, with no reordering or merging. If you preferred app-managed, you can switch it back in Settings → Manage Channels.

Category order now follows your provider
Categories were previously sorted by their internal ID number, which had nothing to do with the order your provider actually sends them in. They now appear in the same sequence as your provider organises them.

Playback menu visual update
The playback settings dialog (stream format, user agent) has been cleaned up — it now fits the TV UI properly with proper focus highlights and no more white card behind the dialog.
Hey all, small update out now.

What's new:

• Added Playback Settings in the TV settings menu — you can now change the stream format (Auto / Force HLS / Force TS) and the user-agent string sent to your provider. Useful if you're getting 403 errors or streams not loading.

Fixes:

• Categories were sometimes not showing even when they should be — fixed
• Toggling a playlist on/off in the dashboard now takes effect in the app straight away without needing to wait for a cache refresh
• Deleting a playlist from the dashboard now properly cleans up all associated data
• New playlists added via the dashboard were occasionally not being picked up on the next app launch — fixed

As always, the app will prompt you to update automatically. Let me know if you run into anything.

• Stall watchdog: if a live stream freezes mid-playback for 5 seconds, the player auto-reconnects (up to 3 retries per channel) instead of sitting on a stuck frame.
• Connection leak fix: rapid channel switching (A → B → A) was leaking HLS connections on the provider, eventually triggering HTTP 458 "Max Connections Reached" and black screens. Players now properly stop + clear media before swapping streams, and listeners are removed before release.
• Friendly playback errors: HTTP 403 / 404 / 407 / 5xx and common Media3 errors now show plain-English messages instead of raw error codes.
• Live TV cache extended to 48 hours so the channel list and EPG appear instantly on cold start.
• Channel preview debounced (220ms): rapid up/down on the channel list no longer spins up the player for every channel you pass through.
• Fragment prewarm tightened: tabs are ready to render shortly after launch instead of being queued for several seconds.

Hey folks, meaty bug-fix release tonight. Most of this came from chasing a couple of weird visual glitches and a navigation gripe on the Movies/Shows tabs. Also a timing issue with XMLTV file causing failed epg update.

• Live TV programme guide now auto-refreshes when it gets stale. If your XMLTV data is older than 24 hours, the app will fetch fresh data on launch instead of showing an empty guide.
• The 24h check now correctly handles every active playlist's EPG file separately — if even one playlist has gone stale, the refresh kicks in.
• Replaced the old "remember when we last updated" timestamp logic with a direct file-age check on disk. The old logic could get stuck thinking data was fresh when it actually wasn't, leaving the guide blank with no recovery.
• After the refresh finishes, the Live TV screen updates the programme info on screen automatically — no need to navigate away and back or restart the app.
• Top picks and Most Watched rows now show their pictures properly. Cards in those carousels were sometimes coming up blank on the first load. Tracked it down to a recycler issue where the holder forgot which backdrop URL it last loaded after being recycled, so the same card would skip its image bind on rebind. Now the URL is reset on recycle and the bind always runs.
• Smoothed out the quick black flash when opening Movies and Shows. When you first hit those tabs the first two carousels would flash black, then briefly show the image, then settle. Two things were causing it: Removed both. The XML background of #1A1A1A is still there as a base, so empty cards still look right, but recycled cards keep their existing bitmap until Glide swaps in the new one.
  1. The recycle path was calling Glide.clear() on the ImageView, which wiped the existing drawable for a frame before the new bitmap landed on rebind.
  2. The bind path was painting setBackgroundColor(#1A1A1A) and using a dark ColorDrawable placeholder, both of which forced one dark frame even when a stale (correct) bitmap was already sitting on the recycled view.
• Up arrow from Continue Watching now goes to the row above instead of the menu. There was a hardcoded D-pad rule that lumped the Continue Watching carousel in with the streaming-provider bar and forced UP to jump straight to the top nav. Removed that special case. UP now just behaves like every other row — one press = previous carousel.
• Fixed two carousels overlapping on the Movies page. The "Because You Watched" row was being inserted at index 0, which stole "Trending Now"'s slot. Since "Jump Back In" is anchored to the position right after the first genre, this was shoving JBI onto the wrong row and visually stacking carousels in the same spot. Now Because You Watched is inserted after Trending Now, so the order is: Top Picks → Most Watched / Trending Now → Jump Back In → Because You Watched → genre rows.

Features

• Streaming provider badges (Netflix, Prime, etc.) now show on movie/show cards in the browse grid
• Provider badges correctly filter by your country — you only see what's available where you are
• Watch provider data is now fetched at index time so new titles have badges immediately
• Each playlist now has its own guide data file — no more mixups with multiple providers

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: clicking a show from Search results would spin forever looking for versions — series.php was sending the response before poster_paths was populated (async TMDB backfill), so version matching always got an empty list on first load. Same issue affected movies. Both are now fixed to backfill synchronously before responding.
• Fixed: title logos missing when opening shows/movies from Search — logo path wasn't included in the search API response. Added.
• Fixed: Search was slow (~12s on a cold server) because movies and series were fetched sequentially. Both calls now run in parallel.
• Fixed: TV guide wasn't matching most channels even though data existed — channel IDs were stored mixed-case but looked up lowercase. SQLite comparisons are case-sensitive, so everything silently missed.
• Fixed: guide stopped re-downloading after clearing app data — a loading flag was never reset after an interrupted run, so the app assumed a download was already in progress and did nothing.
• Fixed: 5s freeze when switching from Movies to Live TV — credential lookup was hitting the database on the main thread. Reads from memory now if already loaded.

Anyone using the web based custom playlist feature? Would love to hear some feedback and opinions!

A couple of years ago I went through one of the darkest periods of my life mentally.

Not in a “feel sorry for me” kind of way — because honestly, life hits everyone eventually. We all go through periods where things feel heavy, uncertain, isolating, and impossible to see beyond. Sometimes you genuinely feel like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

But if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that things really can get better. Not overnight. Not magically. You just have to keep pushing forward even when your brain is telling you there’s no point. One more day. One more week. One more step.

At some point I made a decision that probably looked insane from the outside. I quit my job and decided to dedicate myself full time to building what I believed could become the world’s most powerful IPTV player.

That project became Viewella.

What started as an idea during one of the worst times in my life slowly became something that gave me purpose again. Every feature, every design decision, every sleepless night poured into this thing became proof to myself that I was still moving forward.

Today Viewella has grown to over 5,000 users and a subreddit community of 1,300+ people who have genuinely helped shape the platform into what it is becoming. Seeing people actually enjoy something you built from the ground up is a feeling that’s hard to explain.

Some of the things we’ve built so far:

• Automated channel mapping based on your location
• A fully working recommendation engine
• Customisation that syncs across all devices
• 250+ unique sub-genres for movies and TV for much deeper browsing
• The ability to create your own playlists, categories, and channel orders from a web dashboard
• Browse titles by streaming service
• Similar title recommendations while viewing a movie
• Full episode summaries for TV shows, upcoming unreleased episodes, release tracking, and reminder notifications with one click

And honestly? We’re only just getting started.

There are still so many ideas I want to bring to life. So many ways IPTV can evolve beyond just “watching channels.” I truly believe the experience can be smarter, more personal, and genuinely enjoyable to use.

I think the reason I’m posting this is because if you’re currently in a rough place mentally, please don’t assume your story ends there. Sometimes the thing that eventually changes your life starts during the period where you feel completely lost.

Keep going. Seriously. Even when it feels pointless.

You have no idea where you might end up a couple years from now.

viewella.com

r/Viewella

https://reddit.com/link/1tnilr8/video/7lqf8vxwzb3h1/player

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You can now build your own playlist from scratch at viewella.com/playlist-manager. Create categories, pick channels from your provider, drag to reorder, and assign EPG from Viewella's guide database so everything shows up with correct programme info in the TV guide. Once saved, it syncs straight to the app — enable it in Live TV settings with the new "Use Custom Playlist" toggle.

Browse by Streaming Platform

Movies and Shows now have a sidebar with platform logos (Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Max, Apple TV+, etc.). Tap one to see everything you have from that platform, organised by genre with recommendations at the top. Great if you want to browse what's available on a specific service from your playlist.

Remote Device Logout

Head to viewella.com/device-manager to see all devices linked to your account. You can now remotely sign out any of them — useful if you've lost a device or just want to clean things up.

Recommendations & Platform Logos

The "What to Watch" section has been improved with better content matching. Platform logos are now properly branded square icons for each streaming service.

Playlist Sync Improvements

The cloud sync that keeps your playlist settings (category order, visibility, custom playlists) in sync across devices has been substantially reworked — faster, more reliable, and now includes your custom playlist data.

As always, the update will come through automatically. Let us know how you get on.

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**EDIT** Thanks to rapid user feedback I managed to squeeze in a quick patch to the matching logic that dramatically improved Movies and Shows version matching. - V1.1.26

Hey all, just pushed an update with a few things worth highlighting (please note Vod will take a while to load in the background if you have a large playlist or multiple playlists.):

Temporary Fix
Version drop down menu will list the full title as per your playlist whilst I work on better version matching logic.

Playback fixes
Spent time making sure playback works reliably across all devices and setups. If something does fail to play, you'll now see a proper error code on screen instead of a blank/stuck player — makes it much easier to troubleshoot.

Better title matching
VOD search and show matching has been improved. Titles that were previously showing up wrong or pulling the wrong version should now be more accurate. Playlists are now indexed for faster matching (time consuming at first load but ridiculously fast after first install).

Adult categories toggle
New hidden option to show or hide adult categories. To toggle it, go to Live TV and press the Live TV button 5 times. There's a small easter egg in there too 👀

Per-playlist refresh
You can now set refresh intervals on a per-playlist basis instead of it being one global setting.

Added a little bit of fun to this update, free lifetime to whoever posts a video of it first!

As always, update should come through automatically. Let me know if you run into anything.