Live TV and the guide

The current-time line is off by default. Turn Show current time line on under Settings → TV guide to draw a vertical line in the current theme’s accent colour from the time labels down through the programmes at the current time, so every channel can be compared at a glance. Whenever the visible hours no longer contain the present, a marker appears next to the date telling you which way it is: ◂ Now when you are looking ahead, Now ▸ when you have scrolled back into what has already aired. The Now button in the row above returns the guide to the current time from either direction, and the guide then follows the clock again by itself. If you would rather do it from a button, assign any spare key to Jump to now under Settings → Remote & buttons (how-to 51) — useful when you are deep in the channel list rather than up on the buttons. Leaving Live TV and coming back also returns you to now. A red edge and a larger circular play badge mark the channel currently playing while the focus highlight follows your remote. Choose Playing channel beside Now, or under Tools in the group sidebar, to return to that row without restarting playback or changing the guide time. If you browsed to another group, it opens All playlists to find the row. Hidden or removed channels are not brought back. A replay icon beside the channel name marks a channel that carries catch-up. The information panel follows the programme you focus. Its height stays steady while details load, so the channel grid stays in place. It shows a short synopsis where space allows; with larger text, the information area can scroll. Choose its ⓘ Info action, or press a remote’s Info button, to open the complete scrollable synopsis and programme metadata. A red record icon marks a programme scheduled to record, and a chain icon marks programmes covered by a Series Link. A replay icon on a past programme marks one you can watch from catch-up. Rewind on the remote also scrolls the guide back in time. The preview keeps playing while you keep browsing. For a TiviMate-style flow, turn on Play a preview as you browse under Settings → Channels & guide → Guide playback; rapid scrolling is allowed to settle before the preview changes. Make the preview fullscreen after can then promote that channel after 5, 10 or 15 idle seconds. Both controls are available in the free version. If you’d rather skip the preview step entirely, turn on Open fullscreen with one press of OK in the same group.

To open Live TV on Favourites, All Playlists, Recently added or one of your own custom folders instead of All channels, choose Live TV opens to under Settings → Menu & sections → Default screens. Custom-folder choices are labelled Custom folder · Name, and the stable folder identity means renaming one does not lose the choice. Choose Last used group to have the guide reopen on the group you were browsing last time, such as UK Sports, a multi-group selection, one of your folders, Favourites or All Playlists. It is remembered separately for each profile and each TV service, so it holds when you close the full-screen player, leave Live TV and come back, switch TV service and back, or restart TiviGlass. If that group has since been removed or hidden, the guide opens on All channels instead, and a PIN-protected group asks for the PIN first. You can also choose one of your TV service’s own groups, labelled Group · Name, so a family TV opens on the kids’ group instead of All channels. The list comes from the service Live TV opens with (your Live TV source if you set one) and leaves out groups you have hidden or filtered out. Stremio sources and lists loaded from a file offer no groups here. The choice belongs to that one service: with a different service in use the guide opens on All channels, TiviGlass starts on its usual screen rather than Live TV, and the picker shows Group (not available), which is also what you see if the group has since been hidden, filtered out or removed by your provider. With parental controls on, a locked or adult group asks for the PIN first, unless Skip PIN for protected content is on. The group choice only decides where the guide opens: hiding a group (hold OK on it, then Group options) is what removes it from All channels for that profile. If a TV on the same account runs an older TiviGlass that does not know this option, that TV can reset the choice to All channels when it next syncs. Anything you pick here other than All channels or Last used group also makes TiviGlass open straight into Live TV, on that screen, after a cold start (a group choice only while its service is the one Live TV opens with) — so choosing Favourites is how you get the app to start on your favourites. Play the last channel when TiviGlass opens remains the higher-priority option: switch that off under Settings → This device if you want to see your chosen screen instead of immediately resuming playback.

Recently Added uses the catalogue dates supplied by your TV source. If an older saved catalogue has no dates yet, the empty screen offers Refresh channels. A source that supplies no date metadata cannot build that list.

Every channel change brings up a short channel banner — the channel name and logo with what’s on now and next — so you always know where you have landed. It clears itself after a few seconds and does not take over the remote: Up/Down keep moving through channels while it is showing, so you can keep surfing. Press OK to turn the banner into the full playback controls (how long those stay up is Settings → Streaming & reliability → Hide player controls after). Auto leaves that to TiviGlass: the controls you open yourself stay a little longer than the banner that appears on its own. Never keeps the controls you opened on screen until you hide them, and still clears the channel banner.

If you like to surf quickly, set Delay before switching (Settings → Streaming & reliability). With a delay, the on-screen selection moves instantly but only the channel you settle on is actually tuned — much faster, and much kinder to your provider.

The programme and channel stay visible at the top while you choose. Close is always pinned at the bottom, and the first focused choice is never a delete or reset action. This single menu covers favourites, watchlist, recording, reminders, multi-view, groups, renaming the channel, channel numbers, guide matching and per-channel corrections.

The menu shows what this programme is already set to do. Once you have set a reminder the same tile becomes Cancel reminder; once a recording is scheduled it becomes Cancel recording; a linked series offers Remove series link. Removing something always asks once before it happens, and you never have to leave the guide to undo what you just set. The full lists stay where they always were — Recordings, Reminders and Settings → Recordings → Series Links.

Actions your TV service or your box cannot do are simply not shown. Watch from start and Watch this programme appear only when your provider actually carries catch-up for that channel and the programme is still inside the days it keeps; Add to Multi-view appears only on a box that can decode more than one channel at once. An action your plan does not include is shown greyed with the plan it needs, because that is the one limit you can lift.

A guide programme has no on-demand ID of its own, so TiviGlass asks you to confirm a matching title from your provider’s Movies or Shows catalogue. If the provider does not carry it there, nothing is saved and the app tells you.

Set EPG channel searches four things, and each result says which one found it: the guide entry’s name, its ID, the EPG source it came from, and what that entry is showing — so you can type a programme you can see on screen and find the guide channel carrying it. The percentage beside a result is a separate thing: it is how close that entry’s name is to the channel you are fixing, which is why it is labelled name match. A result found by its programme or its ID can carry a low name score and still be the right answer.

You can start typing in Find guide data while candidates load. Typing narrows the search immediately after a short pause, and previous results stay visible while it searches. If reading the saved guide takes too long, use Try again; your search text and saved guide remain intact. EPG entries includes each enabled source, even when two sources use the same channel ID. Choose the entry with the source name you want. Linking saves that source for this channel and starts a guide update in the background; another source cannot replace its schedule. Where no preview is cached yet, the listing appears after that source downloads successfully.

Some remotes report a held button as lots of very fast presses instead of one long one. TiviGlass detects this and adapts, but on a third-party remote the first hold may register as a normal press — back out and hold again and it will work from then on.

Your TV’s own remote is the common case. When you control the box with the TV remote rather than the one it came with, the buttons travel over the HDMI cable, which has no way to say “still holding” and repeats the press instead. TiviGlass recognises that immediately, with no first-hold cost, so holding OK opens this menu. Holding Back jumps to the top in a channel or group list; elsewhere it counts as one Back rather than several. If you want two Backs there, leave a short beat between them.

If your remote still won’t hold, assign any spare button to Options for the focused item under Settings → Remote & buttons (how-to 51); one press of it opens this menu.

Holding OK on a group opens three short tabs: Group for its name, position and lock; Channels for members and visibility; and Cleanup for duplicates and provider-name clutter. Bulk Hide and Reset always ask before changing everything.

A group can hold channels from several playlists at once — open any playlist and add to the same group, and rows from elsewhere carry a source badge and play using their own provider’s details. Groups exist separately for Live, Movies and Shows. Deleting a playlist thins the groups it fed rather than removing them. Groups you already made keep working even if your plan lapses — only creating new ones needs Premium.

You can send channels straight into a group your provider already gave you: to merge “UK Regionals” into “UK Entertainment”, select them and pick UK Entertainment as the destination — no need to invent a group you already have. Copy leaves the channels where they are as well as adding them. Move also takes them out of the group you are standing in — they stay in Favourites, Search and All channels. To undo a move, select the channels in their new home and move them back to the original group. The group you are currently viewing is not offered as a destination. Custom groups are Premium, but copying and moving between your provider’s groups is free. Switch playlists and keep selecting: one custom group can be filled from all of them (provider groups belong to a single playlist, so channels from another one are skipped). Back leaves selection mode without changing anything.

Your active playlist does not change when you play something from another one, so your guide, favourites and resume points stay where they were. Playlists a profile isn’t allowed to see never appear in the merged view.

Filter by channel prefix: open Settings → Channels & groups → Manage group filters → Add custom filter. Select Channel name starts with, enter a literal prefix such as US|, UK| or FHD, then choose Hide matches or Show only matches. Matching ignores case and uses the displayed channel name; renaming a channel can change whether it matches. Multiple Show filters combine, and Hide wins. Saved filters apply to this TV source in the channel list, guide, favourites and custom folders, including after refresh. Disable or delete the filter to restore those channels; no channels or favourites are deleted. Prefix filtering requires Premium and stops narrowing lists if Premium expires.

Missing channels after cleanup? Open Settings → Channels & groups → List cleanup & refresh → Restore hidden channels. This restores every hidden channel in the active playlist for your profile, including channels you hid manually. The restore is carried to your other devices when cloud sync is enabled. A playlist refresh preserves hidden flags; it does not undo cleanup. Restore all channel names only undoes renaming. If feeds are still collapsed together, turn off Merge duplicate channels under Streaming & reliability, and check Manage TV groups and Manage group filters for hidden groups or filters.

All of these are overlays on top of your provider’s data. Refreshing the catalogue never wipes them, and clearing an override always brings the original name, logo or number straight back.

Renaming is free. Typing a name yourself is included on every plan; on a paid plan the same dialog first offers tidied-up suggestions built from the provider’s own name, so you can clear a country prefix or a quality tag in one press instead of retyping the line. Restore original is always there, and a rename follows the channel everywhere — the guide, search, favourites, your groups and the player.

Event and pay-per-view slots are treated differently on purpose. Some providers rewrite those channel names every few hours to whatever is on right now, so they arrive looking like ENDED | Fri 28 Aug 05:59 | UK: MAX PPV 1 or MAX USA 43: NO EVENT. A rename is permanent, so tidying one of those would pin last night’s match to the channel for good. TiviGlass instead suggests the part that stays true — MAX PPV 1 — and where there is no such part it offers nothing and leaves the provider’s own text alone, which is why the suggestion list is sometimes empty on those channels and not on the ones beside them.

The other half of that is what you see while you browse. When a slot like that has no real guide listing, TiviGlass reads tonight’s fixture out of the channel name and shows it as what’s on — next to the picture, in the empty guide cell, and on Home. A real guide always wins. A reminder or recording you set from that title still fires at the time shown, but it will not follow a later schedule change, because there was never a guide row to follow.

Three ways to reach the guide’s button behaviour. From the guide itself, hold OK on a channel and choose Guide behaviour. From Settings, it is under TV guide → Guide playback, and there is a TV guide row beside Live player and Movies & shows under Remote & controls → Button behaviour that goes to the same place. Searching Settings for “single tap”, “small player” or “fullscreen” also lands on it.

If the guide looks too small or too crowded, these are the two controls for it. They are free, they are per profile, and they only affect the guide — so you can enlarge the guide without enlarging every other screen. To make the whole app bigger instead, use App text & layout size under Settings → Appearance; the two combine, so it is worth changing one at a time.

A guide source that came from your provider is shown but can’t be deleted — it disappears with the playlist. Sources you add yourself, including their order and On/Off state, travel with cloud sync and Cloud Backup; the feed address is encrypted in the cloud copy. Provider-supplied sources are rediscovered when that playlist updates. EPG coverage tells you how many of your channels currently have programme data, which is the quickest way to spot a bad source.

Opening the TV guide pulls the schedule in by itself the first time each session if there isn’t one yet. Routine manual and timed updates live under Playlists, so there is only one update process to remember.

Background updates run on any connection, including a 4G router or phone hotspot. If data use matters, lengthen the Update interval or turn Automatic playlist updates off under Playlists.

Programme times come from your guide source, not from TiviGlass, and the app shows them in your TV’s own time zone. If everything is out by a whole number of hours, the source is stamping its times against a different zone — that is what Guide time offset is for. Check your TV’s date, time and time zone first, then set the offset to the difference you can see. If it is one or two channels rather than the whole guide, use Channel corrections on those channels instead. Whichever you use, the direction is the same: the guide running behind the real broadcast needs a plus correction to move it forward.