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Beta

Android TV rebuilt, mobile and desktop reworked

v1.2.0-beta.1. Our biggest update so far: a new Android TV player with HDR, rebuilt phone and desktop players, a redesigned mobile home, a Live TV overhaul, and cross-device sync.

This update lands on all three platforms at once. Here’s what matters, device by device.

This is a beta build, v1.2.0-beta.1. If something feels off, tell us. It helps us get the final release right.

Highlights

  • A rewritten Android TV player, now with HDR.
  • A new video player on phone and desktop.
  • A redesigned home screen on mobile.
  • A Live TV overhaul, with an automatic TV guide.
  • Sources and live channel preferences that sync across your devices.

Android TV

The big one. The video player was rewritten from scratch: resume is more reliable, hardware compatibility is noticeably better, and the loading screen now carries the BoTV colors.

Remote navigation got the same treatment:

  • Focus no longer gets lost or jumps off-screen when you reach the edge of a list.
  • The selected item is marked with a clean white outline instead of the old red glow, with a slight zoom on posters.
  • A title opens on a large animated image, with playback front and center as soon as you land on it.
  • Search uses an A–Z keyboard and a poster grid, which is faster to move through with a remote.
  • Settings, Sources, Simkl, and live TV are all reachable with the remote alone.

The player also handles HDR now. When your TV supports it, HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision content plays in HDR automatically, with no setting to flip and a small badge on screen so you know it’s active.

A rebuilt player on phone and computer

The TV player wasn’t the only one we redid. The player on phone and desktop was rebuilt too.

  • The progress bar is new. You can drag it to scrub, and it shows both how far you’ve watched and how much has loaded ahead.
  • On phone, a single tap in the middle shows or hides the controls right away. The old “sometimes they appear, sometimes they don’t” delay is gone. Double-tap the left or right edge to jump back or forward 10 seconds.
  • On desktop, a click plays or pauses and a double-click toggles fullscreen.
  • Display mode, subtitles, and audio track are reachable straight from the player.
  • When picking a source, you’ll see the actual stream quality in the menu, and the source list is fully scrollable.

Mobile (Android)

The home screen was redone: a full-screen featured title, themed rows, a Top 10, a “Continue watching” row, and progressive loading that shows the page layout before the artwork arrives. Detail pages go full-screen too.

Desktop (Windows, macOS)

  • On macOS, the app is now signed and notarized by Apple. No more right-clicking to get past the “unidentified developer” warning; it just opens.
  • Settings have been redesigned.
  • You can move through cards with the keyboard (arrows and Enter) and drive the player the same way.
  • The window stays draggable while a video is playing, and window management is much more stable overall.
  • It can be shrunk down to 480×360.
  • The scroll wheel no longer hijacks vertical scrolling on rows.
  • The “remove from history” button is back on the “Continue watching” row.

For everyone

  • Massive Live TV improvements: we’ve completely overhauled live channel reliability. You’ll see live channel counts, and the live catalog loads much more smoothly without slowing down the rest of the app.
  • A simpler TV guide: the program guide now comes straight from your source automatically, so “now playing” and “up next” show up on your live channels. Want your own? Set a custom EPG URL in the settings.
  • Browse a whole channel group: every row in Live discovery now has a “show all” that opens the full channel grid for that group, and it’s fully remote-friendly on TV.
  • Your setup follows you: sources and live channel group preferences now sync across all your devices. Add a source on your phone, find it on your TV.
  • Faster search: we upgraded the engine under the hood, so searches across your sources respond instantly.
  • Smoother onboarding: a revamped welcome flow makes setting up a new device easier.
  • A new Video fit setting (fill or fit), synced across your devices.
  • A clear message when playback is blocked because another device is already streaming (if enabled).

That’s v1.2.0-beta.1, on every platform. A Linux version is in development and will follow in a future update.

Found a bug or have feedback? Let us know; it helps us get v1.2.0 right.

Don’t have BoTV yet? Get it at botv.app.