How to Use TiviMate: A Beginner's Tour and the Best Settings

TiviMate works like a cable box once it's set up: you get a TV guide, channel groups, favourites and search, all built for a TV remote. Most of the confusion comes from its settings, which go very deep. You only need a handful of them. This tour covers the everyday screens, then the settings worth changing on day one.

This assumes you've already added a playlist. If not, start with how to add a playlist to TiviMate.

The main screens

The TV guide

This is home. Channels run down the left, time runs across the top, and programmes fill the grid. Scroll up and down through channels, right to see what's on later, and select a programme to watch the channel or see details. On channels with catch-up, you can scroll left into the past.

Channel groups

Playlists arrive sorted into groups: News, Sports, Movies, countries and so on. Switching groups is the fastest way around a big playlist. Many playlists include dozens of groups you'll never watch, and hiding those is the single best thing you can do to make TiviMate faster (see settings below).

Favourites

Long-press a channel (hold the select button) to open its options and add it to Favourites. Favourites then work like their own group, so you can open the guide straight to the 15 channels you actually watch.

Search

Search finds channels and programmes by name. It's the quickest way to answer "is the match on anywhere?"

The player

While watching, pressing select brings up the channel info. From there you can open the mini guide, switch audio tracks or subtitles, and (with Premium) start a recording.

The settings worth changing on day one

Open Settings from the menu. These are the ones that matter:

Exact menu names shift a little between versions, but these options live under Settings in every recent release.

Tidying up a big playlist

Large playlists arrive messy: duplicate channels in several qualities, groups named in capitals with country codes, channels you'll never watch. A few minutes of tidying makes TiviMate feel like your own TV:

• Hide whole groups you don't need (other countries, radio, adult). This is the biggest speed boost on small devices.
• Hide duplicate channels and keep the quality your connection handles best. On a Fire TV Stick, HD is often smoother than 4K.
• Rename channels and groups with names you'd actually use.
• Set your favourites order so channel up and down moves through the ones you watch.

These changes are tied to channel names, so if your service renames channels, some may need redoing.

What Premium adds

The free version covers the basics well. Premium, bought in the app on Google TV or through the TiviMate Companion app on devices without Google Play (such as Fire TV), unlocks features including:

• Recording to internal storage, USB or a network folder. See can TiviMate record?
• Catch-up for services that support it.
• Multiple playlists merged into one guide.
• Multiview, several channels on screen at once.

It costs roughly $10 a year or a one-off lifetime fee. Check tivimate.com for current pricing. Premium is tied to the account you bought it with, so keep those login details somewhere safe for when you change devices.

Tips from daily use

• Use your phone as a keyboard for anything you type. The Fire TV and Google TV apps both have one.
• Rename long groups if your playlist uses cryptic names. It makes the guide easier to scan.
• Reorder favourites so the channels you watch most sit at the top.
• Restart the device weekly on a Fire TV Stick. Small sticks run TiviMate happily but benefit from a clean start.

When something isn't working

• Blank guide: EPG not working.
• Spinning wheel: IPTV buffering fixes.
• Frozen picture or crashes on Fire TV: IPTV freezing on Firestick.

Still deciding whether TiviMate is the right player for you? We compare it with the old favourite in TiviMate vs IPTV Smarters, and list alternatives for every device in the best IPTV player for every device.