What's new in v0.13.12

Brazil-friendly Portuguese defaults, stronger IPTV Web Player SEO, and new guides.

• Geo: Brazil (and Brazilian timezones) default Movies/Series language to Português, not Spanish.
• VOD: BR/BRASIL catalog tags map to Portuguese; PT filter label is Português.
• Landing: title, H1, and hero lead target “Streamly — Modern IPTV Web Player for Xtream Codes.”
• Guides: Best IPTV Web Player for Xtream Codes in 2026; How to Use an IPTV Web Player; pt-BR Como usar o Streamly.

Fall back to server HLS when VOD has unsupported or silent AC-3/DTS audio.

• VOD: after swapAudioCodec / silent progressive play, request transcode=hls (copyVideo → AAC).
• VOD: clearer error when NEXT_PUBLIC_VOD_TRANSCODE is not enabled in the build.

Choose which Live/Movies/Series categories appear in pickers, plus Docker SQLite bootstrap fix.

• Settings: category visibility filter per Xtream login (Live, Movies, Series).
• Docker: create core SQLite tables on startup so signup works without db:push.

Download VOD episodes to disk before transcoding so playback no longer stalls or loops mid-episode.

• VOD: cache the source file locally, then ffmpeg from disk (single-connection safe).
• VOD: wait for enough downloaded bytes before seek/resume encodes; keep source across Try again.
• VOD: never treat early ENDLIST as finished when the episode is incomplete.
• Player: re-wire finale detection so series autoplay advances instead of live-sync looping.

Brave cast guidance, Continue Watching sync via PIN, and one clear search bar.

• Cast: Brave Media Router / Shields recovery tips; Samsung needs Chromecast built-in.
• PIN pairing carries Streamly session so Continue Watching syncs phone → TV.
• Search: single TopBar field on Live/Movies/Series; unified min length and retry on failures.

Quieter API health alerts and steadier VOD resume after background.

• Monitor: stop duplicate API health alert emails.
• Player: resume VOD after background at the saved position.

Resume VOD after a break at the right time — not 00:00.

• Player: long-background wake reinit keeps continue-watching position and tc_seek.
• VOD: serialize ffmpeg spawn so concurrent resumes cannot orphan duplicate encodes.

Stop mid-episode Unable to play when the VPS is briefly overloaded.

• Player: soft-retry mid-playback 502 on VOD transcode manifests instead of killing the episode.
• VOD: resume a failed encode from flushed segments instead of returning hard 502.
• VOD: default x264 preset ultrafast to cut CPU on small VPS hosts.

Stop VOD transcode playback from skipping a second when encode lags.

• VOD: hold the HLS playlist a few segments behind ffmpeg so clients stop racing the encode edge.
• Player: wait/retry on 503 segment prep instead of restarting load and jumping buffer holes.
• Player: stay further behind growing EVENT playlists and tighten maxBufferHole.

Live Trending on TV loads much faster from cache.

• Trending on TV: serve the warm assembled shelf even when the browser sends EPG hints.
• Trending on TV: stop React Query refetch storms as IndexedDB/shelf hints fill in.
• Trending on TV: skip the 2.5s shelf-hint wait when local titles are already warm.

Fix Live TV black screen on smart TVs after opening a channel.

• Player: delay background suspend so brief TV visibility flickers no longer pause HLS forever.
• Player: wake from pagehide/pageshow always resumes loading (not only bfcache).
• Player: after a real suspend, video.play() also restarts hls.js startLoad().

Favorite channels from the All Channels category popout.

• Live: heart toggle on category overlay channel rows (“See all”) to add or remove from My List.
• My List: same local prefs + cloud sync as the rest of the app.

Fix Chromecast title-only stall; add cast monitoring.

• Cast: always resolve a cast-safe H.264 ladder from the master — never reuse the browser’s HEVC/Dolby rung.
• Cast: live segments keep type=hls (Smarters UA) so Chromecast can fetch IPTV CDNs.
• Cast: 18s stall watchdog when the TV never reaches PLAYING.
• Ops: cast funnel in /api/metrics, client /api/cast/events, token-gated /api/cast/diag.

Cast to TV starts faster and more reliably; iPhone gets real AirPlay.

• Cast: pre-warm Chromecast-safe HLS while you watch so Cast to TV is near-instant.
• Cast: server resolve picks a playable media playlist — fixes title + cast icon with no video.
• Cast: persistent Cast button, auto-follow when already connected, poster metadata, MKV via HLS only.
• iOS: AirPlay picker from the player; Share copies a TV-safe proxied URL instead of the raw provider link.

Mobile live TV recovers when audio plays but the picture stays frozen.

• Player: auto-reload on audio-only live playback and native iOS frozen-frame recovery.
• Player: pin phone live streams to browser-safe HLS quality rungs (HEVC/Dolby drift).
• Player: Try again on the “hearing audio but no picture” banner.
• Infra: redirect www to apex in Caddy.

Mobile and desktop get stronger background recovery after tab sleep or bfcache restore.

• Player: listen for pagehide/pageshow and freeze/resume — covers mobile Safari bfcache and Android tab discard.
• Player: iPhone/iPad after long background now full pipeline reinit instead of a bare play() on a stale native HLS session.
• Player: shared recovery planner for all clients — gentle/soft HLS on Chromium, safe reinit everywhere.

TV browsers no longer freeze after overnight standby when leaving the player.

• Player: suspend HLS on TV/tab sleep (pause + stopLoad) instead of leaving a stale MSE session overnight.
• Player: wake recovery uses soft HLS reload — never sync video.load(), which froze Samsung/Fire TV after standby.
• Player: defer hls.destroy on close so browse remount does not race teardown and lock the whole browser.

Pause is respected during MKV transcode; no more random resume or skip.

• Player: stop calling play() on every transcode fragment — fixes unprompted resume while paused.
• Player: remove transcode edge watcher that nudged HLS and fired fake ended events.
• Autoplay: ignore synthetic ended while paused; do not advance on countdown when paused.

Stabilize series transcode playback and stop false autoplay skips.

• Player: only fire transcode ended near the real finale — HLS snap-backs mid-episode no longer advance.
• Player: simplify episode URL setup and stop prep UI from resetting mid-playback.
• Series: disable neighbor transcode warming and transcode-buffer autoplay polling.

Series playback no longer auto-advances when transcode encode stalls mid-episode.

• Player: only treat transcode as ended near the real episode finale — not when encode catches up mid-playback.
• Series: warm only the next episode (delayed) instead of prev/next MKV transcode jobs that stole the provider slot.
• Resume: fix timeline-hold race that cleared continue-watching position before the pipeline attached.

Series episodes no longer restart or skip on first play.

• Player: stop prefetching neighboring episodes as raw MKV — use transcode warm only.
• Player: bake resume seek into the first transcode URL so playback does not start at 0 and jump.
• Player: initialize transcode URL before the pipeline attaches to avoid a double restart.

VOD probing no longer exhausts single-connection IPTV panels.

• VOD: probe only MP4 (not four extensions) and stop immediately when the provider is busy.
• VOD: skip format probes when server MKV transcode is enabled; cooldown before fallback playback.
• Series: removed auto transcode warm on page load that stole provider slots before Play.

Live TV search finds channels across the full catalog.

• Live TV: server-side name search scans the full channel list instead of a 240-row sample.
• Live TV: programme (EPG) title search enabled by default on the Live page and shelf browse.
• Live TV: search results play correctly from shelf browse without a category context.

Discovery shelf filters, smarter For You rows, and gentler VOD format probing.

• Movies/Series: discovery shelves stay visible under filters — only non-matching titles drop out.
• For You: suggests new titles from genre taste instead of repeating Continue Watching.
• VOD: probe MP4/M4V/MOV/TS one at a time with lightweight upstream checks before MKV transcode.

Probe for MP4 and other browser-friendly VOD formats before MKV.

• VOD format probe when panel metadata says MKV — try MP4/M4V/MOV/TS before playback.

Sanitize player error messages when providers return HTML.

• Player errors: stop showing raw HTML or Cloudflare pages in the Unable to play overlay.

Player close freeze fix for mobile and desktop browsers.

• Player close: defer HLS teardown on every client — mobile and desktop match the TV non-blocking close path.

Fix TV player close freezing the app.

• Player close on TV: defer browse remount and HLS teardown so the overlay dismisses before heavy work.
• Guard double-close taps and history cleanup races when exiting playback.
• Floating X close control stays pointer-reachable; Backspace closes like other TV remotes.

Faster TV navigation between hub and Live/VOD/Series pages.

• TV hub prefetch: warm route chunks and slim catalogs on the home menu; tiles prefetch on D-pad focus.
• Shorter TV deferrals: catalogs, discovery shelves, live browse UI, and shelf loading start sooner.
• Back to Home: TV sub-nav prefetches the hub route on focus.

TV Live browse defaults and tighter North America region filtering.

• TV Live: open straight into category shelves — Guide/List toggle removed on living-room TVs.
• Live TV search: fix keyboard dropping after one letter; category lists scroll while filtering.
• North America: hide Arabic, Latin American, and other foreign shelves unless that region is selected.
• Live API: stop falling back to unfiltered channels when regional sampling returns empty.

VPS capacity monitoring — know when to upgrade your server.

• Host metrics collector (RAM, CPU, disk, egress) runs every 5 minutes on the VPS.
• Protected GET /api/metrics — stream-proxy concurrency, Node memory, upgrade signals.
• npm run monitor:report — human-readable capacity summary to paste into support chats.
• One-time scripts/vps-monitoring-setup.sh installs cron, secret, and vps-spec.json.

TV Live UI overhaul — readable 10-foot text, fixed category picker freeze.

• Categories on TV: full-screen grid picker — no more page freeze from the old modal.
• Samsung / TV browsers: fix root font scale so text is readable at 100% zoom.
• TV Guide: taller rows, larger channel names and programme blocks.
• TV Live: bigger toolbar controls; hide Continue Watching when viewing the guide.

Live TV layout fills wide screens — no more empty shelf gaps on TV.

• Live TV: inline “+N more” after channel cards — fixes huge blank bands on 4K TVs.
• Live TV browse: up to 10 channels per shelf row with responsive card widths.
• TV Guide: taller programme grid on living-room browsers.
• TV Live page: tighter padding and compact header for more content area.

TV discovery browse, cable-style live guide, and Balkan region filtering.

• TV Movies/Series: restore discovery rows (Continue Watching, For You, Trending) on the landing view.
• TV Live TV: category shelf rows with now-playing EPG subtitles and a full TV Guide grid.
• TV browse: full-width poster grids and denser category tiles — less blank space on large TVs.
• Live TV: recognize |BLN|, |HRV|, |MKD| and Balkan country names so North America no longer shows European shelves.
• TV settings menu expands to four columns on wide screens.

Chromecast live playback and TV-simple UI.

• TV hub: four large tiles (Live, Series, Movies, Settings) — zero catalog load on home.
• Fix TV application error on join — server/client TV hints prevent hydration crash.
• Fix Live TV crash on TV — live search provider always mounted on /app/live.
• TV settings: tile menu with playlist switch, add, rename, and remove.
• Web settings: restore inline Edit for saved playlists (server, login, name).
• Mobile: stop auto-loading heavy home shelves; defer catalog prefetch, cloud sync, and HLS preload.
• TV browse: region chips with geo default, paginated categories, compact channel list.
• Fix saved playlists not restoring when Streamly session loads after cached IPTV creds.
• Stronger D-pad focus ring and auto-focus on each TV screen.
• TV browse: pick a category, then channels or titles — no EPG/discovery shelves.
• TV UA skips marketing landing; no auto-rich home, prefetch, or perf HUD on living-room clients.
• Chromecast: media playlists only, active HLS level reuse, VOD proxy for segments.

Mobile playlist menu, episode flip, Chromecast live, and TV chrome fixes.

• Poll NextAuth before restoring saved playlists; retry activation and show errors on onboarding.
• Clear stale transcode timeline when flipping episodes — fixes next-episode freeze and rewind loops.
• Mobile playlist dropdown scrolls and stays on-screen; Playlists link in More menu and settings anchor.
• Hide Discord strip on TV; recursive Chromecast live HLS variant resolution with cast=1 URLs.

Saved playlists restore reliably when signing in on a new device.

• Wait for Streamly session before restoring encrypted provider accounts — fixes empty library on new devices.
• Auto-save cookie-only IPTV sessions to your Streamly account when you sign in later.
• Onboarding shows your saved playlists so you can pick one without re-entering credentials.

Fix series episodes looping at the end of transcoded playback.

• Stop hls.js manifest polling when a transcoded episode reaches the encode edge — prevents snap-back to segment 0.
• Detect backward playhead jumps and encode-caught-up finale even without reliable duration metadata.
• Finale autoplay countdown works when duration hints are wrong; resume lock resets on episode change.

Regional filtering fixes, release-date sort, and IP-based region/language defaults.

• North America filter no longer shows |EU|, |ALB|, and other foreign IPTV category blocks.
• Category see-all and list view respect the active TV region.
• Release date sort for Movies and Series; discovery shelves stay visible with language filters.
• Live TV region and VOD language default from IP geolocation (timezone fallback).

Smart TV onboarding, GitHub Discussions for feedback, and Live Continue Watching fixes.

• /tv setup page with QR code, PIN pairing, and Samsung/LG/Fire TV guides.
• GitHub Discussions — Feedback & Ideas thread linked from footer, Settings, and README.
• Live Continue Watching plays from recents when catalog lookup fails.
• TV PIN codes persist in SQLite across restarts and multi-instance deploys.

GitHub Discussions for low-friction feedback; changelog links across the site.

• GitHub Discussions enabled with a pinned Feedback & Ideas thread — share thoughts without opening an issue.
• Footer, Settings, blog shell, and README link to Discussions alongside Discord.
• CHANGELOG.md and /changelog stay in sync for release notes on GitHub and the live site.

Smart TV onboarding, persistent PIN pairing, and reliable Live Continue Watching.

• /tv setup page with QR code, PIN steps, and Samsung/LG/Fire TV guides.
• TV PIN codes persist in SQLite — survives restarts and multi-instance VPS deploys.
• Live Continue Watching plays from recents when catalog lookup fails; touch-friendly Watch buttons.
• tv-apps/ scaffolds for Samsung, LG, and Fire TV store wrappers.

Faster episode start and fix for series playback jumping backward and looping.

• Transcode warm (hover/focus) no longer blocks — ffmpeg starts in the background before Play.
• Single ffprobe pass, 2s HLS segments, and pre-warm on resume/next episode cut cold-start latency.
• Fix growing HLS manifest refresh resetting playhead to 0 (backward seek / loop on TV and desktop).
• Cache get_series_info for 5 minutes — series pages load faster on repeat visits.

Filter browser userscript errors out of Sentry so third-party scripts do not trigger production alerts.

• Client beforeSend drops extension and Tampermonkey-style stack frames (app://, *.user.js).
• Sentry automation prompt committed — noise issues auto-ignored with a comment.

Mobile player controls no longer sit under the tab bar; continue watching works after closing playback.

• Bottom navigation hides during playback so fullscreen and transport controls are tappable.
• Fix browse page stuck blank after closing the player (race in mount gate).
• History cleanup no longer cancels a new play session if you tap continue watching right after close.

Fix scroll-only freeze after dismissing the Discord banner.

• Removed touchend preventDefault that blocked all taps on iOS after dismiss.
• Live shelf rows no longer use content-visibility (misaligned touch targets after layout shift).
• Discord strip hidden on mobile; shelf EPG deferred on phones; category overlay cleared on dismiss.

Fix mobile freeze when dismissing the Discord community banner.

• Dismiss defers localStorage so large IPTV session blobs cannot block the main thread.
• Banner collapses smoothly and blocks iOS ghost taps on content below.
• Live shelf scroll loader ignores layout shifts for 450ms after loads settle.

Mobile page-to-page navigation stays responsive under heavy live shelf loads.

• Bottom nav uses React transitions so taps register immediately while the next page loads.
• Live shelf bootstrap loads one category batch then defers the rest — no more chained fetches blocking the main thread.
• Catalog prefetch waits longer on phones; leaving Live aborts in-flight shelf requests.

Fix mobile bottom navigation taps blocked by overlays and stacking.

• Bottom nav renders in a body portal at z-100 so page content cannot steal touches.
• Cookie consent and version badge offset above the nav bar on /app routes.
• Nav links use touch-manipulation and solid backdrop for reliable iOS taps.

Complete Live TV shelf 502 fix — stale-first catalog and graceful degradation.

• Expired disk catalog is served immediately while upstream refresh runs in the background.
• Shelf batch and preview APIs return empty shelves with catalogUnavailable instead of HTTP 502.
• Load-more and prefetch paths set in-page errors instead of unhandled promise rejections.

Discord links across logged-in app chrome; Live TV shelf 502 resilience.

• Join Discord in sidebar, mobile More menu, TV nav, and a dismissible strip on app pages.
• Live shelf batch uses stale catalog cache when upstream refresh fails.
• Shelf load failures show Try again instead of crashing the Live TV page.

Fix Chrome click blocking — defer EPG scans and home discovery until after interaction.

• EPG cache readiness stops polling after warmup instead of scanning the full store every 1.5s.
• Library home defers IndexedDB EPG hydration and prefs rehydrate so navigation stays clickable.
• Desktop Chrome no longer auto-loads heavy home shelves — opt in via Load recommendations.
• Slim catalog APIs parse with res.json() to avoid worker structured-clone overhead.

Fix Chrome freeze on initial load — eliminate remaining full-catalog client fetches.

• Home rich shelves use server discovery APIs instead of downloading entire VOD and series catalogs.
• Search uses paginated item APIs; live name search uses a capped channel sample with chunked indexing.
• Movie and series detail pages load a category preview for similar titles, not the full catalog.
• Catalog JSON parsing always prefers a Web Worker when available.

Paginated Movies and Series grids — 120 titles per page with load more.

• Catalog grids fetch 120 items at a time instead of 600 on first paint.
• Show more button and scroll sentinel load the next page from the VPS.
• Virtual grid renders all loaded pages without the old 400-item display cap.

Server-built Movies and Series discovery shelves — no 800-item preview fetch.

• New /api/vod/discovery-shelves and /api/series/discovery-shelves build top rated, new, for-you, trending, and genre rails on the VPS.
• TMDB trending matching runs server-side from the cached catalog bundle.
• Movies and Series pages no longer download an 800-title preview blob for discovery rows.

Server-side slim VOD/series catalogs with paginated item APIs.

• Movies and Series load category metadata only — titles paginate from /api/vod/items and /api/series/items.
• Disk-cached full bundles on the VPS; browser no longer downloads entire movie/series catalogs up front.
• P0 click-through tests for slim grid, genre filter, and search on Movies and Series.

Fix library and browse freezes on Chrome and desktop browsers.

• Defer discovery EPG and yield between batches on all clients — not only TV.
• Lazy/chunked VOD name indexes; skip heavy category maps until a genre is opened.
• Smaller catalog JSON uses Web Worker parsing sooner; home rich shelves load later.

Fix player close freezing on TV, Fire TV Silk, and mobile.

• Skip sync video.load() on teardown — avoids main-thread hangs on embedded browsers.
• Defer history.back() and browse remount when closing the player overlay.
• Always-visible exit control when TV/mobile chrome is hidden; Close on stall overlay.

Production release — cross-platform UX parity (P0–P3) and player polish.

• P0: TV EPG guide, tablet bottom nav at 1024px, Fire TV Silk remote hints.
• P1: Mobile EPG/PiP, compact top bar, TV movies/series shelf-first browse.
• P2–P3: useLivingRoomShell/useNativeTvUa, TvHomeHub, iPad policy, QA checklist.

Living-room architecture cleanup, TV home hub, and mobile polish.

• Split useLivingRoomShell vs useNativeTvUa — clearer TV shell vs native UA playback.
• iPad stays on mobile/desktop shell unless Comfort TV or a real TV browser.
• TvHomeHub wired into rich TV home; larger bottom-nav tap targets; compact landscape guide.
• scripts/qa-device-checklist.mjs — manual device QA list + optional P0 automation.

Mobile player controls, compact top bar, and TV VOD shelf browse.

• Phone player — EPG schedule and Picture-in-Picture buttons visible on small screens (hidden on TV).
• Top bar — route title on phones; icon-only playlist switcher below the sm breakpoint.
• Movies & Series on TV — shelf-first browse with D-pad-friendly rows; full grid when a genre is selected.

Cross-platform UX parity — TV guide, tablet nav, Fire TV hints.

• Samsung / TV live — List/Guide toggle now opens the full EPG grid (category rail + modal on guide).
• Tablet breakpoint unified at 1024px — bottom nav on phones and tablets, sidebar on desktop.
• Fire TV Silk — remote control hints banner in the player (same as native TV browsers).

README guides, changelog page, and release notes everywhere.

• GitHub README — Featured guides table linking all four blog posts.
• CHANGELOG.md on GitHub and /changelog on the site (What's new in v0.2.x).
• Version badge in the player links to release notes; footer and Settings links.

Guides, changelog, and community polish.

• Four blog guides live — weekend build log, $5 VPS costs, Docker self-host, Xtream vs M3U.
• Changelog page on the site plus CHANGELOG.md for GitHub.
• Discord community links across footer, settings, and welcome email.

Google Analytics actually collects data now.

• Default GA4 measurement ID for iptvwebplayer.org when env is unset.
• SPA page_view events on client navigations.

Official Discord community.

• Permanent invite linked from landing page, login, and Settings.
• Welcome email includes optional Join Discord CTA.

Binge UX and VOD playback hardening.

• Autoplay next episode overlay for series.
• VOD transcode seek/resume fixes and MKV/HEVC fallback path.
• Catalog sort toggles and genre bars on movies/series.
• Playback speed and multi-audio track selection in the player.
• Live Trending on TV shelf EPG hints and cache improvements.

First public Streamly release.

• Xtream Codes and M3U login with proxied HLS playback.
• Live TV shelves, movies, series, global search, and custom player.
• TV browser layout with D-pad navigation and TV pairing PIN.
• Three-tier EPG fallback chain and optional TMDB artwork.
• Docker Compose, SQLite accounts, and MIT open source.