SmartTV Client for Twitch

Felipe Leon

About this app

See the demonstration video here on play store to understand how the app works.

This is a Android TV Twitch client design to give you full access to all Twitch content plus a variate of features not available on others Twitch app.


Most notable features:

Multiple modes to watch streams:

4 way Multistream, 2 way Picture in Picture, Side by side chat and video, most modes have multiple option allowing you to change the video and or chat size and position.

- Simple user interface design for TV devices that only have a D-Pad as main remote control
- Fully customizable player experience, with a lot of player controls and status as, latency to broadcaster, low latency, quality/resolution, speed, several chat customization options, network health, skipped frames, direct access to channel content, game content, follow/unfollow button, etc...
- Past broadcast/Highlights (VOD) and clips with chat
- BetterTTV, FrankerFaceZ and 7TV emotes support
- Custom Unicode Emojis support
- Search for Live streams, Channel or Games
- Notifications, followed streams is now live, changed game, changed title
- Full Twitch user content, followed Live streamers, games, Past broadcast/Highlights (VOD), channels and etc.
- User history for Live, VOD and clips
- Multi user support, add as many different users as you wanna
- Easy way to switch between users, using settings you can enable so the app always starts on the user selection screen
- Small APK (Less than 2MB in average) allowing the installation on devices with a very limited storage
- Small Data storage use (average 10MB), with a auto storage self cleaning tool, no need for the user worry about data storage use or clearing the cache, the app does it automatic
- And many more features not listed

* After installation, check the in app settings and controls to understand how to use and setup the app.

For the best performance is recommended to have installed on yours device the latest version of "Android System WebView app" install it from play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.webview

Phones and tablets aren't fully supported as the project focus is Android TV, because of that you can't install this from play store on phones or tablets, but is possible to use the below link to download the APK and install this on any device:

https://github.com/fgl27/SmartTwitchTV/releases

This is a "open source project" check it in github:

https://github.com/fgl27/SmartTwitchTV

Anyone is welcome to participate of the development, you can participate via github or email [e-mail]

Any issue , feature request, help request or anything related can be informed via github issue or via email.

This app has no affiliation with Twitch, this is a user made app, but is only possible because Twitch provide all the API that allows the app to show Twitch content.

Those API are documented here:

https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/

Ratings and reviews

App is pretty unstable & tends to crash every few minutes while watching a stream, but it does restart itself & picks itself back up before the crash. I don't use this app very much (usually only when supporting other streamers with a lurk to add to their viewers), but I noticed the official Twitch app was kicking me out on BOTH of my Shield TVs on 3/21/2022 & decided it was time to authenticate my primary account in this app as an alternative to the clearly busted official app (which I will be using until Twitch can fix the official app on Shield TVs). This app also offers additional functions on a Shield TV device that still has not been added in the official app (the official app being severely behind on functions added to Twitch over the last couple years). I'm docking 2 stars in my score due to the instability of the app (as well as the somewhat complicated interface; especially when it comes to adding channels to my home screen, which I still have not figured out, not to mention it appears you have to go into the app just to get any channels you may have added to your home screen to refresh/update), but adding 1 star back due to supporting functions that Twitch still has not added to the official app on Shield TV devices.

For whatever reason this is app actually plays Twitch streams on my AndroidTV (Philips 49PUS7101), whereas Twitch's own AndroidTV app doesn't work at all (only a black screen when starting a stream/VOD). And yes, the UI needs some time to getting used to. But once you've figured it out, that's not a problem anymore. I'm a strong proponent of the design principle "Form follows function", i.e. make the app work first with what it's supposed to do, *then* tweak the UI. Twitch obviously did the opposite. Its app looks "shiny", but doesn't work (for me). And given the resources available to Twitch in comparison to this lone programmer - if anything, it should be the other way around. So thank you a lot Felipe.

It's lean and fast; runs well even on my sub-par HiSense TV (can't do multistream, but that's 100% the TV I think). Watching using it does not count for things like Twitch Drops, but that's a minor setback and not worth reducing the rating of it. The consistent updates are a big plus as well, thank you for your hard work!

What's new

Full changelog check this:

https://github.com/fgl27/SmartTwitchTV/blob/master/apk/Changelog.md

The app has a building update check warning, when a update is available a small warning will pop, and a warning will show bellow main page clock

Phone and tablet aren't fully supported because of that you can't install this from play on those, but is possible to use the below link download and install the APK on any device
https://github.com/fgl27/SmartTwitchTV/releases