HomeAndroid TV

A Telegram media player built for the remote

Most Android apps put on a television are phone apps with bigger text. This one was drawn for a D-pad first: a rail you can reach without looking, cards you can read from the sofa, and focus that is never in doubt.

What changes on a television

Same account, same library, same one APK. The interface is what differs, and it differs because a remote is not a thumb.

A rail, not a menu

Continue, Favourites, Recent, Channels, Groups, People and All chats sit down the left, one press away. There is no hamburger to hunt for and nothing hidden behind a long press.

Sign in without typing

A QR code on the screen and Telegram's own Link Desktop Device flow on your phone. Nobody should have to enter a phone number on an on-screen keyboard with four arrow keys.

Voice search from the remote

The microphone already in the remote, matched word by word, so a typo, a missing accent or one wrong keyword among right ones still finds the episode.

Runs on a 1 GB stick

Developed against a Mi TV Stick, which is the machine that punishes a careless layout. If it is smooth there it is smooth on a Shield.

One video on disk at a time

An 8 GB stick cannot hold a library, so the previous video is cleared and the app tells you how much that freed. Resuming keeps the half already downloaded.

Next episode on its own

It reads episode numbers out of filenames, so when one finishes the next starts after a countdown you can stop with any key.

The ten-foot layout

Both pictures are the app on a television, filled with demo content that belongs to nobody.

The TMPlayer chat list on Android TV, with a navigation rail down the left for Continue, Favourites, Recent, Channels, Groups, People and All chats.
Your chats, as somewhere to startThe rail carries the categories, the grid carries the chats, and the ones you were last watching are along the top.
Videos from a Telegram chat shown on Android TV as a grid of tiles carrying running times and file sizes.
The videos in one chatRunning time and file size on every tile, big enough to read across a room. Press one and it starts while the rest downloads.

Will it run on yours?

Yes

  • Android TV and Google TV, on Android 8.0 or above.
  • Sticks and dongles: Mi TV Stick, Chromecast with Google TV, Fire-adjacent boxes that allow sideloading.
  • Boxes and built-in sets: Nvidia Shield, Sony, Philips, TCL and the rest of the Android TV family.
  • 32-bit and 64-bit alike. The universal APK carries the native code for both.

No

  • Not Samsung Tizen, not LG webOS, not Roku. They are not Android and cannot run an APK.
  • Not Apple TV, and not a Chromecast without Google TV, which has no launcher to install into.
  • Not a device where the manufacturer has locked sideloading off entirely.

Star it if it helped

A television app that is not in the Play Store lives or dies on word of mouth. Starring it is the cheapest way to be that word of mouth.

GPL-3.0, and free for good