What's new in Electron IPTV

Downloads you can follow

A download now shows its progress as it happens, with its speed and the time left. Series pages offer “Download season”: every episode you don’t have yet is queued in order, after one check that the whole season fits on your device.

When a download fails, it says why: access refused by your subscription, title not found, server busy, storage full, connection lost. A server that answers with a web page instead of the video is refused instead of being saved as a film.

A downloaded film plays from your device, even after you change your subscription’s password, and it resumes where you stopped, online or offline. On a subscription that allows a single connection, downloads pause while you watch and pick up again afterwards, so your provider never cuts your stream.

Where your downloads live

If your device takes an SD card, you can keep your downloads on it, from Settings › Playback or straight from the Downloads tab. Switching moves every download, with its progress shown, and nothing is lost if the card is removed along the way. When the card is missing, the app says so and your downloads come back with it.

A new “Wi-Fi only” switch, on by default on phones and tablets, keeps large downloads off your mobile data. A download asked for on mobile data says it will start on Wi-Fi.

Also in this version

• Radios are marked in your channel lists, gathered in a Radios category, and play on a screen made for them.
• In the player, the time and battery show with the controls, and pulling down the status bar no longer changes the channel. A live channel that the server drops reconnects on its own.
• A new animated opening screen.
• On tablets and foldables, the player and trailers turn with your device, ready for Android 16.
• Parental control now also covers favourites, history, the TV guide, downloads and recordings.
• Clearer error messages, more reliable playlist and guide updates, and many fixes.

Electron IPTV provides no content: it plays the IPTV subscription you already have.

Our biggest update yet. It also brings everything planned for 2.5.0, which was never released on its own.

A brand-new look

One clean design across phone, tablet and TV, with new icons and calmer colours, in light and dark.

A new home

Pick up where you left off in one tap, with your favourite channels first. On TV, the home opens on what you were watching.

Android TV, rebuilt

• A side rail to move between sections, with search and settings at hand.
• The TV guide in the rail, on your own channels, with a category picker.
• A series page made for the big screen.
• A display size setting for a denser layout.
• Hold OK or press Menu to open a row’s options.

The player

• The guide opens in a side panel on every screen, with reminders and recording.
• When your provider offers replay, restart a programme or watch it again from the guide, then go back to live in one press.
• Swipe a panel toward its edge to close it.

Also in this version

• Watch stats and streaks.
• Search categories by name, and show films and series as a grid or a list.
• On phones and tablets, a floating navigation bar, and the TV guide one tap away from the top bar.
• A smoother first setup, clearer messages when something goes wrong, and many fixes.

Electron IPTV provides no content: it plays the IPTV subscription you already have.

This release brings together 2.3.0 and 2.4.0.

Record and remember

When your provider offers replay, you can record a programme once it has aired. The recording is saved on your device and waits for you in Downloads.

Reminders notify you before a show starts, wherever you are in the app. You manage them from Settings.

A new TV guide

The guide opens at the current time, runs across several days and lets you jump from one day to the next.

The TV player, reworked

• The channel guide opens in a side panel, without hiding the picture.
• Hold Left or Right to seek faster and faster.
• Go back to the last channel in one press.
• Grouped buttons, easier to read from the couch.

Also in this version

• History, favourites and downloads in two columns on TV and tablets.
• Your playlist account is checked before it is saved, with a clear message if something is wrong.
• Smoother scrolling, new illustrations, settings built for large screens, and many fixes.
• From this version on, the app offers new versions itself.

Electron IPTV provides no content: it plays the IPTV subscription you already have.

A focused row in the channel panel hid its own number behind the focus treatment, which is the one moment the number is being read. It stays visible now.

Sources

The player opens UDP and local file URLs as well as HTTP. RTMP was added and then withdrawn in the same cycle: the native library it needs blocks publication on Google Play, and shipping the app matters more than one protocol.

Playback errors

A failure now reports what the player was trying to decode, instead of a generic error — which is the difference between “your provider sends a codec this device has no decoder for” and “something went wrong”.

The player panel

The programme gets its own full-width line under the channel, the channel logo and its badges sit on the channel’s own line, and a programme’s hours stay beside its title rather than against the edge.

The guide

The guide says when it was last refreshed, above the grid rather than only when it is empty — so a schedule that looks wrong can be recognised as stale instead of broken. A manual refresh keeps running after you leave the screen.

Catalogue

Series pages show the trailer, which until now only film pages did. Categories can be pinned to the top of their list, on any of the category screens.

Downloads

What is still running is listed first, under section headers that fade into the page instead of banding it, and the page is titled with the count. The queue picks itself back up after the app is killed, and progress figures stay on one line.

The player

The channel number leads, and the player names what comes next with its start time. The programme on air states its hours.

Fixes

Eight separate error screens became one. Empty-state text is centred. A purchase made from the pre-trial offer continues to setup instead of stopping there. The gap between a channel number and its name was tightened.

Android TV

The category panel retracts, giving the grid the screen back once the choice is made. Setup shows a flat animation instead of the old line-art television.

Series

Each episode shows where you stopped, rather than the series carrying a single position for all of them.

Fixes

The remote keypad reaches channel numbers past 9999. Zapping scope is derived from the channel itself rather than from the screen the channel was tapped on. The detail backdrop sits against the top edge again, settings selectors no longer repaint the screen for as long as they hold focus, and the paywall shows the reduced price for existing users without losing the lifetime plan.

Onboarding

The two generic illustrations are gone, replaced by animated scenes built for the three things the app actually does: live television, a catalogue, and content taken offline. The copy was rewritten around those three capabilities rather than describing the interface.

The carousel loops on its own, with the countdown to the next slide drawn on the dots instead of a separate bar, and it stops while the app is in the background. Start is a button of its own rather than the last slide’s only exit.

Fixes

The legal disclaimer’s text and links can be reached with a D-pad, so the screen is usable on a television. The pre-trial window is measured from the first launch rather than from the install date, so an install that sat unopened for a week does not arrive with its window already spent. The replay availability label now says what expires, and a long programme description no longer pushes the Watch button off screen.

One subscription, everything included

Until this release the app was split in two: a free player, and a Premium upgrade holding offline downloads, parental controls, encrypted backups and category display styles. That split is gone. So are the quotas on the library and the blurred rows on favourites and history.

There is now a single question — is this install entitled — asked once when the app opens, instead of a check inside every screen. Everything the app can do is available from the first launch: live TV, the programme guide, movies, series, downloads, parental controls, encrypted backup and restore, and the Android TV interface.

You choose between a monthly plan, an annual plan and a one-off lifetime purchase, all priced per country by Google Play.

The free trial

Three calendar days, and the countdown starts when the app has proved it works for you — the moment your channels have finished loading — rather than at install. An app that never managed to read your playlist does not spend your trial: that case gets its own window instead.

The trial needs no card, no account and no email. The time remaining is shown in Settings, where people look for it, and a notification arrives the day before it ends. Winding the device clock back changes nothing.

If you were already using Electron IPTV

Existing installs are not treated as new ones. Instead of a three-day trial they get a two-week notice period, announced on the launch that carries the update, and a price reserved for early users that stays open for three weeks — a week longer than the notice, so there is room to reconsider after the wall arrives.

Nothing is deleted in the meantime. Playlists, favourites, history and settings stay on the device and become available again the moment you subscribe.

The programme guide

The guide can now be searched by programme title, on the phone and on the television. It attaches itself to channels the provider gave no identifier for, instead of demanding an exact match, and it can be corrected when a provider publishes the wrong times. The grid is virtualised horizontally, reads correctly under TalkBack and follows the device clock. A schedule is only offered where the guide actually has one.

The player

The player states what is on air rather than only which channel is playing, and shows how far into the programme the channel is. The guide sheet opened from the player follows the channel being watched, and the display-mode sheet names the source ratio.

Downloads, subtitles and backups

The downloads screen shows what your downloads occupy on the volume, and the centre key on a remote now acts on the download it is pointing at. Both subtitle background colours share the same opacities, and the subtitle style is carried through export and import.

Restoring and sideloaded copies

“Restore purchases” brings a subscription back on any device signed in to the same Google account. A copy installed outside Google Play cannot subscribe or restore — Play billing is unavailable there — and now says so, with a way to reinstall from the Store. Android TV has its own paywall layout, reachable entirely with a D-pad.