How to Organize Your Channel List with Favorites

Organising Your Channel List

Scrolling through thousands of channels every time is tiring. Most players offer three tools to fix it: favourites, category hiding and search.

Favourites do most of the work

The number of channels anyone actually watches rarely exceeds fifteen. Adding those to favourites and making the favourites tab your start screen changes daily use completely.

How you add them varies: long-press on the channel, hold OK on the remote, or tap a star icon.

For match days: add the backup versions of your sports channel (FHD, HD, numbered ones) to favourites as well. If one stalls, you switch instead of searching. The full checklist for watching football at home, backups included, is in Watching Premier League and Champions League at Home.

Hide categories you never open

Lists carry dozens of categories irrelevant to you — channels from countries you do not watch. Most players let you hide them.

Hiding does not delete anything; you can restore it any time. But it makes navigation noticeably faster.

Use search

Typing the first three letters of a channel name beats scrolling a long list. If typing with a remote is awkward, check whether your app supports remote control from a phone.

Parental controls

For categories children should not reach, players include a parental lock. You set a PIN and those categories will not open without it.

Keeping children's channels as a separate favourites list is another practical approach: parental control guide.

When the list updates

Channel lists change over time — new channels appear, others move. Favourites usually survive, but if a channel leaves the list its favourite entry becomes empty.

It is worth reviewing your favourites once after a list refresh.

If the list will not load at all

That is a different problem with a short fix: common problems and fixes.

Source: Android TV – android.com