Fix iOS and Mobile issues

Things are messy on iOS and mobile in general. I want to do a lot of cleanup and make it a much nicer experience.

Stability and bug fixes

I’ve added a LOT of features in a short amount of time. Bugs are stacking up, and things aren’t very stable. :-/ I’d like to take a week to really dig into bugs and stabilize things before adding more features. I have much better tracking of issues and errors now, but I need to squash a lot of these bugs.

Auto Fetch Imported Data

I need to do more backend work for this, and that’s coming as part of the bigger work to allow more videos per channel. Once that’s in place all of it will auto refresh.

Remote Controller

In relations to the person who requested volume control, I think it would be a great idea if there was some sort of remote (like on iPhone or Android for example) and pair it to the website to control channels, guide, volume etc. What I do at least is mirror my Macbook (Google Chrome) to my TV and instead of going to my laptop to change channels or the volume, it would probably be better to control it on your phone + for the real experience

TV / Streaming Device App (Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV)

The most requested feature by far. Users want to run Channel Surfer on their actual TVs via Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, and Fire TV apps — not just cast from a browser. 12 people asked for this across HN and email.

Dynamic Shuffle Mode Option

While the Sync Bookmarklet is great for playing playlists in their strict chronological order, I would love an optional "Shuffle Mode" toggle for custom channels. Instead of building one static, permanently scrambled loop, this mode would play through the playlist in a randomized sequence, and then—the moment the last video finishes—automatically "re-roll" the playlist into a brand-new random sequence for the next rotation. For Example… In a 6-video playlist, the first sequence rotation could be 3-1-2-6-4-5. Once video 6 finishes, the next rotation dynamically shuffles to 1-6-3-5-2-4. While the risk of repeats is a thing, a longer playlist with more videos isn’t going to have this issue as much. With that said, I think some types of channels can benefit with this. Especially ambience channels.

Channel Suggestion

Sometimes I wish there was a channel about lore videos for video games or even a channel about video games.

Allow everyone to import a YT Guide as a channel

Right now, there are a ton of guides: https://channelsurfer.tv/guides I want everyone to be able to click a button and add a guide channel based on the content in the guide.

Make the free experience better

I want to make the experience better for free users by letting them try out adding one custom channel and one regularly updating channel. I want to explore how I can make this work for mobile only users too.

Allow bulk importing of Channel and Playlists

This will allow supporters to bulk import a lot of data at once vs. one source at a time.

Add to Roku

Commercials and infomercials in between videos

What if there was a feature that turns on old 90s Commercials and Infomercials In between Videos This feature should be able to turn on and Off.

Fully suppress video controls, end cards, and captions

Whenever I change channels the video controls and automatic captions appear on screen for a little bit despite having all the relevant settings to disable them. The video controls also appear when I move my mouse over the video. If I see the end of the video, the end cards that link to another video also automatically appear. This does not impair my use or enjoyment of the site, but I think if you were able to suppress these fully then it would be a much more immersive experience.

Fix timezone issues

Right now it is 1:43 in morocco, guide says I should be seeing video about vectors, instead I got dialogue video which sloted in the next hour.

Exclude shorts / include all videos in Custom Channels

I love that you added the ability to exclude shorts / import all videos when importing individual channels. Could we see this also with Custom Channels composed of several playlists/ channels? I’d love to be able to exclude shorts / import all videos on an individual basis in those setups

A new board for sharing playlist links.

A spot we can share playlist links we have made for channels.

An option to enable an end of broadcast day that activates at 12:00 AM

As the title says, I would love for there to be an optional feature that adds an end of broadcast day video playing the U.S. anthem (or maybe the anthem of whatever country the viewer is from) at 12:00 AM

Imported Channels

Thank you for this app, love it so much. I do have one Issuer, my Hisense TV doesn’t allow me to import channels on that TV, so i am stuck with the default channels. If you could do it such that all import channels are saved to those accounts that logged in with their account, then perhaps imported channels can persists across devices. This would be a welcomed fix. I hope my request will be met with a kind soultion. Thank you

Change video order for channels/playlists

Is it possible to load the videos from the channel and then order them oldest to newest (or for that to be an option)? Watching a webseries in reverse order is fine if there is no throughline, but it can be a bit odd seeing multipart videos coming through with the last part first.

Age restricted youtube videos

I cant seem to get these videos to work when making a channel. Wondering if I’m doing something wrong or is this something they are working on?

CRT whine sound

I would really like there to be an option to enable that CRT whine. Maybe with some very quiet white noise if you want. It would be perfect as something to go with the scanline effect

Bug report

I can’t sign in. I press sign in and then do the thing with my Google email and then it sends it says I have an account already so I should try signing in instead of creating an account. It just is stuck in this loop.

Not able to add playlists to channels anymore.

In the past, I was able to just grab the link of different playlists and add them to a custom channel. Unfortunately, now every time I do it, it claims that the playlist is a private playlist. Not sure if it's a bug or something on my end, but I've tested it with a playlist that I was able to grab in the past, and they're currently not parsing.

Import ALL videos?

This is a fantastic product. Well done. Is there any possible way to set this up so that when you import a channel or a playlist without using the bookmarklet, it will import all of the videos that are within the playlist or the entire channel? Currently, when I use the instant importer and just drop in a playlist or a channel, I only get the most recent fifteen videos or so. This is a shame because I'm trying to create a custom Sesame Street channel for my son, and I want to combine the videos that are in about five different playlists. f I add all five of those playlists, I'll only get around fifteen videos from each, when a lot of these playlists actually have hundreds of videos in them… That's a lot of content I would hate for him to miss out on, but I love the idea of having a unified master playlist that has everything in it.

Add Filter for YouTube Shorts!

Hey there! I typically watch long form videos for my channels but many creators make Youtube Shorts which don’t fit the scaling or vibe of Channel Surfer. Would we be able to implement a feature to filter these out? Thanks for your consideration!😄