Strata IPTV

An Android TV / Fire Stick IPTV app that doesn't look like it was built in 2012.

Why I built this

I've been using IPTV for years and every Android TV app I've tried feels bodged together. SmartersIPTV, XCIPTV, IBO Player, OttPlayer, TiviMate. They all do the job, sort of, but they look stuck in the early 2010s. Tiny text, cramped grids, no posters, no plot summaries unless you tap into menus, and the UI feels like an FTP client with a remote control plugged in.

Meanwhile Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and Apple TV all run on the same Fire Stick hardware and look great. Big artwork. Smooth animations. Continue Watching that actually makes sense. Episode lists that look like a TV show should look in 2025, not a directory listing.

So I started building the thing I wanted. Strata is opinionated. It tries to feel like Sky Glass or Apple TV rather than a file browser. It pulls posters and backdrops from TMDB, deduplicates the four "HD / FHD / HEVC / UKHD" copies of every channel and movie that providers ship by default, groups TV shows so Continue Watching shows the series rather than the specific episode, and treats your remote like a remote rather than a keyboard.

It also stays out of your way about credentials. Your provider URL, username and password are entered once on first launch and stored locally on the device. Nothing is hard-coded anywhere in this repo.

What you get

• Provider setup wizard with built-in entries for MyBunny.TV and SkyGlass (XCIPTV-based), plus generic Xtream Codes and raw M3U options for everything else. Subscription expiry pulled from the provider where available.
• Region, language, genre and year filters picked during onboarding and editable from Settings any time. Changing a filter retroactively re-evaluates the library so newly-excluded items disappear and newly-included items come back, with a fresh enrichment pass kicked off to fill in any missing posters.
• Ignore-this-thing context menu on every movie and show card — long-press for "Hide this film", "Ignore genre: X" or "Ignore language: Japanese". The library updates immediately.
• Sky Glass style home with hero rotation, Continue Watching, Watchlist, New Episodes and genre rails.
• TMDB enrichment for movies and series. Posters, backdrops, plots, cast, ratings, trailers (open in the YouTube app for the cleanest playback).
• Smart Continue Watching that collapses TV show episodes into one entry per series, remembers what you were halfway through, and offers the next episode when you're done.
• TV Guide for live channels with proper XMLTV EPG support.
• Favourite channel zapping during live TV with D-pad up and down.
• Auto-play next episode with a 10 second countdown, just like the streaming services.
• Watchlist that survives re-syncs because content IDs are stable hashes, not row IDs.
• Background sync via WorkManager so the library stays fresh without slowing down app launch.

A note on provider URLs

Some IPTV providers ship their own player app (often a rebranded XCIPTV called something like "SkyGlass") that hides the underlying Xtream Codes URL from you. The app just asks for a username and password. Strata isn't doing anything that wrappy app isn't doing, it just makes you aware of the URL.

If you don't know your provider's Xtream host, the easiest way to find it is to ask their support. A polite "what's the get.php URL for my account so I can use a different player?" usually does it. Once you have the host, pick "Custom Xtream" in the wizard, paste the host, type your username and password, and Strata takes care of the rest.

If your provider is MyBunny.TV, just pick it from the wizard and enter your username and password.

Install

From a release

1. Grab the latest APK from the Releases page — or point the Fire Stick Downloader app straight at the evergreen URL https://github.com/Yokomoko/Strata-IPTV/releases/latest/download/strata-iptv.apk (always serves the newest release).
2. Sideload it onto your Fire Stick or Android TV. The easiest way on Fire Stick is to install the Downloader app from the Amazon Appstore, then paste the URL above.
3. Launch Strata and follow the wizard.

Updates work without losing your library or settings — every release is signed with the same key so Downloader (or adb install -r) overwrites the previous version in place.

A note for Fire Stick users about the apps tile

Amazon's stock Fire TV launcher squares off sideloaded apps' banners, so Strata's wide STRATA wordmark gets cropped down to a centred square in the home row. There's nothing the app can do about this from inside the APK. Two ways round it:

1. Banner proxy via ATV Launcher (no launcher replacement needed): use ATV Launcher's banner generator to build a tiny proxy APK that carries the wide banner and forwards to Strata when launched. Install the proxy alongside Strata, launch it once, and Fire TV will use the proxy's banner for the home-row tile.
2. Replace the launcher entirely: install ATV Launcher itself and set it as your default home. It honours the standard Android TV banner convention so every sideloaded app renders properly.

Build from source

You'll need JDK 17 and the Android SDK (API 34).

git clone https://github.com/Yokomoko/Strata-IPTV.git
cd Strata-IPTV

Add a free TMDB API key to local.properties (get one from themoviedb.org):

tmdb.api.key=your_key_here

Build:

./gradlew :app:assembleRelease

The APK ends up at app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk.

Install via adb:

adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk

Release builds use a stable release keystore (app/release.jks) that's gitignored — generate your own with keytool -genkeypair -keystore app/release.jks -alias strata -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 and add the password to local.properties:

release.keystore.password=your-password
release.key.alias=strata
release.key.password=your-password

Without those entries the build falls back to the Android debug keystore so a fresh checkout still works.

Configuration

Strata supports two ways to connect to your IPTV provider:

1. Xtream Codes (recommended): enter host, username and password. Strata tries the standard get.php M3U endpoint first and falls back to player_api.php JSON if the provider doesn't serve M3U (MyBunny.TV is the canonical example — its get.php only returns an auth blob, so we go straight to the JSON action API). MyBunny.TV and SkyGlass are preset; any other Xtream provider works under "Custom Xtream".
2. Raw M3U URL: paste a URL that already has credentials baked in. Subscription info isn't available because there's no API to query.

For SkyGlass specifically: the IPTV host is actually issued per-customer by a license server, so the preset doesn't pin one — enter whatever your provider gave you (often http://skyglass.vip:8080).

You can change provider at any time from Settings without losing your watchlist, continue watching state or favourites. Those are keyed off stable content hashes derived from the title, group and stream URL, so the same content keeps the same ID across re-syncs.

Filters

The first-run wizard asks for region and language preferences. By default Strata keeps UK and English content released since 1970 and drops the rest. You can change the filters at any time from Settings. The dimensions are:

• Region: country prefix matched against the M3U group-title (e.g. "UK | Entertainment"). Applied at sync time.
• Categories: keyword exclusions for genre groups. Default excludes adult and religious categories. Tick or untick each one. Applied at sync time.
• Languages: TMDB original_language whitelist applied to movies and series during enrichment. Default is English plus "Unknown" (so unenriched titles aren't pre-hidden).
• Minimum year: drops films and shows older than the year you pick (defaults to 1970, options run 1940→2020 plus "No minimum").
• Per-item ignores: long-press any card for "Hide this film/show", "Ignore genre: X" or "Ignore language: Y" — handy when one row sneaks through.

Changing a language, genre or year filter retroactively re-evaluates every enriched movie and series, so items newly excluded disappear and items newly included come back. A fresh enrichment pass kicks off in the background to populate posters on anything that just became visible.

Tests

Unit tests run on the JVM in seconds:

./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest

Instrumented tests run on a connected device or emulator:

./gradlew :app:connectedDebugAndroidTest

The instrumented suite covers the setup wizard ViewModel, Room DAO behaviour (Continue Watching aggregation, new-episode detection), and the sync exclusion filter end-to-end against a MockWebServer that stands in for the IPTV provider's player_api.php and get.php endpoints.

Tech stack

• Kotlin 2.0 with Jetpack Compose for TV
• Hilt for DI
• Room for local storage
• Media3 ExoPlayer for playback
• Retrofit and OkHttp for TMDB and Xtream API calls
• WorkManager for background sync
• DataStore Preferences for settings and credentials
• Coil 3 for image loading
• minSdk 21, targetSdk 34, runs on every Android TV, Fire Stick and Android 5.0+ device

Status

This is a personal project I use every day on my own Fire Stick. It's good enough that I want other people to be able to use it, but it isn't a polished commercial product. Expect rough edges. Bug reports and PRs welcome.

Support

If Strata is useful to you and you want to help me keep working on it, GitHub Sponsors is the easiest way. Even a few quid a month keeps me motivated to ship features rather than just fix my own bugs.

Disclaimer

Strata IPTV is a client application. It doesn't host, stream, broadcast, transmit, sell or resell any media content. It plays whatever IPTV provider the user configures it with — exactly the same as VLC, MPV or any other media player — and connects only to the URL the user enters on first launch. No content is bundled with the app.

The project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any IPTV service, provider, channel, broadcaster, studio, or rights holder. References to provider names (MyBunny, SkyGlass, etc.) describe technical compatibility with the public APIs those providers expose — they do not imply any commercial or legal relationship.

Users are responsible for ensuring that the content they stream through Strata IPTV is legal in their jurisdiction and that they have the necessary subscriptions, licenses or rights from the actual content provider. The maintainers don't condone piracy and don't provide playlists, credentials, decoders or any way to access unlicensed content.

If you are a rights holder and believe a specific URL or stream the app is being used to play infringes your rights, that's an issue with the IPTV provider hosting the stream — not with Strata. We do not have the ability to block specific streams; users connect to providers directly.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.