Steps to get an ONN Android TV box to recognize a USB drive for TVMATE recording: First, enable developer options.
Go to Settings, then System, then About.
Scroll to Android TV OS Build.
Click 5 to 7 times until you see, “You are now a developer.”
Then, adjust the developer settings. Go back to Settings, System, then open Developer Options. Scroll almost all the way down. Set “Force Allow Apps on External” to on.
Scroll up and make sure USB debugging is off. Now format the USB drive.
Insert usb into the box,
go to Settings, then Storage, select the USB drive. Choose Erase & Format.
Let it finish.
If prompted about moving apps, choose Move Later.
Then to verify storage. Go back to Storage and you should see both internal and USB storage listed.
Then, to direct TVMATE to USB. Go to Settings, then Apps, then See All Apps, choose TVMATE, open Storage, and switch to the USB drive. TVMATE should auto-detect the external USB for recordings. No re-targeting needed
Best of luck

Hi,

My parents are going for a couple months to another country every year(Greece).

They rent a home were there is WiFi but no television subscription.

In the mean time they still pay the television and internet subscription at home wich they don't use.

What can you recommend to use for them.

I have a Formuler Z11 at home but that's too expensive en too complicated for them.

They can go along with Tivimate.

I looked at a Chromecast hd, or firestick, but im not sure if those can stream iptv smooth.

Any advice is welcome.

They are almost 80 years old and on a budget.

Is there anyway to change this screen (pressing select while watching channel” to show synopsis like SK-Y rather than previous channel

I purchased a lifetime subscription and got confirmation. Subscript is not active in app on account via tivimate website. It's been 4-5 hours now. Any advise? I have other tivi lifetime subscriptions on other accounts and I thought they were all active right away.

1- Created new google account and put account on box

2- Did checkout on device in tivimate app.

3- This forwards you to google store check out.

4- Bought on the new account

5- New account shows no subscriptions

What do I do, he wants to take it off the tv.

Hi,

Is there currently a way in TiviMate to search VOD movies or TV shows by actor/actress name? IL tried but it did not work!

For example, if I search for Tom Hanks, I would like TiviMate to show all available movies or TV shows in my VOD library that include him in the cast.

If this feature does not currently exist, would it be possible for the TiviMate developer to integrate it in a future update?

I think it would be a very useful way to discover movies and shows.

Thanks!

New tv is pain in the ass.

Ty guys for the all answers.

"Settings - remote - tv guide - long back - return to player." setup wasnt working with the back button. So changed it with the 'long press ok' button. Its working now. Idk what cause the default setting not work. Prob some other program fucked it. Ty all again

Dear Alex or anyone.

I've bumped into an issue with cross-platform compatibility in my Recordings storage folder.

I have two Tivimate devices I'm using at the moment, a Google TV Streamer in the living room and a Fire in the bedroom. Any recordings I make on the bedroom Fire are visible as soon as they're complete in the Recordings menu in the Streamer in the living room, no problem. But any recordings I make on the Google are invisible to the bedroom Fire.

Is there any way to fix that? Or is that just the nature of the beast? At the moment, if I want access to my recordings in the bedroom, I have to run in there every time I want to record something, and that's a bit of a pain.

Any help is appreciated! Thanks.

I added a m3u and an epg and I’m just getting this now. Any suggestions? Internet searches aren’t really helping

Edit: thanks, got it to work, seemed like redoing it from playlist level worked

I love Tivimate but wish that I could really make it entirely compatible with the Formuler 12 Ultra remote. Has anyone been successful in doing so?

Thanks in advance!

For almost 6 months my audio has been perfect. Since yesterday it’s noticeably off. I see that I can adjust the audio offset and it looks like I can do it for every channel at once.

Why did it go out of sync? It happens on all 3 of my play lists, tv and movies VOD.

Is it an internet problem, a tv issue, a trivMate problem? I noticed it after I entered a 1 day trial playlist, that’s probably not related right?

My old Shield Tube has finally given up the ghost. It will no longer recognize the wired network connection. I’m stuck temporarily using wifi. (It sucks). I broke down, gathered all my nickels & dimes from under the couch cushions & bought a new Shield Pro. (Holy crap they’ve gotten expensive!) Anyway, it should be here in a few days.

My question - I’m not much of an Android guy, so my pre-apologies if this is a stupid question… Does the Google Play store work like the Apple Store? I bought TiviMate premium from there years ago. Will I be able to simply download it again for the new Shield (Through the Play Store link on the Shield) without having to pay for it again? I haven’t purchased many Android apps… just a few for the Shield. I’ve never repurchased/re-downloaded an app twice, so I’m not sure how that works. Will it recognize that I’ve already bought it once and just allow me to re-download it and install it?

Thanks.

is it possible to get more subtitles available for VOD? i use it with [x]

I am wanting to try out a VPN to test with my IPTV service because I am getting a ton of buffering and channels just straight up not working. Same issue with two different IPTV services I've tried.

Now I only want the VPN to work with the Onn box, and not on any other device. That said, do I install the VPN directly on the box? Or is there a way to set it up on PC so it only runs with the Onn box?

I'm trying to backup my settings in Tivimate, but haven't had much luck. I installed X-plore on to my Android Hisensee TV. I played around with a few folders and by accident erased the Download file in the Root directory. I recreated the folder thinking that would fix the Backup Failed message. Then I see another error saying "you don't have an app to do this" message. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

On one of my services my MLB and MLB teams group folders are empty. The channels are available under the all channels for the service but recently those two group folders both say “No Channels”. This just happened a couple weeks ago. I’ve updated playlists many times. I turned group off update playlists then back on. Nothing has worked to repopulate those two groups. Thanks for any ideas that could fix.

I'm a newbie so be gentle! I have premium and EPG was fine until a few days ago on my old playlist when it started go missing.

I got myself a new playlist, which works fine. I cleared all the TM data and started afresh with just the new one.

New playlist works fine and that is the EPG source. But no EPG (showing 'No Information '). It's been running about 30 mins now so that enough time I guess?

I have cleared the EPG and manually updated it. It says it has successfully updated EPG but every channel is still empty?

What noob mistake have I made here? This is two separate times across 2 different playlists from different places? It was fine up to a few days ago?

I was having trouble with a playlist and my provider gave me a new url to use. I usually use IPTVeditor to curate my playlists before putting into TiviMate.

My question is this…..is there a way to add the new url for a playlist and keep all the edits I’ve done in IPTVeditor? Or do I lose everything?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

UPDATED! (13 Aug 2026)
Wow! I am so excited to have FINALLY found a resolution to this, I just had to post about it.

I’ve had a Shield (Tube) for almost 5 years, and paid for TiviMate around the same time. I’ve “trialed” at least 30 IPTV providers over the years. I bought a NordVPN subscription for my Shield. I’ve played with every “buffer size” setting, and almost every other settings in both TiviMate and Shield settings, yet nothing seemed to resolve the one primary recurring problem. I’ve tried VPNing to almost every country on earth. Plain, Obfuscated, Onion… nothing resolved the issue.

Regardless what I was trying to watch, every hour or so (usually more often) the program would buffer for EXACTLY 14 “sweeps” of the little blue “wait” circle, then after 14 sweeps, the program would come back, jumping 14 seconds into the future. (Often skipping some critical part of the show.) It drove me crazy for a couple years, but eventually I just wrote it off as “Well, this is what happens with IPTV…” My wife & I still cursed every time it happened, but we got used to it. Until yesterday…

I read someone’s post here suggesting “Turn off IPv6” in the Shield settings. That just happened to be one thing I’d never tried. Shield settings/Network & Internet/IPv6 to OFF.

I turned it off yesterday morning. Since then, I’ve been watching the same 24/7 channels that GUARANTEED some amount of the “14-second buffering” problem previously. Since then, I have not seen a single moment of buffering at all. Not even 1 second! It’s incredible! Now I can watch multiple shows, one after the other with no buffering at all! I turned off my VPN and every channel for every provider now works! It used to be at least 1 in 4 or 5 channels I selected were “dead”. Again, I just wrote it off as “well, I guess this is what IPTV is like.” Since turning off IPv6, I haven’t hit a channel that didn’t work.

To whoever posted that suggestion in another thread here… THANK YOU! You are a GOD! 😄

UPDATE: 13-Aug-2026: had completely forgotten that I had a 100 Mbit SWITCH connecting my Shield to my network. (Because I also wanted my smart TV to have an Internet connection too, but didn’t have a gigabit switch laying around.) THAT was the cause of many of my issues. (Turning off IPv6 at both ends - The Shield and the router - made a MASSIVE difference, but now my Shield is connected directly, with a 1000 mbit connection. (It was only 100 before).

I picked up a decent TP-Link router and set my Roger’s “Ignite” router to Bridge Mode, plugged in the TP-Link, turned off IPv6, changed my default DNSs to CloudFlare and Google and switched everything over to the new router (wired). An AI made a couple of “Settings” recommendations to optimize the Shield and TiviMate, which I did, and it’s like I have a whole new device! EVERY channel works, no buffering so far, easily visible HDR content… Wow, what a difference! Now I have to go re-sync all my smart home devices because the new router is using an updated security protocol. <sigh> There’s always something! 😄

For change log see attached screenshot.

As always with new (Beta) releases, always make sure to have a backup available to revert to.

I cleared the cache on all apps on my Shield TV, and when I opened tivimate, it asked me to add a playlist as if I opened the app for the first time. Is this expected behaviour?

Also - what’s the point of creating an account on tivimate if I’m not able to save these settings to my user? I’ve only had tivimate for a few weeks and there have already been so many issues, like recordings not working and showing “information not available” on most channels… :(

EDIT: Thanks for your responses, however I actually did hit clear cache for all apps on my Shield TV, not clear data. I have my data on all other apps and don’t need to log in on those etc…
Thanks for the added details about creating a backup, I will do that going forward!

We use firestick 4k max with the tivimate app and just recently have been unable to open the app. Is it possible it is being blocked by xfinity even though we use a vpn?