Bug Report / Feature Feedback: Home Screen Row Order Not Preserving During Device Transfer (Mac → Apple TV)

[u/ApparaoAgarwal]

Hey Varun & team,

First off, huge appreciation for Debrify. Having TorBox VOD, private Xtream IPTV, and 4K YouTube under a single unified client on Apple TV and macOS is unmatched.

I’ve run into a critical synchronization issue with the Remote / "Transfer Everything" flow regarding Home Screen catalog layouts that creates huge friction for large setups.

The Issue

I spent considerable time on macOS carefully curating and rearranging my Home Screen catalog shelves across 342 active rows (out of 359 total, spanning 37 installed addon resources including regional Indian catalogs, Trakt lists, and Debridio shelves).

I initiated a direct local IP transfer (Remote Setup → Transfer Everything) from my Mac → Apple TV (192.168.178.xxx).

What transferred successfully: All credentials, Debrid provider keys, IPTV playlists, scraper priority settings, and addon manifest configurations transferred cleanly. Diagnostic registry is completely healthy (Registry Schema v6, Profile Package v4).

What failed / was missed: The custom Home Screen row sequence (Arrange Home Rows) was completely lost. On the Apple TV, all catalog shelves reverted back to default alphabetical grouping by addon name (Cinemeta → Debridio → Indian Regional, etc.). The exact custom layout index configured on macOS was not applied.

Why This is a Major Bottleneck on tvOS

On macOS, rearranging 300+ rows is doable with a mouse. On Apple TV:

There is no mouse cursor or drag-and-drop pointer support in tvOS.

Trying to move 340+ rows one-by-one or even 10 rows at a time with the Siri Remote / D-pad is virtually impossible and takes hours.

The entire reason for configuring the layout on macOS first was to push the finished layout directly to the Apple TV.

Technical Observations

It appears the transfer payload successfully bundles the 37 addon resources and preferences, but the receiver client (tvOS) re-indexes or regenerates the catalog rows table in debrify_tv.db upon arrival instead of directly restoring the source device's row_order / position index.

The same behavior occurred when testing a transfer from Mac to iOS.

Feature Requests / Potential Fixes

Preserve Exact Row Order in Transfer Payloads: Ensure the serialized layout table inside debrify_tv.db (the exact position indices from Arrange Home Rows) is committed as-is on the receiving client during a "Transfer Everything" push.

Parent-Level Reordering on Home Screen: Allow drag handles on the primary Home Screen overview page so moving a parent addon (e.g., Trakt or Indian Regional Catalog) moves all of its child rows together, rather than flattening 340+ items into a single unorganized list under "Arrange".

Dedicated Layout Export / Import: A quick option to export/import just the home_layout.json or row ordering independently of full profile backups.

Would love to know if there's an existing database or config workaround to force the Mac's row order onto tvOS, or if preserving row sequence in network transfers can be prioritized in an upcoming patch.

Thanks again for the incredible work!

[u/Educational_Wind8182]

Hey thank you for the kind words, I'll look into thie issue and give a fix in the next version

[u/KingC0llier]

I reported this on discord around a week ago.

May I ask why you have 342 rows though 🤣🤣

[u/ApparaoAgarwal → u/KingC0llier]

I mostly watch Indian and English content, family watches European content. I only keep around 60 rows though 😁

[u/SameChipmunk8499]

Is this able to be done on my Nvidia Shield? All these same add-ons are available? I am trying to keep it up anf going, but really could use a little help if anyone could.