Setup guides
Installing InoxTV on a phone or tablet
The mobile build is a straight Play Store install. The part worth reading is what changes when the interface is touch rather than a D-pad.
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The phone and tablet build is in.inoxtv.mobile, published on Google Play. Search for InoxTV, tap Install, and you are done; there is no sideloading and no permission to grant, because Play carries this build for every normal Android device.
What follows is the part actually worth reading: how the touch version differs, and the two things it does better than the television build.
First run
The app opens on the intro screen stating it provides no sources of TV channels, with an Add Playlist button. Adding a playlist on a phone is considerably easier than on a television, for one reason: you can paste. Copy the M3U link or credentials from your provider's email or website, then use Paste from clipboard in the URL field rather than typing a sixty‑character address.
Which type to pick is covered in choosing a playlist type. If you already have InoxTV working on a television, use the same type here.
Set up the phone first
If you are installing on both, do the phone first even when the television is the device you actually watch on. Getting the playlist right is faster with a real keyboard, and a backup file taken from the phone can then be restored on the television, skipping the on‑screen typing entirely.
What is different from the television build
| On a television | On a phone |
|---|---|
| D-pad navigation, every key reassignable | Touch and gestures; the key reference does not apply |
| OK held for a context menu | Long press for the same menu |
| Landscape, always | Rotates between portrait and landscape without interrupting playback |
| Mains power, so a software decoder costs you nothing | Battery, and a software decoder is the most expensive setting on the screen |
| Local playlist files hard to get onto the device | Files pick straight out of Downloads |
| Auto frame rate matters for smoothness | Not applicable; the panel has one refresh rate |
What the phone is genuinely better at
Getting the details in. Every field in this app was designed to be filled from a clipboard, and a phone is where the clipboard already has your provider's email in it. A server address, a username, a password and a guide URL are four chances to mistype something that fails with the same message an expired subscription gives you. On a television you type them with a D‑pad; here you paste them.
Diagnosing problems. A phone can switch to mobile data in one tap, which makes it the fastest way to answer the question that matters when a stream fails: is this the app, the connection, or the provider? If a channel plays on mobile data and not on your home connection, the problem is between your router and your provider, and buffering and stuttering explains what to do about it.
Running the phone and the television together
Two things to know if you use both.
Nothing syncs. There is no account and no server, so playlists, favourites and settings live on each device independently. Moving them means a backup file, taken on one device and restored on the other.
Your provider's connection limit applies to both. Most services allow one or two streams at once, and the second device is refused. Often with a vague failure rather than a clear message. If the television suddenly stops mid‑programme when someone picks up their phone, that is what happened, and it is a question for your provider rather than a setting here.
Local playlist files are easy here
If your provider sent an .m3u file rather than a link, a phone is the sensible place to use it. Select local playlist opens the app's Storage browser, and the file is normally sitting in Downloads where your mail app left it. System picker switches to Android's own file chooser if the built‑in browser cannot reach it.
Doing the same thing on a television means getting the file onto the device first, which is why the phone route plus a backup file is usually less work than fighting a USB stick.
Battery and data
Video over a mobile connection is the heaviest thing a phone does. A rough figure: a standard‑definition stream is on the order of 0.5 GB an hour, a high‑definition one around 2 GB, and 4K several times that. Streams come straight from your provider without any transcoding on our side, so the app cannot reduce that. Only choosing a lower‑quality stream, where your provider offers one, changes the number.
For long viewing on battery, the software decoders cost noticeably more power than the hardware ones. If you switched a decoder to Software to fix a specific channel, it is worth switching it back once you are done with that channel.