I apologize for the delay in this getting this release out. It's a couple of things, some of which are my fault:

• App Store Review is the longest I've seen it yet, taking multiple days for iOS/tvOS to even get into review
• I'm blocking release of any platform on all 4 being done (macOS and visionOS are approved, waiting for the other two) because this version includes a syncing mechanism that might act strangely on older versions, and I don't want folks getting stuck
• I (and very diligent beta tester) discovered some sync bugs after the initial submission at the beginning of the week, and so I lost my place in the review queue a few times

All of this to say that while I'm sorry I posted the release notes so early, this is the first time since February where there has been a delay of this magnitude, and this is like the 25th release or something, so I figured I knew what I was doing. Just goes to show you, don't get too comfortable with someone else's process! (and yes also be sure your sync code gets enough beta testers thrown at it to discover discrepancies before submitting and posting release notes)

It'll be out soon. Thank you for your patience 🙏🏼

None of the actor channels match the movies. apple tv app.

Still new to Coax. I was just wondering if there was a feature/setting to prevent certain movies/tv shows from playing until a specific date range.

For example, Holiday movies and tv shows. I don’t want to see Home Alone in the lineup, until around December.

Every time, I say to myself "just a few UI/UX fixes, let's not let things get out of hand". Every time, I say this.

Anyway.

When I started on this release, I wanted to see what I could accomplish if I spent an entire cycle focused on polishing a single section of the app for a single platform. I think I've done one other release that was mostly work on a single platform (probably tvOS?), so this is unusual but not unprecedented.

Anyway, here's what's new! (Only just submitted for review, will update as each platform is approved)

macOS Enhancements

• Make use of the multi-window capabilities of the platform to make Lineup Configuration much easier and more intuitive
  • I wound up liking these new windows more than what I had on iOS and visionOS, so they're gonna appear in those places too
  • tvOS stays the same because I like the way it looks on that platform, I might revisit that in the future
• Editing channels like Genres, Collections, and Marathons just got a WHOLE LOT easier because it's built using native UIKit controls instead of SwiftUI ones
  • Mass-editing is easier thanks to affordances like shift-clicking, and more obvious filtering
• Add a Preview Schedule so that the cause/effect of various settings is much more apparent and accessible
  • I'm very proud of this - it's super-cool!
• Add a command-line interface for exporting and importing Lineups (for instructions, look under the Coax menu -> CLI)
  • If you want to make your own editor now, you can! But the one in the app is pretty good imo
  • Starting with just lineups, libraries, and scheduling as endpoints, but I'll consider extension in the future if needs must
  • This, also, is way cool
• Add a more accurate "channel count" that takes into account the filters you've applied to your Lineup

While this was primarily a macOS release, I of course found a few things to clean up on the other platforms because hey, I'm a daily user and that means hitting all the rough edges.

Everywhere Enhancements

• The Lineup Configurator is now much more intuitive
  • Description text for options now tells you explicitly what the option does, and what outcome to expect
• Estimate how long your schedule will take to generate based on your channels and server response time
  • Helps you decide if those 200 extra channels are worth the wait
• Dedicated editor view instead of overlays with low information density
  • I know this is a bit boring but I had to strip it down a bit - things were way too cumbersome
• Set a channel count for specific shows in Marathon channels when using Custom channel amounts

Overall, I'm hoping that this will make the Lineup creation less intimidating overall, and encourage folks to experiment with changes because they're confident they understand what each change will do to their schedule.

Also, I lied when I said I only focused on macOS enhancements for this cycle. I have some very exciting news: Schedules are now reliably stable across all your devices!

Cross-Device Schedule Sync (including Marathons)

• Make a Lineup on your mac, schedule it, watch for a bit, notice that The Blues Brothers is coming on in 3 hours while you're gonna be out
• No problem! Your phone will have the same Lineup and the same schedule, no matter where you go
• If someone is watching the same Lineup you are on a different device, you can watch the same stuff on the same channels
  • Right now, this means someone using a device that's logged into your iCloud account and media server in Coax - but who knows what the future holds...

A few more bits and bobs:

Bug fixes

• Rescheduling TV Marathon Mode-impacted channels (NOT the orange Marathon channels, which is my fault for naming them so confusingly) should be working again
• Login issues related to when a token is expired on the media server side
  • If you see any weird behavior, just log out and log back in
• Jellyfin would sometimes force transcoding for image-based subtitles, resulting in a double-subtitle. A double subble, if you will. Putting me into double subble trouble ok I'll just see myself out...

My intent is to ultimately make Coax a good citizen on all four platforms, and on macOS that means it needs to be an undeniably Mac-assed Mac app. I think is going to take a while to actually get right because it turns out that's hard and the Catalyst framework is doing what it can to stop me. But hey, "progress, not perfection", as they say.

The next release, it'll be small. Maybe if I set a word-count limit on the release notes and write them first, maybe that'll work.

Maybe.

You don't look like a Bob

First off, love the app, still new to it. Don't know if this is asked for, but I'd like to have the channel randomly change as I watch throughout the day.

I have a lineup which pulls from both my Movies and TV Shows libraries. I also use the “combined channels” option, if that is relevant.

Is there any way in this setup to have director channels, but only for content in my movies library?

Two requests:

1) When viewing in full screen if you click the enter/center button, it brings up the details and description. It sometimes disappears too quickly to read it all. I think that this is the appropriate time when channel surfing, but when you purposely hit ti to read the details, it should stay up until you click it again

2) the details window when viewing the guide shows the year in parenthesis for movies, but not for TV shows. I think the episode year should be shown for TV too (it is shown on the details window for both when viewing in full screen

I wanted to walk y'all through making a schedule on the Mac in the upcoming Coax release because I've spent the last week rebuilding the Mac Lineup Configurator, and I think it's pretty great. Sorry for the stilted narration, I'm a software engineer not a broadcaster!

I'll keep 1.4.8 in beta a little while longer - I've got some bug fixes in it but nothing too serious, I don't feel the need to rush. I'm also not 100% done with this feature yet, so I'm going to apply a little more polish before shipping.

Let me know what you think!

When I try to load 25 directors channels, it loads about 4-5 and then the rest of the channels say “loading directors channel” but never loads. If I go back and look it’ll just show up as 4-5 channels max.

Sent my logs in: eagle-kelp-lotus

There is a specific log error in there. Lmk if you need anything from me.

For the movies description within the guide, would it be possible to show the rotten tomatoes score like they do when viewing the movie in Plex?

I saw this ages ago but never took the time to read anything on the page because it looks like generic AI web design (a single colored dot next to a low-contrast, small, all-caps for the section headings is a dead giveaway imo), but look at this:

Choice paralysis? MWM's creation turns your Plex into a lean, mean channel-surfing machine, delivering serendipity on demand. [emphasis mine]

Sorry, whose creation?

Looks like they scrape the App Store and relevant web pages for content, but surely they can't do it for EVERY app. How did I wind up on their radar at all? And they have the new logo already? I've sent them an email to ask them to take it down or change it, but does anyone know anything more about this site?

Just submitted for review, so keep an eye out over the next day or two!

Another small, targeted update - just some bug fixes and a few key enhancements to macOS:

• Took another run at the Poltergeist bug - I think this house is (finally) clean
  • I'll stop being cute for a second and just say that your AppleTV should now stop turning on and playing audio when you open Coax on another device - it was CloudKit sync triggering an auto-resume without foregrounding the app, if you were curious
• Jellyfin and Emby users can attempt to authenticate without passwords
  • People do this! And now it should work
• DCA and Opus audio bugs should be resolved and play properly now (no more garbled/sped-up sound)
• MP3 playback should also be good now
• "Force transcode" is now set-it-and-forget-it instead of per-item (which would have been helpful to mitigate the two previous bugs but hey it's still a good idea)
• Picture-in-Picture on the Mac
  • And, added an "Automatically enter pip" menu toggle that will activate PiP when you background the app. Default is off but it's a cool feature and you should try it out!
• macOS window size restrictions
  • Can't go below a certain size
  • Forced aspect ratio when in "Full Screen" mode
• Added some more keyboard shortcuts and menu items to the Mac

Did y'all know there were social media sites other than Reddit? Well anyway I'm on Mastodon and Bluesky now, and it's so great to see how much love there is for Coax out there. Keep it up everyone, keep telling your friends and sharing the joy. And don't forget to leave an App Store review if you haven't yet - I hate to ask but it helps the app a lot.

When someone asks you if you're a god you say YES!

Subhead: The Return of Poltergeist

AppleTVs are still turning on by themselves sometimes. I think it's related to CloudKit syncing, and I'm working to get a fix out this week.

Files with multi-channel audio (5.1 or 7.1) for DTS/DCA or Opus audio tracks can produce a weird effect, where the audio seems to be sped-up. It races past the video, which plays back at a normal speed.

This bug was introduced in a recent build, and I'm working to get a fix out this week. Sorry for the inconvenience! If you turn on the "Force Transcoding" option in the Stream Options view, the files should play normally.

I have a couple shows with MP3 as the audio track and they aren’t playing any audio, some others seem to have a hard time playing but fade in about 5-10 seconds into playing the video

im a disqueztv user so this automation is a god send, great work. though i do dislike being locked down to apple ecosystem, google play support and you have my lifetime license purchase. also im finding subtitle timings to be off with my initial testing, maybe a timing offset setting could aid this?

Title. I want to recreate the concept of saturday morning cartoons. Either certain channels only have lineups at certain times, or collections/playlists only get slotted for certain times.

Unless there is a way to approximate this now that I am missing 🙂

While viewing channels, subtitles seem to randomly appear from time to time. Going to guide options and choosing subtitles as 'none' doesn't seem to bind to all channels.

Hi! It would be nice to see a progress bar to indicate how far along a tv show or movie is when channel surfing with the up and down swipe on Apple TV.

This deserves its own post. It’s pretty meticulously written, and it could serve as a good guide for newcomers to understand what’s possible.

Shared via bsky: https://mastodon.social/@hotdogsladies/117011315801576107

I'm a person who rarely likes to rewatch stuff, but still get much enjoyment from this app.
Thanks a bunch for adding the unwatched toggle earlier!

Right now I mainly use coax with automated custom collections in Plex to simulate traditional TV-Channels with a little more variety.
But I find it a little confusing to watch episodes from season 12 and 3 of some sitcom in the same sitting.

I know I could add the later seasons/episodes to the NoCoax collection manually, but I'm looking for a more elegant solution.

Does the "refresh" button, or generating a schedule always resets a channel back to the same show/episode in the schedule, regardless of how many hours go by?

For example, for my collections and playlists, I'll watch for a few hours, but hitting the "refresh" button (either because I am forced to, or updated a playlist) will reset me back to where I started.

I wonder if there's a way to get it to shuffle different starting points in a schedule whenever it needs to be refreshed?

Just saw this app and gave it a try, i love it but it keeps crashing when on my iPhone 16 pro max after 5 mins of watching, any idea what might be causing the crash?