Profiles, favorites, and guide¶
Last updated: 2026-11-03
WyreDeck organizes your Live TV channels, program guide listings, movies, and series around profiles and favorites so you can find channels and shows quickly on an Android TV or Google TV remote.
How profiles and favorites work on your TV¶
Account-wide capabilities vs. viewer profiles¶
When a TV is linked to a WyreDeck account, your commercial tier and server-reported capabilities apply to the linked account across its registered devices, never to individual profiles:
- Shared capability state across all profiles on a TV: Every local viewer profile on a paired TV—and every household profile within an authorized Full LAN Backbone home—shares the same account capability state and device limit. You never need separate accounts or subscriptions for different family members' profiles on the same TV.
- What profiles separate: Viewer profiles exist to keep channel and title favorites, watch history and playback recency, and optional PIN-locked entry or content-maturity filters separate per viewer on top of the account's shared capabilities.
- Server-reported capability manifest: During periodic device check-ins, the account service returns an authoritative capability manifest and device limit for your account's effective tier. The TV validates and caches that manifest atomically across app restarts and preserves it during the 7-day offline grace window.
Local Install mode¶
In Local Install Only mode, profiles, channel and title favorites, and recent playback tracking live directly on the TV:
- Basic device-local profiles and favorites: Included on the Free tier (and available on Premium) on supported clients. You can mark favorite channels, movies, and series for quick access without linking a WyreDeck account.
- Local progress retention vs. resume: Both Free and Premium tiers record local playback progress and recency on the TV. On the Free tier, playback starts from the beginning of a movie or episode and uses stored progress for recency presentation only. Resuming playback directly from a saved position and displaying progress bars is a planned Premium capability.
LAN Backbone mode¶
When your TVs connect to a self-operated LAN Backbone appliance on your home network:
- Standard Backbone: Supports single-profile Backbone content filters and shared provider catalog/guide access across connected TVs, while basic profiles and favorites remain device-local on each client.
- Full Backbone (planned Premium scope): Adds planned support for shared household profiles and LAN-wide synchronization of household favorites, watch history, and saved playback positions across TVs connected to that appliance.
Free vs. Premium capability comparison¶
Free is permanent for local use, not a time-limited trial. During the private test, Premium is not for sale and Premium capabilities remain labeled as planned.
| Capability | Free tier | Premium tier | Where data lives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live channels, guide, movies, and series from your providers | Included | Included | TV or your LAN Backbone |
| Device-local profiles and favorites | Included on supported clients | Included on supported clients | Local to each TV |
| Single-profile Backbone content filters | Included in Standard and Full Backbone | Included in Standard and Full Backbone | Your LAN Backbone |
| Shared household profiles through Full Backbone | Not included (local profiles remain Free) | Planned, not active | Your Full LAN Backbone |
| LAN favorites, history, and playback-state sync through Full Backbone | Not included | Planned, not available | Your Full LAN Backbone |
| Cloud cross-device personal-state sync | Not included | Not available | Deferred |
| Local playback progress retention and recency | Included (playback starts from the beginning) | Included | TV or your Full LAN Backbone |
| Resume from a saved position | Not included | Planned, not active | TV or your Full LAN Backbone |
| On-device cross-provider duplicate cleanup | Not included (base Backbone catalog operations remain in both editions) | Planned, not active | TV |
| Persisted on-device episode structure | Not included (ordinary provider episode browsing and playback remain Free) | Planned, not active | TV |
| Direct TMDB access with your own key | Planned on supported clients (approved for Free) | Planned on supported clients (approved for Premium) | Encrypted on TV or configured on LAN Backbone |
| WyreDeck-provided metadata enrichment | Not included | Planned, not active | TV or your Full LAN Backbone |
| Managed Discovery: Trending and Available to You | Not included | Planned, not available | Matched against local catalog |
See the Pricing and feature overview for the current public comparison table.
Program guide (EPG) and channel browsing¶
WyreDeck imports Electronic Program Guide (EPG) schedules from your Xtream provider or from an optional XMLTV guide URL paired with an M3U playlist:
- Independent guide and stream health: Guide listings describe scheduled programs, not live stream availability. A channel can play normally even if its XMLTV listing is empty, and a populated schedule does not guarantee a provider stream is currently online.
- Surface controls: Under Settings > Providers & Sync > Manage providers, you can enable or hide Live TV, Movies, or Series per provider and trigger a manual refresh without deleting your saved favorites.
- Metadata precedence: Ordinary provider-supplied posters and descriptions are always shown on both tiers. Bringing your own personal TMDB v3 API key is approved for both Free and Premium tiers and does not require Premium, while per-client support for the direct BYOK path is still being completed. See TMDB API key.
What happens if Premium expires (non-destructive downgrade)¶
WyreDeck follows a strict non-destructive downgrade rule whenever an account transitions from Premium to Free:
- No local data is deleted: Your local profiles, favorite channels and titles, imported provider catalogs, previously cached artwork, persisted episode rows, and saved watch-progress positions remain intact on your TV.
- Clean fallback to Free behavior:
- Saved progress and resume: The app continues recording local playback progress in the background, stops applying saved resume offsets on new playback starts, and never resets an already-playing video back to zero.
- Duplicate cleanup and persisted episode structure: The app stops new background Premium consolidation or persistence work and returns cleanly to the provider-mirrored catalog and episode view while keeping existing rows on disk.
- Metadata enrichment: New managed enrichment work stops, while any in-flight item finishes and already-saved artwork remains available according to local display rules.
- Offline grace window: If a previously verified Premium TV cannot reach the WyreDeck account service because of a temporary internet outage, the app retains its cached entitlement state for up to 7 days past the stored expiry time before falling back to Free. Once the service responds that the account is on the Free tier, the fallback applies immediately without signing out your device.