TV Akhi 1.3.0

Please read: TV Akhi 1.3.0 installs as a new app

The signing key of the old app was lost, so 1.3.0 can't replace it. It installs next to your current TV Akhi, which keeps working but gets no more updates. Your bookmarks and settings stay in the old app and don't move over. Once you're happy with 1.3.0, you can uninstall the old one. The old app may keep offering this update, and uninstalling it stops that.

Which file?

• tv-akhi-armeabi-v7a.apk: most Android TVs and TV boxes. If you're not sure, use this one.
• tv-akhi-arm64-v8a.apk: newer 64-bit devices.

New

• Blur images with nudity: an optional setting, off by default. Images stay blurred until they're checked on your device, and nothing is sent anywhere. It needs the GeckoView engine (Settings, Web browser engine). It uses more memory, takes about a second per image on a TV, and covers normal images only, not videos or backgrounds. It can miss some images and can blur some harmless ones.

Fixed

• GeckoView settings: in GeckoView, pages never received the app's settings. No music, Smart skip and Play videos in fullscreen now get them, so these may behave differently there.

Changed

• TV Akhi's own code is now in a private repository. The parts based on TV Bro stay public.

TV Akhi 1.2.0

Which file?

• tv-akhi-armeabi-v7a.apk: most Android TVs and TV boxes. If you're not sure, use this one.
• tv-akhi-arm64-v8a.apk: newer 64-bit devices.

It installs over 1.1.0 and keeps your bookmarks and settings. TV Akhi 1.1.0 also offers this update by itself. How to install: see the README.

New

• 🎬 Video mode: when a video is fullscreen, the remote controls the video instead of the cursor. Left and Right seek (faster while held), OK plays and pauses, and a seek bar shows the position. Up gives you the cursor back, Back leaves fullscreen.
• ▶ Built-in player: when the seek bar shows "↓ Built-in player", press Down to keep watching in TV Akhi's own player, from the same moment. Up or Down open its menu: quality, audio, subtitles and speed. Back returns to the page. Optional: Settings → Match the frame rate of videos switches the TV to the video's frame rate for smoother playback (off by default).
• 🎮 Remote media keys work on more sites: play/pause, rewind and fast-forward now reach video players inside frames, as on many streaming sites.
• New error pages: clear pages for "Can't reach this site", "Dangerous site" and more, with Try again and Back buttons.

Better

• Back on the remote opens and closes the menu, like in TV Bro. Go back a page with the menu's Back button.
• Back that leaves a fullscreen video no longer also opens the menu.
• If a page runs out of memory or its process crashes, TV Akhi stays open and shows "This page crashed" with a Reload button, instead of closing.
• Sites ask for camera and microphone permission only once.
• GeckoView: videos are no longer sent in AV1 to TVs that can't decode it in hardware, so they play smoothly with much less CPU.
• New installs use the WebView engine by default (lighter on TVs). You can still choose GeckoView in the settings.

Several of these come from TV Bro 3.0 by Fedir Tsapana.

TV Akhi 1.1.0

Which file?

• tv-akhi-armeabi-v7a.apk: most Android TVs and TV boxes. If you're not sure, use this one.
• tv-akhi-arm64-v8a.apk: newer 64-bit devices.

It installs over 1.0.9 and keeps your bookmarks and settings. How to install: see the README.

New

• ⬆ Updates from inside the app: TV Akhi checks for a new version once a day and offers to install it. Settings → Version & updates → Check for updates checks right away. The first time, the TV may ask you to allow TV Akhi to install apps.
• 🔇 No music, much better:
  • Silent between sentences: a voice gate mutes what's left of the music when nobody speaks, without cutting the start of words.
  • Filtered from the first second of a video: it starts silent for a moment, then the sound fades in. No more music before it kicks in.
  • Less delay between the voices and the picture.
  • Slower TVs get a lighter version step by step instead of stuttering. It only switches off if even the lightest one is too much.

Fixed

• Pressing play on some video sites replaced the video with "This page is blocked": the site's ad pop-up went to a blocked site. Those pop-ups are now dropped and the video keeps playing.
• "Support the author" now opens the TV Akhi author's page.

TV Akhi 1.0.9

Which file?

• tv-akhi-armeabi-v7a.apk: most Android TVs and TV boxes. If you're not sure, use this one.
• tv-akhi-arm64-v8a.apk: newer 64-bit devices.

It installs over 1.0.1 and keeps your bookmarks and settings. How to install: see the README.

New

• 🛡 Family filters (both on by default, in Settings):
  • Porn/nudity block: about 64,000 adult sites are blocked, SafeSearch is forced on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo, and pages with an adult label are closed.
  • Haram filter: about 298,000 drug, gambling and vaping sites are blocked, plus sites with alcohol or gambling words in their name.
  • Search words: searches on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, YouTube and other search engines are checked for porn, alcohol, drug and gambling words in many languages (English, Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Urdu, Turkish, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Indonesian/Malay). Learning about it is allowed, getting it isn't: why is alcohol haram searches normally, buy alcohol or casino near me is blocked.
• 🔒 Parental PIN (in Settings): once set, the PIN is needed to turn off a filter or No music, to go incognito and to delete history. Turning a filter on never asks. Only a salted hash of the PIN is stored.
• ⏭ Smart skip, better:
  • On players that use TMDB episode numbers, the exact recap, intro and credits times come from TheIntroDB, so skipping works from the first episode.
  • After the credits (or when an episode ends) it opens the next episode.
  • Shows a message while it's still learning a show or can't see the video.
• 🔇 No music runs on the audio thread in mono: half the CPU, so slower TVs keep up.

TV Akhi 1.0.1

Which file?

• tv-akhi-armeabi-v7a.apk: most Android TVs and TV boxes. If you're not sure, use this one.
• tv-akhi-arm64-v8a.apk: newer 64-bit devices.

It installs over 1.0.0 and keeps your bookmarks and settings. How to install: see the README.

New

• ⏭ Smart skip (on by default, new button in the bottom menu bar): skips the intro and the end credits of TV show episodes on any site, with a 2-second safety gap.
  • If the site shows its own Skip intro, Skip credits or Next episode button, TV Akhi presses it.
  • It learns a show's intro from two episodes, so the skipping starts with the third.
  • A credit roll near the end is skipped after about 10 seconds of it.
• 🔇 No music (off by default, new button in the bottom menu bar): removes the background music from videos and keeps the voices. It runs NoMusic's FastEnhancer Lite model on the TV itself and works with most streaming players. If the TV is too slow, it switches itself off for that video.
• Version numbers now follow TV Akhi's own releases (1.0.1).

TV Akhi 1.0.0

First release of TV Akhi, an ad-free web browser for Android TV based on TV Bro.

Which file?

• tv-akhi-armeabi-v7a.apk: most Android TVs and TV boxes. If you're not sure, use this one.
• tv-akhi-arm64-v8a.apk: newer 64-bit devices.

How to install, including from a laptop over Wi-Fi with adb: see the README.

Highlights

• Ad blocking with uBlock Origin: the real extension in GeckoView, which is the default engine, or uBlock Origin's
  filter lists with WebView.
• Arabic voice search (البحث الصوتي بالعربية): choose the language in Settings.
• DuckDuckGo is the default search engine. Typing a site name opens the site.
• Remote controls: single-press scrolling, Back goes to the previous page, and the ⌂ button goes to the home page
  (press again to go to the TV home screen).
• Videos you start play in fullscreen.
• Links that open new windows load in the same tab.
• Home page shows your most visited sites.