v0.8.0 — copy the address of the thing you are watching

Three buttons sit beside a title on your own list, and every one of them removes itself on some device.

VLC and Infuse are deep links. vlc-x-callback:// and infuse:// are the schemes those two apps register, so a tap on a phone opens the app already on the file. On a desktop they mean nothing: VLC opens, is handed the whole scheme string as its media address, and reports that it cannot open it. So app.js takes both away there, because a button that looks live and then fails is worse than no button at all.

The .m3u download is the mirror image. Right on a desktop, where it downloads and opens and plays. A trap on iOS, where Safari either offers to save the playlist or follows it and offers to save a .ts file, and neither plays. So that button goes on a phone.

Add the two rules together and the result is the thing nobody had noticed. On any given device one of the two ways out of this site is already gone. A desktop reader has a download. A phone reader has two deep links. Neither has ever had the address itself, and the address is exactly what you need if the player you want is not one of the two we can name: mpv, ffmpeg, a set-top box, a Plex box, VLC on a second machine. Until now the answer for all of those was to download the .m3u and open it in a text editor.

There is a Copy URL button now, in two places. Beside the player buttons on a row, where it hands over the same string the VLC link beside it already carries. And under the inline player once something is playing, because by then the row has scrolled off on a phone and the video is fullscreen on a desktop, so this is a second place to press the same control rather than a second control.

The rule that shaped both is the one that already governed VLC: the address IS the credential. On a line you bought, the stream URL contains your own provider username and password, which is why the VLC button may hand it over at all. But a title on our managed line is our reseller credential rather than yours, and a title from somebody else's shared list is their subscription. Those rows have never carried VLC, Infuse or a download, and they do not carry Copy URL either. The new button appears under exactly the condition the old three do and disappears under exactly the condition they do.

The wording follows the row, because this catalogue is mostly files rather than channels: a film says "copy the address of this file", a live channel says "stream".

One last case. navigator.clipboard does not exist outside a secure context and can be refused even inside one. A dead button that swallowed the address would be the worst of the possible endings, so a refusal drops the URL into a field, selected, one keystroke from copied.

Ported from tipoffwatch v0.19.0, where the same change also covers the multiview grid and the news channel player. This site has neither, so this is the part that applies. genrewatch shares no git history with tipoffwatch at all, so shared work arrives here by hand rather than by merge.

Also in this tag, released here for the first time

The last tag was v0.3.0, so everything below shipped to production on merge but was never tagged. Listed by its own commit rather than described second-hand.

• 0.7.1 — Show the password sign-in form instead of folding it away (#29)
• 0.7.0 — Every line gets a card, not just the first (#28)
• 0.6.0 — Say what else we run, in every footer (#27)
• 0.5.0 — Say where a film can be watched, and mean everywhere (#26)
• 0.4.0 — More than one provider per reader (#25)
• Store a list of any size, instead of guessing how big one can be (#24)
• Restart a container whose pool has stopped serving (#23)