The first official release of Dispatch is here! V1 brings one (maybe 1.5) additional features + many more bug fixes as well as some performance improvements.

Media from Android TV's Play Next row will now sync to Dispatch's Watch Next row.

Unfortunately, since very little metadata is known about media in Android TV's Play Next row, these items won't be as visually rich as content from your Plex library (so no logos, for example.) Still, it's better than nothing!

Dispatch's App Peek feature also supports Play Next items from Android TV. If an app has added media to your Watch Next / Play Next row, those items will be contained in a special card in front of all the other media in App Peek.

It is not yet possible to manually add to the watch next row, but that enhancement will come in the future. , on the other hand, can always be added to Watch Next by clicking the "Add to Watch Next" button.

You can individually control which apps are allowed to add items to Watch Next (and Watch Next in App Peek) from Settings -> General -> Home & Wallpaper -> Personalize Media Feed.

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Dispatch comes with a free . Afterward, users have the option of buying the app outright. Pricing differs per region, but in general, the lifetime license hovers around the Big Mac meal range 🍔:

Lifetime license:

Monthly license:

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Lastly, I'd like to take this last paragraph to thank everyone who has helped with testing. Many of you have been very enthusiastic about this project from the start, and it's been a joy working with you all. Thank you for all your help and suggestions, ! 🫡

The control center has been redesigned with some new features, including the ability to put your device to sleep.

The control center also includes a new input switcher. Note that the input switcher will only show on displays with Android TV built in, and will not show on devices like the Nvidia Shield or Chromecast with Google TV.

Additionally, users can access a new recent apps menu from the updated control center.

As a reminder, the control center can be accessed by pressing right on your remote when the tab is highlighted, or by pressing the menu button on your remote. To use the menu button, your remote must be configured to send the menu command. I personally recommend users set the menu button to send the menu command with a single click, and a long click set to open the android device settings view.

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The context menu now includes options to mark media as watched / unwatched, as well as the ability to navigate to an episode's parent season or parent show.

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The following changes and fixes are included in this release as well:

In order for navigation sounds to work System Sounds must be enabled in the devices settings.

Instead of having to manually enable / disable each row one at a time, a button has been added.

Logo brightness modulation is a feature that attempts to keep logos visible as detailed here

This feature is now optional and can be disabled from Settings -> Advanced -> Graphics Settings.

Dispatch has a logo! It's nothing fancy, but it's nice to have nonetheless. The logo features a capital D that functions as the upper half of a capital P.

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You can now show and hide the movie and television tabs. For each tab that you hide, you will be able to add 2 additional favourite apps using the free up space.

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The following issues have been fixed:

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A new onboarding slideshow has been added for the initial setup.

A clean installation is not required, but without one, you'll notice that upon launch you will be prompted with a "continue setup" screen. You can just click through the setup until you arrive at the home page. This will trigger a metadata refresh as well, similar to the first install. However, all your previous media and settings should be carried over without issue.

Enhanced logging: Users can now enable logging in Dispatch from Settings → About → Diagnostics. If you are having issues, you can enable logging and send me the logs so that I can investigate. You can export your logs from the same page. Logs are exported to the Downloads folder by default. If you do not know how or don't have the ability to extract the exported logs from your device, please let me know. For those users, I can enable cloud upload for logs on your device, which will zip and send your logs directly to me upon export.

All in all, app recommendations should appear much more stable and instances of app media disappearing or not showing when expected should be completely eliminated.

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Dispatch now includes support for wallpapers. You can pick an image from your device and use it as a featured photo for your TV. For now, there is only support for local files. Future efforts will provide support from various online sources as well.

You can access these options from Settings → General → Home & Wallpaper → Look & Feel.

There are some additional options for wallpapers, such as changing the brightness of the image as well as and the style of the "feed hint"

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Navigation scrubbing occurs when the use holds a navigation button in one direction. Depending on where you are in the app, scrubbing behaves will differ. Here are some examples of how scrubbing looks in various contexts:

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Dispatch will now attempt to restore your last session on start up. This means that if the app is closed in the background by the OS, when starting up again, it will attempt to re-position itself from where you left off. Here's what that looks like in action:

This feature is optional and can be turned off from Settings → Experience → Save & restore state. Note that in this example, this feature works even if the user force closes the app. This is only for demo purposes. During normal usage, state restoration will only kick in if the OS has killed the app in the background, and not when the user has deliberately chosen to close Dispatch themselves.

Currently, sessions are only saved when navigating the home tab. Future releases will enable this feature app-wide.

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You can now customize how your home feed is organized. There are a few different options, so please take a look! You can configure your feed from Settings → General → Home & Wallpaper → Personalize Media Feed.

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You can now change which list is shown at the top of the movie and television pages. The default is new movies / television, but you can also choose trending movies / television or watchlisted movies / television.

For the apps page, you can choose to include non-Android TV apps in your app list.

You can find these options in Settings → Media & Apps

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The Home Directory is a new view that can be accessed by pressing the left navigation button while on the first item of a row in your home feed. It shows a zoomed out view of your feed whilst allowing you to quickly move up or down.

The Home Directory also becomes visible while scrubbing the home page in the vertical direction.

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The Settings page has been completely rebuilt. Efforts will continue to be made so that all the various options (present and future) are as intuitively organized as possible.

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Dispatch now comes with 3 graphics modes to help target various Android TV devices out there.

You can find these options in Settings → Advanced → Graphics Settings

is the default for high-end devices such as the Shield TV Pro. When this option is used, Dispatch will use the most amount of animations and graphical flourishes. As you descend the graphics settings from there, various effects are turned off or reduced in order to ensure the best possible performance.

is the default for devices like the Chromecast with Google TV 4K, and is the default for even lower-end devices or instances of Android TV built directly into your TV / display.

Please note that Dispatch is a fairly large application that prioritizes presentation, animations, and large images. Unfortunately, the landscape of Android TV devices is currently dominated by low-end devices with weak CPUs and very low amounts of RAM. As such, while I am happy with the level of optimizations reached thus far (especially with the help of these graphics modes), one should not expect any miracles. It's very possible that if your device is too slow, Dispatch will never perform satisfactorily on it.

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With this beta release, testers are encouraged to try Dispatch on non-shield Android TV devices. Please report any device specific issues you encounter.

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With this beta, Dispatch 1.0 is feature complete. Going forward, I will only be focusing on bug fixes and other tasks tied specifically to going public. Thanks for reading and thanks for all your help so far!

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Dispatch can now sync with the default channels included in Android TV. This allows Dispatch to display certain content from installed apps on your device.

Each Android TV Channel is displayed as a row on your home page. These rows appear slightly differently than rows added by your Plex server.

Currently, Android TV Channels are displayed after your Plex rows on your home page. In a future release, various features will be added to allow you to customize the order and visibility of these rows.

In addition to the Android TV rows on your home page, content from your apps can be highlighted via the new App Peek feature.

When enabled, hovering over one of your pinned apps will display a new App Peek card.

App Peek cards a browsable by pressing to enter the card, and then using or to navigate the list of items.

You can exit the App Peek card by pressing or .

Here's a video of App Peek in action:

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Dispatch now supports Watchlists. Your is currently synced to the row on your home screen. In a future release, options will be added to allow the Watchlist to live in its own row, or alongside Watch Next as it is now.

Here are some screenshots:

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You can now search your media libraries directly in Dispatch. Most features have been implemented, however search history, along with the ability to clear your search history, will come in a future update.

Here are some screenshots of the search experience:

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During onboarding, Dispatch used to wait until a complete library download was complete before moving to the home screen. This has been changed: the library will continue to download in the background while the user is navigated to the home screen without delay.

New UI elements have been added to indicate to the user that the library is still loading:

Also, after a first library download, there is a somewhat lengthy (~30 minutes) process within which Dispatch must download metadata and artwork for the home screen UI. App performance is expected to be degraded during this process, but it is a one time event.

New UI elements have been added to indicate to the user that metadata is still being generated

This will be expanded upon in the future to hopefully support all game pads. For now, I have only tested it with the Stadia controller. If you have a gamepad and have issues navigating the UI, please create an issue for it here.

Dispatch opens a web socket with your Plex servers to listen to playback events so that it can update the watch next / on deck rows, as well as media playback positions. There was an issue with this code that was previously causing a memory leak, and thus intermittent performance issues. It's possible this issue is still not solved for every scenario, however, so if you notice the app or your device sometimes becoming very laggy, please create an issue for it here.

One of the next major features being worked on is Search. The design is still being finalized, but here's a quick preview!