Overview
Help with curating, watching, searching, and importing in Prism. If something here does not answer your question, email us — a real person reads it.
A channel will not play
- Public streams go down constantly. That is the ecosystem, not your install — try another channel first.
- Run Validate from the toolbar to probe your list and mark dead streams, then turn on Hide dead.
- Some channels are geo-blocked at the source and are labelled that way in the catalog. Prism cannot unblock them, and will not try.
- If an entire playlist fails, its source file may have moved. Use Refresh from source, or re-curate.
Getting a better lineup
- Open Smart Curate (⌘⇧K on Mac, the Curate tab on iPhone and iPad).
- Describe what you want in the natural-language box, or pick language, countries, and genres directly.
- Leave quality-first ranking on unless you specifically want breadth over picture quality.
- Raise Max channels for a bigger list; the ceiling is 4,000.
- Turn on Attach EPG when available if you want a programme guide with the result.
The programme guide
- Prism loads several XMLTV feeds in parallel, including gzipped ones, and merges them on your device.
- Guide rows are matched on tvg-id, tvg-name, or channel name — a channel with no tvg data may show no guide even when the feed loaded.
- You can set a guide URL on an individual playlist and press Load.
- Use Reload EPG after changing feeds.
Importing your own playlist
- Import M3U (⌘O) opens a local .m3u or .m3u8 file; Import URL (⌘⇧O) takes a remote one.
- Import URL also offers quick-add for the trusted lists — English, Free-TV country feeds, regions, and genres.
- Export M3U writes any list back out as a standard playlist.
- What you import is your responsibility; Prism validates the format and the streams, not the rights.
Search
- Search (⌘F on Mac, the Search tab on iPhone and iPad) covers every installed list plus the programme guide.
- Scopes are All, Channels, Shows, and Movies; results cap at 200, ranked.
- Selecting a programme-guide result jumps to the channel carrying it.
Turning on Reddit discovery
Reddit discovery stays switched off until you supply your own approved Reddit installed-app client ID and a descriptive User-Agent in Settings. Prism ships no Reddit credentials and never scrapes anonymously. GitHub discovery and the trusted catalogs work without any of this.
Starting over
Clear All beside Playlists deletes every imported, starter, and curated list, stops playback, and will not silently restore the starter set afterwards. It is the clean slate before a fresh curation, and it cannot be undone.
Contact
Email support@shutterscoutapp.com with your platform, OS version, and what happened.