Taming a long channel list in IPTV Smarters Pro on Android
The mistake almost everyone makes on day one is the same: the app opens, several hundred channels appear, and the natural instinct is to start scrolling down through them. Within half a minute the thumb is tired, the right channel still hasn't appeared, and the whole thing feels harder than it should be.
The channel count itself isn't the real issue. The issue is that everything sits at the same level — channels you watch every evening alongside categories you've never touched. IPTV Smarters Pro on an Android tablet gives you two practical ways to fix that. Neither involves deleting anything or modifying your account. This guide explains both, and helps you work out which one fits your situation.
Quick answers
- Does hiding a group permanently remove those channels?
No. Hiding a group is a local display setting on that one device. The channels stay on the account and appear in full on any other device where you sign in.
- Can I get a hidden group back if I change my mind?
Yes, whenever you like. The group management screen that lets you hide a category works just as well for restoring it. There is no waiting period and no effect on the content itself.
- How many channels can I add to favourites?
There is no limit that you would realistically hit during normal use. The list can hold two channels or two hundred — whatever length works for you.
- My favourites list vanished after updating the app. What happened?
IPTV Smarters Pro keeps the favourites list in local storage on the device rather than on the account. Some app updates clear that local data as part of the installation process. Keeping a brief note of which channels you've added means you can rebuild the list in a few minutes if this happens.
Two questions that point to the right approach
Before changing any settings, it's worth pausing on two questions.
The first: is most of your viewing concentrated in one or two categories, or do you pick channels from groups spread across the whole list? Households that mostly want drama in one language and a couple of news channels will get more from hiding entire unwanted groups. Households with more varied tastes are usually better served by keeping the full group structure intact and building a short favourites section instead.
The second: is the tablet used by more than one person? A housemate who follows sports you have no interest in, or a child who wants access to categories you'd prefer kept out of the main view, changes things. When the device is shared, a personal favourites list leaves everyone's groups untouched, whereas removing whole categories can quietly break someone else's routine.
Those two answers lead naturally to one of two approaches — group-hiding or a favourites list — or a combination of both.
Hiding entire channel groups
This approach suits a household where whole sections of the list are simply never opened. Perhaps there's a block of channels broadcast in a language no one here speaks, or a regional tier that covers a part of the world nobody follows.
- Open IPTV Smarters Pro and go to the playlist management area — usually accessible through the menu icon near the bottom of the screen.
- Switch to the category or group view. A long press on a group name, or a small edit icon beside it, reveals the available actions.
- Set that group as hidden. The app removes it from the browsing view straight away; nothing is erased from the account itself.
- Work through any other groups that don't belong in your day-to-day view.
When you're finished, the channel browser shows only what you've chosen to keep visible. Any group hidden by mistake can be restored from the same menu at any point, with no effect on the content.
It's worth knowing that this is a local setting, specific to the app on this particular tablet. Other devices using the same account are unaffected; the groups stay fully visible there.
Building a short favourites list
If quick access to a specific set of channels matters more than tidying the full group structure, a favourites list is the more direct solution. You pick the fifteen or twenty channels that actually get watched, group them together, and that collection becomes the first thing you see when the app loads.
In IPTV Smarters Pro, a long press on any channel name in the list brings up a small menu where you can mark it as a favourite. Work through the channels you open most often, and within a few minutes you have a curated section that reflects how you actually use the service.
A tablet suits this well: the screen is large enough to show a couple of dozen names without any scrolling at all, which makes the list feel genuinely immediate rather than just a slightly shorter version of the original problem.
If sport drives most of your viewing — say, Champions League midweeks or a Sunday of Formula 1 — a focused favourites section built around four or five channels is faster than any search function. The same general logic applies across different apps and devices; for instance, the guide on channel-hiding on the Apple TV 4K covers comparable thinking on a different platform, with its own set of steps.
First-time setup: getting the login right
If the app isn't installed yet, open the app store on your Android tablet, type the full name into the search bar, and install it. When it runs for the first time, a login screen appears asking for three things: a username, a password, and a server address. All three are sent to your e-mail address shortly after payment completes — most people find the message waiting before they've even finished setting up the tablet. If the inbox looks empty, a quick check of the spam folder usually turns it up.
Those credentials go in once. The app holds onto them from that point forward, so every subsequent launch goes straight to the channel list. Playback itself runs over your home broadband connection — no aerial, no set-top box, no hardware beyond the tablet and a decent Wi-Fi signal.
The ideal moment to configure groups or favourites is right after that first successful login, while the list is still completely untouched. It's considerably easier to make decisions about structure before you've started half-scrolling through things. If you also watch on a phone away from the living room, this piece on streaming on a mobile device covers some relevant ground.
All the content accessible through Balkans IPTV is available through this app on your tablet without any additional per-device fee.
When the list still feels unwieldy
Occasionally, hiding groups and adding favourites don't fully clear the clutter — this usually happens when you want access to several categories but only a fraction of the channels within each one.
The solution is to run both approaches in parallel: remove the groups you never open, then populate the favourites section with the specific channels you watch most within the groups that remain. The rest stays accessible but no longer crowds the front of the list.
It's also worth checking the display mode. IPTV Smarters Pro can show channels as a grid of logos or as a plain scrollable list. On a tablet's larger screen, the grid view often feels less cluttered, while the list view makes it easier to scan alphabetically. This option usually lives in the app's display or appearance settings.
Slow loading when the app first opens is nearly always a home network matter rather than anything to do with the account. A tablet sitting in a room far from the router, or one that has latched onto a congested Wi-Fi frequency, will take noticeably longer to pull the channel list. Moving the tablet to a spot with a stronger signal, or adjusting the Wi-Fi frequency in the tablet's network settings, tends to resolve this without any changes to the app itself.