Support Articles
Deep Links
Channels for iOS and tvOS supports Deep Links, allowing you to launch the app directly into content, including automatically playing it.
Open Channels directly to a specific show, collection, or even a specific channel to immediatly start watching. Deep Links can be used in a variety of ways, learn more below.
Note: Deep Links on tvOS
You might wonder how this is useful on tvOS, since there’s no browser, Shortcuts, or anything else directly on the platform.
If you’re a home automation fan, you might have your Apple TVs set up in Home Assistant, or something else. These tools can launch and run deep links for you on your behalf.
This is super useful as it means you can just use deep links to open/play content, vs having to wire up schemes to launch the Channels app first before you can hit the Channels API to do the same thing.
Deep Link Format
Deep Links mimic the URL structure of the Channels API as well as the available functionality. Read below on how they are formatted.
Scheme
The scheme for Channels Depp Links depend on which version of the app you are using.
channels://- Store releasechannels-beta://- TestFlight beta
Actions
Use identifiers for your content. You can retrieve these either via the Server API or just by inspecting the URLs in your Channels DVR Server web admin. Browse to the content you want to link to and look at the URL in your browser’s address bar for the unique identifier.
Build your deep link by appending a path to the scheme you’ve chosen. The path should be formatted as follows:
channels://open/show/:id
Jump to the type of deep link directly from the list below:
Available Deep Links
Read below to learn about all of the available actions and deep links you can use.
Navigate
This will let you open a section in the app. Use the name of the section as the parameter. Be sure to URL encode the name. This means replace spaces with %20, i.e. /TV%20Shows
/navigate/:sectionName
Open
These will let you open the content in the app. Nothing will play.
/open/show/:id/open/video_group/:id/open/recording/:id/open/episode/:id/open/movie/:id/open/video/:id/open/collection/:id/open/playlist/:id
Play
These will let you play the content directly in the app.
/play/channel/:id/play/show/:id/play/video_group/:id/play/recording/:id/play/episode/:id/play/movie/:id/play/video/:id/play/collection/:id/play/playlist/:id
Play Options
The following paramaters can be added to the end of the deep link to control playback.
| Parameter | Value | support content |
|---|---|---|
| playNext | true | Playlists, Shows, Video Groups |
| playFirst | true | Collections, Playlists |
| shuffle | true | Collections, Playlists, Shows, Video Groups |
Example
channels://play/show/2322?shuffle=true
