Fix your TV service
TappedIn drives each TV service's own web player. Websites change, and most services were built without a real account to test with (they're marked Experimental). If you have one of them, you can test it, fix it, and send the fix back so it works for everyone. No coding needed.
1. Test your service
- Install TappedIn and pick your service in setup.
- If setup gets stuck at any step (sign-in, channels, playback), press Diagnostics. You can also open it later from Settings → TV service → Diagnostics.
- Run the five steps in order. Each shows pass or fail and what it saw.
| Step | What it checks |
|---|---|
| Sign-in detection | TappedIn can tell you're signed in |
| Channel guide | It can read the guide and find the sports networks |
| Tuning | It can put screen 1 on a channel |
| Playback | The video plays |
| Full-screen video | The service's menus are hidden and the video fills the screen |
2. Fix what fails
When a step fails, the settings it depends on appear right under it:
| Setting | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
signin.checkUrl | A page that shows the service when you're signed in | https://watch.spectrum.net/guide |
signin.signedOutPattern | Text that only appears when you're signed out (a regular expression; /…/ keeps upper and lower case exact) | /\bSign In\b/ |
shell.appUrl | Matches every page of the service's player | ^https://watch\.spectrum\.net/ |
shell.playerUrl | Matches the page that's playing a channel | /livetv |
tuning.lineup.row | A CSS selector for one channel row in the guide | li.channel-header-row |
tuning.lineup.ref.* | Where the channel's id is inside that row: an element, an attribute, and a pattern whose first ( ) group is the id | img.channel-logo, src, /guide/(\d+)\? |
tuning.watchUrl | The address of a channel; {ref} is replaced by its id | https://watch.spectrum.net/livetv?tmsid={ref} |
tuning.refInUrl | Finds the id in the player's address, to check where a tune landed | [?&]tmsid=(\d+) |
shell.hideCss | Extra CSS to hide anything still covering the video | .player-controls { display: none !important } |
Tip: to find a selector, open the service in Chrome, right-click a channel in the guide, choose Inspect, and look at the element's tag, class and attributes.
Saving. Change a value and press Save & retry, then run the step again.
- TappedIn checks every fix before saving it. A value that wouldn't work (a broken pattern, a wrong type) is refused, with the reason.
- Your fixes are stored on your computer and sit on top of the built-in settings, so updates to TappedIn don't erase them.
- Edit all fixes as JSON shows the whole fix file, for bigger changes.
3. Send the fix
Press Export config. TappedIn writes tappedin-<service>-<date>.json to Documents\TappedIn and opens the folder.
- What it contains: your fixes, each step's pass or fail, and what each step saw.
- What it never contains: your password, cookies, page text, or the parts of web addresses after
?or#(that's where sign-in codes live).
Open the file in Notepad first if you'd like to check it. Then email it to us with the service's name, so the fix can go into the next version.
What TappedIn will and won't do
These rules keep TappedIn on the right side of the services' terms and the law, so a fix that needs to break one can't be accepted:
- TappedIn only does what you could do yourself in the service's player: load channel addresses, click its guide and its own buttons. Reading the page, and the data the page itself downloads, is fine.
- It never types passwords and never clicks a terms, consent or activation button. The only button it presses on its own is Xfinity On Campus's Watch Now.
- It never gets around a stream limit, a home-network or location check, or a "this browser isn't supported" or bot check. If a service blocks TappedIn, it's marked as not working, with the reason.
- Nothing leaves your computer except what your service and ESPN's public scores need. No servers, no proxies, no tracking.
A service that isn't listed
Not supported yet: Hulu + Live TV, Fubo and DIRECTV. If you use one of these, or another service with a web player, email us its name and whether it's campus TV or a home service.