PickFlick: Live TV, Sports, and Streaming for Apple TV & iOS

I started PickFlick in early 2023 to watch live sports and free TV streams (like public broadcast playlists) on my Apple TV. As US streaming hit 278 billion watch hours (Nielsen), live sports split across 8 apps and 1,870+ free ad-supported channels (Gracenote), pushing search time to 10.5 minutes (Nielsen).

Loading channel playlists or a home media server on a TV was a four-step chore:

• Typing a 90-character URL with the Siri Remote.
• Scrolling 10,000 raw channel names like US_ESPN_HD_720P_RAW without posters or schedules.
• Hitting black screens when Apple's video player rejected a broadcast format.
• Losing watch progress and saved channels between phone and TV.

I connected a live iPhone and Apple TV simulator on my Mac so you can test the app below with touch or the Siri Remote.

My 2023 prototype, Kaleidocast, ran on macOS, iOS, and tvOS and showed what breaks on a TV.

1. A third-party video player broke the Siri Remote

Apple's built-in video player choked on many live broadcast formats, so I swapped in VLC's mobile player with custom controls. It played almost anything, but Siri Remote swipes lagged, Picture-in-Picture broke, and software decoding heated up my phone.

2. Loading 50,000-line playlists froze launch

My first playlist and TV schedule parser read whole files into memory at once. It worked on 200 test channels, but 50,000-channel lists locked the app for ten seconds and crashed Apple TV on launch.

3. Static guide tables cut away from video

My first TV guide drew raw schedule text in gray boxes. Clicking a channel cut straight to a loading spinner, making it painful to flip through channels.

When Kaleidocast became PickFlick, I built a two-step video player. Standard streams use Apple's built-in player for hardware decoding and Picture-in-Picture, and if a broadcast stream fails to load, the app switches to an FFmpeg-based fallback player (which I contributed to upstream) behind the same controls.

To stop big channel lists from freezing launch, I rewrote the importer to read playlists and TV schedules in background chunks into the local database, and added a live corner preview player to the guide.

Raw playlists give you channel names like UK: SKY SPORTS MAIN EVENT FHD instead of artwork. I wrote a cleanup pass that strips region and resolution tags, then pulls posters, trailers, cast, and IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic ratings from TMDB, plus direct links to Prime Video, Paramount+, Apple TV, and Netflix when no custom stream is loaded.

For live sports and movies in theaters, the app pairs schedules and scores with live betting odds and local Fandango and AMC showtimes.

Ask a friend what to put on and they give you two or three picks. Scrolling thousands of channels takes too long after a long day. Hold the Siri Remote mic button and ask for "Nature documentaries narrated by David Attenborough" or "Where can I watch the Champions League game?" My first Apple TV version copied the iPhone's chat bubbles, which were hard to read from ten feet away. I replaced the chat log with a ten-foot discovery screen: a one-line answer, follow-up suggestions, and a playable row of posters or live channels.

On the backend, my first prototype ran a separate Python agent service to call search tools, which added too much delay between servers. Moving all 30+ movie, sports, and channel search tools directly into the Next.js web backend let the assistant stream structured cards that render as interactive shelves on the web, Apple TV, and iOS.

To watch four games at once on busy sports weekends, I built a four-screen multiview player on Apple TV. Moving Siri Remote focus across the four corners switches active audio to the highlighted game.

Moving the playlist parser and video player into shared Swift libraries let me reuse 80% of the code across iOS, macOS, and tvOS while syncing watchlists, progress, and saved channels over iCloud.

To skip typing URLs on the TV, I built QR pairing into the companion web app. Scanning the TV's QR code pairs your phone over an encrypted connection to send playlists or home media servers straight to Apple TV, and the web app also powers iMessage App Clips and the voice agent on this site.