Are there plans for a non-tablet Android app?

I see that the Android app currently on the market requires a tablet-sized device. I’m not overly clear on why this is. Even beyond media streaming (which I do on 4" and 5" devices), device setup and scheduling should be possible from as many devices as possible.


Will we be seeing a phone release soon to bring Tablo to the rest of us who only carry around a phone?

Hey @dan - Our iOS and Android apps are formatted for tablet screen sizes which is why they don’t work on phones. 


If you do want to use Tablo on your phone, try our web based app at my.tablotv.com

We are looking at creating phone specific apps, but this would require a lot of resizing work. Stay tuned. 

The FAQ on access of TabloTV from outside of the home talks about access from phones. You might want to update that…

Good eye Michael - we are planning to add Tablo Connect to the web-based app but this isn’t currently supported.

I too am disappointed that the Android App can’t run on the phone.  I have plenty of phones that are 4.2 or greater and tablets that are ICS.  Hopefully a more veristile Android app is on the way soon.

i have an android moto x phone that does not meet the 7 inch criteria, but is running 4.2. So, i tried using the web based app on the moto x. However, it doesn’t connect, but instead the spinning wheel keeps spinning. Any thoughts, or is this not yet implemented?

@duddar - Not sure if we’ve tested the MotoX with the web-based app (there’s a lot of phones out there!) Are you using a Chrome phone browser? 

yes, i’m using the chrome browser. Its very flaky. sometimes I get in, but cant play in landscape. Live TV will not play. A universal app would be much better that supports smaller screens, etc. Will you be looking into the Moto x for answers as well as creating an app that works on all screen sizes and OS besides jelly bean 4.2+

@duddarr - We’re making some updates to the web-based app today. Try again this evening to see if that’s resolved the flakyness.



As for a phone-based Android app, that would require us to re-size our existing app which would require a lot of dev hours. It’s something that seems popular but there’s no ETA.

Speaking of Android…is there any plan to ensure app compatibility with the new Amazon FireTV box (even if we have to sideload it?). Cheers!

@alphawave7 - Amazon Fire TV looks super cool. It does run Android which is a bonus, but it runs it with a remote, and our app is designed for a touch-screen interface so it’ll likely require some dev time to make it work. That being said, we haven’t even started looking into the dev resources for this yet. 

Right now we want to focus on the stuff we DO support and crank up the awesome there, before we start playing with shiny new things. 


PS - Please wave at Mark for us :) 

I too have a Moto X phone now running Kit Kat 4.4 and am disappointed I can’t run a native tablo app on it.  The web app is actually very nice but I don’t seem to be able to “cast” to my Chromecast-enabled TV using it.  From what I’ve been able to gather the released android chrome browser does not support Chromecast.  There is a beta release of the chrome browser for android that is supposed to support Chromecast, but I have been unsuccessful trying to get it to work with the Tablo web app.  No chromecast icon appears anywhere.  So for now I can only view tv shows on the phone itself, which is not what I’m after.

Same here. I have two Android tablets but neither is running KitKat. I do have a KitKat device, but it’s a phone. And we have one other Android phone that is pre-KitKat. So the app is unsupported on all four of our Android devices. :frowning:


We also have also two Chromecasts, but the native app is required to cast to them.

Using the browser is not really a viable option because the pages load extremely slowly on my tablet and (more importantly) there’s no way to skip commercials during playback.

I’d be happy to use either my tablet or my TV with my Tablo, but right now I can’t use either. Until the app supports more tablets and/or phones, I’m basically stuck without any way to watch my recordings.

You don’t need KitKat to run the app.  You just need Android 4.1 now, as long as it’s a tablet 7" or bigger.


Chromecast support is still very limited.  Even if you have the tablet app, all you can do in the Chromecast is play.  Nothing else works.

>> You don’t need KitKat to run the app.  You just need Android 4.1 now, as long as it’s a tablet 7" or bigger.


Ah, thanks!  I somehow had missed that. One of our tablets does just meet the 4.1 requirement. The app seems to have some issues, though, it keeps existing to the desktop when I click on “Recordings”.  I guess it’s still a bit rough…

>> Chromecast support is still very limited.  Even if you have the tablet app, all you can do in the Chromecast is play.  Nothing else works.

Good to know.  Well, at least it’s a start. Getting back to the topic of this thread: phone support is particularly important for the Chromecast case. The app is the remote, and a phone makes a much better remote than a tablet.

I just played around with Chromecast some more. It will pause, rewind, and fast forward a recording, just like it does in the tablet app. Live tv is still limited to pause and play in both the app and chromecast.

@danwa  CNET article explains how to enable Chromecast in Chrome Beta for Android.  This worked for me.  http://www.cnet.com/how-to/enable-chromecast-streaming-in-latest-chrome-beta-for-android/

If we aren’t going to get a phone app anytime soon, then I’d love to see a mobile version of the web app.


Basically, this is what I’m looking for:

1) Mobile recognition, and default to a simple interface
2) Instead of giving me the fancy guide (nice, but not needed on my phone as it takes FOREVER to load even on 4G), just give me buttons for Live TV / Recordings
3) Under Live TV, give me a button for each channel in my guide

I’ve started to listen to my TV in my car via bluetooth over the car speakers.  It’s nice to catch the morning news on my drive to work and the evening news on my way home.

+1 lungcookie, use of a phone as a remote is ideal (I would even say expected for a product like this) as I really have a problem trying to use a Nexus 10 as a Chromecast remote, especially as the Tablo tablet UI is designed… first off, why lock the tablet UI to landscape mode only… how could I ever hope to use just one hand 2) why use only 10% of the screen as remote control buttons… this makes interacting with the tablet UI a real hassle to skip commercials… plus none of the controls are near the left\right edge of the screen where I can use my thumbs. UI improvement is needed for the whole 10 foot experience Tablo claims to play in. Must be nice for Ruku users reusing a Ruku remote… I’m jealous. 


+1 lungcookie, Chromecast support is very limited. 1) Tablo web UI on Android or in Chrome on Windows 8 doesn’t offer Chromecast connectivity (Android tablets are it so far, why? 2) the web UI on Android doesn’t even offer skip functionality, so what use would it even be… as is. Also, I can’t even bring myself to use my Android phone for Tablo because of this.

Chromecast support across devices is requested and a Tablo UI refocus for the 10 foot experience is very much desired. Netflix and YouTube are great examples. I look forward towards the improvements to Tablo but worry when I hear Tablo say an Android phone app is not a focus. 

So I am sitting on the couch and I have to get up and grab the tablet to stream to the Chromecast. I feel Tablo developers are underestimating the importance of a phone app. Nexus 5 has more resolution than a first generation Nexus 7 but the Tablo app won’t run on a phone. Illogical