Accessible-IPTV-Client

A vibe-coded, keyboard-first IPTV player for Windows and Linux, built to work well with screen readers and reliably load large playlists and EPGs.

The main window: playlist groups on the left, the channel list on the right, and the now/next guide entry plus the stream URL for the selected channel underneath.

Typing in the filter box narrows the channel list as you type; the guide panel follows the selection.

What’s on Now (in the EPG menu) lists everything airing across every channel, with its own filter box, and can play a programme’s channel or schedule a recording.

The built-in player (libVLC) with keyboard-reachable controls, or hand the stream to an external player instead.

Sources are managed in the Playlist Manager (Ctrl+M), which takes M3U files, URLs, Xtream Codes logins, and Stalker Portal details.

• Screen reader friendly (NVDA, JAWS, Narrator, Orca).
• M3U/M3U+ playlists, Xtream Codes, and Stalker Portal sources.
• Built-in player (libVLC via python-vlc) or an external player (VLC, MPC-HC, MPV, etc.).
• Channel groups, fast channel search, and EPG search.
• Favorites: mark channels with Ctrl+D and reach them from the Favorites category at the top of the category list.
• A preferred audio track for the built-in player, under Options > Preferred Audio Track — pick an audio description track automatically wherever a channel offers one, or name the track/language you want.
• XMLTV EPG support (.xml and .xml.gz), including large multi-million-row guides.
• Catch-up/timeshift playback for channels that support it.
• Account status under File > Account Info — expiry date, days remaining, trial flag and connection limits for Xtream Codes and Stalker Portal accounts, including accounts detected automatically from a playlist or stream URL.
• Casting support, plus optional system tray minimize.
• Recording and DVR scheduling, with an optional Recordings > Shut Down the Computer When Recordings Finish for overnight captures.
• Multilingual interface (14 languages) with automatic OS-language detection and a manual selector under Options > Language.
• Built-in updater on Windows that verifies SHA-256 and Authenticode before applying an update.

Grab the latest build from the Releases page.

See the changelog for release-by-release changes.

Windows installer (recommended)

1. Download AccessibleIPTVClient-Setup-vX.Y.Z.exe.
2. Run it and approve the elevation prompt. It installs to Program Files, adds a Start Menu entry, and updates itself in place.

Windows portable

1. Download AccessibleIPTVClient-vX.Y.Z.zip (or IPTVClient.zip).
2. Extract it anywhere and run IPTVClient.exe — no installation required.

Debian and Ubuntu (.deb)

1. Download accessible-iptv-client_X.Y.Z-1_all.deb.
2. Install it with apt so the dependencies come along: sudo apt install ./accessible-iptv-client_X.Y.Z-1_all.deb
3. Start it from your desktop menu, or run accessible-iptv-client.

The package is architecture-independent and runs the app with the system Python, so apt supplies wxPython, python-vlc, the VLC plugins, and ffmpeg. It is built and install-tested on Debian 13 (trixie); other apt-based distributions work as long as they ship python3-wxgtk4.0 and python3-vlc.

Casting is optional there, because Debian’s python3-pychromecast is older than the app needs and pyatv is not packaged at all. Everything else works without them; to add casting:

pip3 install --user "pychromecast>=14" "async-upnp-client>=0.38" "pyatv>=0.14"

There is no built-in updater on Linux — install the next .deb over the current one. Where your data lands on Linux is existing app behaviour that the package does not change: iptvclient.conf and scheduled_recordings.json go in your home directory, while the EPG database (epg.db), the playlist cache, and the EPG debug log go in your temp directory — so an imported guide is cleared whenever /tmp is, typically at reboot. Point TMPDIR somewhere persistent before launching if you want the guide to survive.

Other Linux

No package yet — run it from source (below).

On Windows, installed builds keep your settings, EPG database, schedules, and cache in %APPDATA%\AccessibleIPTVClient. Portable builds keep the settings file (iptvclient.conf) next to IPTVClient.exe and fall back to the same %APPDATA% folder for everything else. Uninstalling leaves your data untouched.

1. Install Python 3.11+.
2. Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
3. If you want the built-in player, install VLC 3.0+ (python-vlc loads libVLC from your VLC install).
4. Launch it: python main.py

• Ctrl+M — Playlist Manager
• Ctrl+E — EPG Manager
• Ctrl+I — Import EPG to database
• Ctrl+Shift+A — Account Info
• Ctrl+D — Add the selected channel to Favorites, or remove it
• Ctrl+Shift+R — Start recording the selected channel
• Ctrl+Q — Exit
• Enter — Play selected channel
• Context Menu / Apps key — Channel options (including Catch-up if available)

• Space — Play/Pause
• Up / Down — Adjust volume (2% steps)
• Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down — Adjust volume (5% steps)
• A — Next audio track
• F11 — Toggle fullscreen
• Escape — Exit fullscreen
• Tab — Navigate between controls

Press Ctrl+D on a channel to mark it, or use the context menu / View > Add to Favorites. Marked channels appear under Favorites, the second category in the category list, and are read out as “(Favorite)” elsewhere in the list. Favorites are stored in iptvclient.conf by provider and channel id, so they survive a playlist refresh; nothing about your account is stored with them.

Channels that carry an audio description track usually start on the ordinary one, which means switching by hand on every channel. Options > Preferred Audio Track fixes that:

• Prefer an audio description track when the channel has one matches the wording providers actually use, in several languages (“audio description”, “AD”, “Audiodeskription”, “Hörfilm”, and so on).
• The text field takes your own track names or languages, most wanted first, separated by commas.
• In the player, Playback > Audio Track > Always Prefer This Audio Track pins whatever you are listening to right now.

The chosen track is re-applied after a reconnect, and a track you pick by hand always wins for the channel you are watching. Press A in the player to cycle tracks as before.

Recordings > Shut Down the Computer When Recordings Finish powers the machine off once every running and scheduled recording is done, which is what you want for a late-night capture. It never fires while something is still recording or waiting in the schedule, it shows a 60-second countdown you can cancel first, and it turns itself off once it has been used or canceled, so it can never surprise you twice.

• During EPG import, a detailed log is written to iptvclient_epg_debug.log — in %APPDATA%\AccessibleIPTVClient on Windows, or your system temp directory elsewhere.
• .xml.gz guides are supported and go through a safe download/verify workflow.

The internal player sizes its network buffer dynamically. You can tune it in iptvclient.conf:

• internal_player_buffer_seconds (default ~2s)
• internal_player_max_buffer_seconds (default ~18s)
• internal_player_variant_max_mbps (HLS quality cap in Mbps, 0 = no cap)

Lower values start faster; higher values are more tolerant of jitter.

The interface is translatable with GNU gettext. By default the app follows your OS language and falls back to English; override this under Options > Language. The choice is saved to iptvclient.conf (language) and applies fully after a restart.

Bundled languages: English, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese (Brazilian), French, German, Russian, Turkish, Italian, Polish, Hindi, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, and Hungarian. Most were produced with AI assistance and have not yet been reviewed by native speakers, so wording may be imperfect.

Found a translation mistake, or want a language added? Please open an issue or contact the maintainer with your fixes and they will be added. New languages are welcome too — human-translated, AI-translated (just ask and they can be generated), or submitted by anyone. Every release keeps all catalogues in sync automatically, so corrections and additions ship in the next build.

Translations live in locale/<lang>/LC_MESSAGES/iptvclient.po. The tooling is pure Python — no GNU gettext, Babel, or polib required:

python tools/i18n_tools.py extract   # refresh locale/iptvclient.pot from the source
python tools/i18n_tools.py update    # merge new strings into every .po (keeps translations)
python tools/i18n_tools.py compile   # compile every .po -> .mo

To contribute a new language:

1. Run python tools/i18n_tools.py update (or copy locale/iptvclient.pot) to create locale/<code>/LC_MESSAGES/iptvclient.po, then translate the msgstr lines.
2. Run python tools/i18n_tools.py compile.
3. Add (code, "Native name") to _LANGUAGE_LABELS in i18n.py so it appears in the menu.
4. Open a pull request. Keep every {placeholder} exactly as it appears in the English source.

Hungarian translation and screen-reader testing contributed by the community (see issue #2).

See BUILD.md for the full release pipeline — PyInstaller packaging, Authenticode signing, and the Program Files installer.

build.bat build       # build the app
build.bat dry-run     # preview the next version bump and release notes
build.bat release     # bump version, build, sign, zip, tag, push, and create a GitHub Release

Release prerequisites: gh CLI authenticated (gh auth login), and a code signing certificate installed with signtool.exe available (or set SIGNTOOL_PATH).

Pull requests are welcome. If Accessible IPTV Client has been useful to you, open a PR with a fix or feature and I’ll review it.

Report bugs and request features in Issues. For questions, feedback, and release news, join the SerrebiProjects Telegram group.