February 23, 2026
Remote wars: tap vs TV trap
What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile
TV Apps Aren’t Just Big Phone Screens—Users Clap Back
TLDR: TV apps can’t be built like phone apps—remotes and distance demand simpler design and clear focus. Comments blast Amazon Prime’s lag, praise Apple TV hardware, and trade tips with Netflix’s focus guide, splitting the crowd between buying external boxes or enduring smart TV struggles.
This developer confession reads like a horror story: build a TV app like a phone app, and the remote turns your UI into remote roulette. The author says TV is a different beast—bigger fonts, simpler screens, and crystal-clear focus (where the cursor lands) or users feel lost. The comments? Absolute fireworks. sumo89 nods like a veteran: focus bugs eat weeks of life. Then embedding-shape swings in with a crowd-pleaser gripe: Amazon Prime on LG WebOS lagging so hard that moving focus takes half a second. Cue the thread morphing into a performance blame game.
On one side: “TVs are weak,” says DanovonT, who’s seen every app stutter—except Apple TV+, which “just works” even on Android TV. The other camp: ditch smart TVs entirely and buy a box; InUrNetz swears external devices “just work better,” roasting sales guys who insist you don’t need one. For the nerd-curious, andsoitis drops Netflix’s 2017 guide to LRUD—left-right-up-down—input and focus, a roadmap for keeping remotes from behaving like gremlins (link). Jokes fly about “couch-safe fonts” and “who stole my focus,” but the mood is clear: navigation clarity is king, and Amazon’s lag is the villain everyone loves to boo.
Key Points
- •The team’s attempt to reuse mobile app foundations for an Android TV app led to persistent instability and UX issues.
- •TV app interaction via remote is discrete and sequential, making navigation clarity critical.
- •Design for TV must account for viewing distance; mobile typography and visual hierarchies often fail on TV.
- •Focus management must be explicitly designed; undefined focus creates emergent, seemingly random behavior.
- •TV hardware is generally weaker than phones, causing slower startup, rendering challenges, and memory pressure.