Living up to the feature's name, I created a Personal Section for a family member with very specific taste. It's a one-stop-shop for them to be able to quickly choose what to watch:
1 - Recently Added Movies
2 - Button shortcuts to various other parts of the app (Up Next, Collections, Playlists)
3 - Game Shows - On Now
4 - Martial Arts (boxing, wrestling, MMA, etc.) - On Now
5 - Unwatched Documentaries in library
6 - 4K movies in library
7 - Top Rated movies in library
8 - Recently Updated Shows
As of the latest TestFlight beta, Personal Sections are now available for Start Up, Remote Shortcuts, and launchable via the Channels API and Deep Links.
They are not yet available from Siri Shortcut actions, but they will come later.
Note: personal Sections will be prioritized over native sections. So if you have a Personal Section with the same name as a native section, I.e. Movies, your Personal Section will be used.
Would be really great if we could have a one touch system from the personal sections. Meaning, every time I select a channel that’s currently playing from “channel collections”, it pulls up the submenu of “watch now, record, etc”. Would be great if we could just click the thumbnail and jump straight into the channel like when we select something from guide.
I have a home automation setup using Keyboard Maestro using the remote trigger feature. This allows me to fire off macros from any browser by entering a specific url. You can also use a curl command in terminal.
When I setup a URL button in a personal section url row to send this url it not seem to go out to the WAN. Is this a limitation in the URL button that it can only launch apps on the ATV?
I suspect the answer is no but I just wanted to check in case Channels can send a curl within the app. Maybe this limitation is related to why Apple does have a browser for AppleTV (other than the fact it would be a terrible user experience).
Some recent changes in the latest pre-release server should help Personal Sections a bit. These changes with Labels should help your Smart Rules work better for Episodes and Videos
Label Propagation
Labels from TV Shows and Video Groups will propagate to their newly added episodes and videos. So, if your Show has a dads-shows label, all newly added episodes will get the dads-shows label.
Note: This is not retroactive, and this does not add the labels to all the episodes when you add the label to the show. Label propagation only happens at the moment items are added to the library (recorded or imported).
Label management now available for the batch editor for Episodes and Videos
You can now select multiple items, open the batch metadata editor, and manage the labels on these items all at once.
This should give you the tools you need to set labels for older items, or just faster in general.
Up Next section sometimes is not updating after i delete something or watch an episode, and it does not refresh to show the next episode. Have to go to a different page, or close open the app again and it refreshes.
Submitted diags from app, just know, after I deleted OPL First Shift from Up Next in personal section, and it still shows, until i say, open the Guide, then go back to my Personal Section
Edit. Did it again when i watched, then deleted a Episode of Mythbusters. Sent diags again
App. Beta 7.17.1457
Same issue. Personal section showing channel collections with progress turned on dont update. Have to close app to get them to refresh with new thumbnails and new shows.
I am trying to just do the main channel page because I am subscribed to a membership thing and would like to go there every week when they release a new video because there is not a way to get that link automatically updated for the new episode.
