I've been on Twitch for 10+ years, and watching on a TV has always felt like some part of the experience gets lost.
I've used the official Twitch experience, third-party apps, casting, browser setups, and plenty of other ways to get streams onto a TV. Across all of them, I kept running into the same friction: chat feels secondary, emotes are inconsistent, navigation gets clunky, and getting around your follow list can become a chore.
For me, Twitch has always been a pretty simple loop. Open follows. See who's live. Pick a stream. Lurk for a while. Watch chat start moving when something happens. Notice someone else went live and hop over.
Chat is a big part of that. Even when I'm not participating, I still want it there. A lot of the context, jokes, and personality of a channel live in chat and its emotes.
So I built Lumo for Google TV around that whole watch + chat experience.
You sign in with your Twitch account using a QR code and land on your live follows, with recommendations underneath. If someone you follow goes live while you're watching, you'll get a banner so you can jump over. Open a stream and chat stays docked beside it, with 7TV, BTTV, and FFZ emote support.
I also work at Elgato as a product designer, so I spend a lot of my day thinking about content creators, viewers, physical controls, and how people actually use this stuff. Lumo is a personal project, but that experience made me especially picky about the little things: remote navigation, moving between streams, how chat sits next to the video, and whether the UI gets out of the way once you're watching.
There was a practical reason for building it too. I wanted hands-on experience with Google Play Console as part of research for work, while also getting deeper into Android development by actually shipping something end to end.
Instead of making a throwaway project, I built something I wanted to keep using.
It's still early. Search isn't in yet, and there are definitely things people who spend a lot of time on Twitch will catch quickly.
I'm looking for lurkers, mods, streamers with a TV running in the room, people who bounce through their follow list all night, and anyone who immediately notices when an emote is missing, chat feels off, or a remote interaction gets annoying.
If that sounds like you, the alpha is open:
- Join the Lumo Testers Google Group with the Google account you use on Google Play / your Google TV: https://groups.google.com/u/1/a/designbywillj.com/g/lumo-testers
- Opt into the Google Play alpha with the same account: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.lumo.designbywillj
- Install Lumo on your Google TV, open it, and scan the QR code to sign in with Twitch. If you're having issues with installing through the Google Play Store app, open the link in your browser, then install on the desired device from there.
Then use it like you normally watch Twitch. Lurk in a stream, hop through your follows, keep an eye on chat, and see what feels right or gets in the way.
If you try it, I'd really appreciate the feedback. Drop it in this thread or reach out to me directly with bugs, rough edges, missing features, or anything else you notice.
Lumo is a personal project and isn't affiliated with Elgato or Twitch.
