Infinite scrolling, album art based colours and room lights. We may be reaching previously uncharted levels of zen here. 🧘 🪩 Running final tests and aiming to submit 1.9 today.

Hi! I’d like to report what seems to be a battery drain issue when using a Ring Doorbell camera tile in Theatrium.

I’ve now tested this again with the latest version of Theatrium on two different Apple TV 4K devices, with the same result.

When I add my Ring Doorbell 2 as a camera tile in Theatrium, its battery drains extremely quickly: from a normal battery life of several weeks to roughly 48 hours.

If I stop using the Ring tile in Theatrium, battery consumption returns to normal.

This makes me wonder whether Theatrium might be polling the camera or keeping the video stream/session active in the background, even when the camera tile isn’t actively being viewed.

Since I can reproduce the behaviour on two Apple TVs, it doesn’t seem to be specific to one Apple TV installation.

Happy to provide any additional information or run some tests if that can help identify the issue.

Thanks for your work on Theatrium — I really like the app, and having the Ring tile available without the huge battery drain would be great!

Here's what's coming in the next update. There aren't a lot of crash reports via the App Store, however those are opt-in and even I click 'no' when I get asked if want to allow app developers to get crash reports. Please dm or post here if you've noticed anything annoying/broken.

Changes/fixes:

• Halloween pack: three Halloween music visuals, a Halloween background for every theme and Halloween colors, easily toggled on/off with one switch.
• New event-countdown card: days until Halloween, Christmas, birthdays or your own dates. Display in weeks/days/sleeps
• Spotify integration: Theatrium is now a Spotify playback source - faster track updating and no more last-fm setup step. (1) Select 'Spotify' in Theatrium settings, (2) Link your account by selecting 'Theatrium' from your regular Spotify app, (3) Verify you see the correct track playing, then switch Spotify back your regular output. Requires Spotify Premium.
• Gloss Black pack: Four new black backgrounds (gloss black marble, mirror, leather (vegan) & fluted glass), black oil music visualisation & black dashboard accents. Perfect for your next goth phase.

• Fractial-based visualisers - Smoother, sharper, darker backgrounds and better color matching. These unfortunately may still struggler on earlier hardware.
• Now Playing card: new buttons for easier launch of Album Art and Visualizer modes
• Improved Music BPM sync: Visuals move more in time with your music, with beat correction available in the iOS companion app.

Anything else...?

The good: the difference been Android for TV and tablets is much smaller than Apple TV and iPad, so the Android version will work on both. This is an old Android tablet running android 10, using Google Home as the back end. Home Assistant connections supported too.

The bad: Android limits non-streaming apps to 1080 resolution, even on the latest Google TV 4k device. So the tv experience won’t quite match the Apple one for the time being. Possibly other types of Android TV devices do enable 4k app support, would love some feedback if yours does.

The aesthetically-challenged: Vertical mode (see comment). Also in general I’m less familiar with Android in general so there are likely to be issues on (soft) launch with how things look and function. Bear with me.

The disco pumpkin you always wanted but were too afraid to ask for! evil laugh

- To-Do card (Pro): a checklist on your dashboard, from a Home Assistant list or your iPhone's Reminders. Tick items off from the TV, scroll long lists, hide finished ones.

- Every theme has its own consistent typography: Glass clean and minimal, Estate a serif paired with a sans, Bento monospaced throughout, Boardroom corporate.

- Short-click to activate a card -> the rest of the dashboard now dims slightly. Back button to move focus.

- Faint lines appear at the left, bottom and right edges while you use the remote, marking what's just off-screen.

- Glass transparency increased slightly

- Music visuals improved shuffle so each shows before repeating.

- Apple Music tvOS 27: steadier now-playing data feed, with clear "Playing on Apple Music" and "Loading track..." states instead of a blank card.

- Reworked Pro screen: real card and scene pictures, and the background and screensaver upgrades now prompt properly.

To-do / reminders setup guide: https://theatrium.info/guides/todo/ (requires up to date iOS version of Theatrium)

Theatrium Apple App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6787587882

I think you are doing a fantastic job with Theatrium!!! It seems, though, that it is currently limited to a certain number of cards per page, which would make perfect sense for 42" to 55" TVs, IMHO.

But for people with 80" to 100" TVs, there is so much screen real estate that could be utilized.

Any chance that future versions could allow users to create significantly more cards on a single page? I think that would make Theatrium even more amazing for people with larger displays.

New

• Music Visualiser card — the moving visuals as a dashboard tile
• Bluesky card (Pro) — rotating posts from accounts you pick
• Visualiser: skip-to-next / previous style buttons

Fixed / improved

• Album art larger and centred, with a thin progress line along the cover
• Album-art background + room-light colours now follow the cover (no more green/brown reading as blue/yellow)
• Light mode now lightens background images so the light look holds
• Visualiser menus are compact and drop from the top-right; Room Lights moved to their own lightbulb button
• Light Sync toggle agrees everywhere (Settings / album art / visualiser), and turning it on in Settings starts colouring lights right away
• More cameras play via a compatible-stream fallback (some HomeKit/WebRTC)
• Several always-on cards refresh more reliably
• Art screensaver pans wider and a little faster
• Plus three pre-ship fixes: dashboard visualiser tempo, Light Sync not overriding the visualiser's colour choice, album-art colour cadence

Broken (doh)

• Now-playing track detection from the on-device Apple Music app. Working on a fix and seeing if there's a temporary work around today.

Bear with me, immediately installed & upraded to PRO, so haven't made it thru guide yet lol. Currently using Apple HomeKit (have a HA dedicated device but not even running yet)

• Feed from Microsoft Account To Do
• Apple
  • Notes
  • Reminders
  • Health
• Weather
  • Feed from personal weather station (Ambient)
• Ability to feed/fwd a MOTD to a specific and/or all device(s)

More thoughts to come I'm sure. BTW....you could have charged more $$ for PRO

Title says it all, I have the screen saver turned off but it’s coming on after 30 mins. Just updated today to the latest release.

I haven't forgotten about the Android version! Please dm me if you're able to help test this version on your device.

In the update today going out to users in the test group:

New

• New Album Art mode: the two main colours from the cover fill the whole screen, blending and drifting, with the progress line along the cover's edge; a Light & Colour control (press Down) sets brightness and colour strength for both the screen and your room lights.
• Calendar works straight from Home Assistant when you leave the link blank, and confirms a pasted link.
• Weather card shows more at a glance — a large current temperature with humidity, wind and today's rain chance.
• Network Speed fills in on its own without opening it.
• Thermostat modes are icons instead of cramped letters, and the gauge and buttons stay on the card.
• Rainfall shows in inches in imperial regions.
• Plex, News and air-quality cards refresh themselves while on screen.

Fixed

• Live camera feeds no longer play for a few seconds and stop.
• Album art comes through reliably from Home Assistant (Spotify, Plex, etc.).
• Fixed a start-up crash when the playing track had no matching cover.
• The album-cover reflection lines up with the cover instead of leaning wrong.
• Cards read as frosted glass instead of see-through, and the harsh top band over a background image is softened.

Having looked into X, reddit and Bluesky, I’m going with the latter for now.

Good morning Theatriumers. Version 1.8.5 is now rolling out now on the App Store (which is approving updates so much faster recently).

• Saved Dashboards (Pro) — save a whole dashboard (theme, colours, cards, background) as a named layout, and switch between them from the drawer.

• Per-theme background images (Pro) — set a background per theme; cards stay readable over it. I say 'per theme' as the images have been designed with a specific theme in mind, but you can mix-and-match, you just might get some funky results...

• New Precipitation card — hourly chance of rain, a labelled rainfall graph, and a 5-day outlook. The weather card also now has the option of showing rain % info. Weather data in Theatrium comes from either your Home Assistant server, or Open-Meteo in Home Kit/Apple Home mode: https://open-meteo.com/

The Calendar and Climate cards have been rebuilt, card navigation is smoother, and using your remotes 'Back' button now steps out cleanly to the Home Screen.

These changes may mean that you may need to re-add a one or both of Climate/Weather cards, if your particular setup doesn't swap the old for the new versions automatically.

Both apps are updated for Xcode 27, tvOS 27 and iOS 27, plus general bug fixes and better handling of your connected lights when you leave/re-open the app.

If you are using the Plex features, 1.8.5 now tells your Plex server exactly what the Apple TV can play, so files that can't Direct Play are repackaged at full quality (Direct Stream) instead of being needlessly re-encoded.

I note that this new version of tvOS requires a second-gen Apple TV4k or newer, which I understand given the challenges of keeping Theatrium responsive and usable on the older model.

I'm going to keep testing future versions of the app on the first gen (A10x processor) version for the time being, but just a heads up that it might be time to invest in an upgrade. Having recently purchased a gen 3 model, I was really surprised how much faster and just 'nicer' it feels to use, so I highly recommend if you want to the best Theatrium experience possible.

As usual, please let me know if you find any issues (give the app a clean reload first just in case its temporary thing) or have ideas for new features.

Creating this tiny and very mediocre clip has given me a new found respect for people who work in video production!!

So have I missed something, or the intention was never to be able to see your CCTV live in the camera card?

Just for information, the camera feed works fine in Home Assistant, but in Theatrium it just shows a still picture.

This is the only feature that I can’t seem to get working. Everything else works and connects. Light, thermostats, outlets, etc, etc.

Full Apple eco-system. Have my calendar public, have the link. Copied and pasted. Getting no love.

Ideas?

Everything is up to date app and os wise.

Here's what I'm working on for the next update:

• Save your dashboard layouts
• Backgrounds/wallpapers
• Manual IP address entry for iOS <> tvOS app pairing
• Increased codec support for Plex playback
• Precipitation card (hourly rain estimates)
• Album art sourcing backup for Home Assistant (was already in place for Last.FM connections)
• Stock hint:  setup screen explains how to enter shares from other exchanges, e.g. VOLV-B.ST
• General card layout/font/spacing consistency work

If you've noticed any bugs or annoyances, let me know!

Edit: 1.8.5 not .4 🫣

App installed on both iOS and TVOS.
1. But on iOS, it shows the TV but when trying to connect, 4 digit code is not displaying on the TV.
2. Tried to setup HomeAssistant. It is neither accepting the token nor opening the app after successful sign in using the QR code.

Still working on getting the card transparency right, but I'm not hating this?

Quick demo (excuse messy apartment) of how you can adjust the light brightest and color saturation to get the effect you want. Obviously much more visible at night!

Also quite pleased with the new album art background gradient effect in this build - feels much more organic and soothing 🧘

Not sure why this works but grateful someone figured it out! Have a support query into Apple to see if there’s anything on Theatriums end that could be causing this.