Infuse Redesign

Hey all!

I felt a little inspired after seeing xazac’s post on a version of Infuse that more closely aligns with tvOS’s design guidelines, so I though I’d throw my hat in the ring with a redesign of my own. I’m happy to field any questions as I go through this progress, but here are some current highlights:

  • The favorites section has been moved to a Tab Bar. It defaults to Watch Now, Movies, TV Shows, Playlists, Search, and Settings, although these would be customizable.
  • Movies and TV Shows have been given their own sections; each now has their respective filters persistently in the side bar. (That way you don’t have to go back and forth between menus).
  • The new play screen ups the visuals and adds some additional, scrollable info, similar to the stock Apple TV app.

Again, this is all a first draft so I’ll be working on it in my free time. Feedback/criticism is always welcome!

37 Likes

Wow, this is impressive! I’d love to see an updated design similar to this. It’s a small detail, but the little badges for 4K, HDR, and TrueHD look much better than the way Infuse handles these tags currently. I would prefer to hide the filters on the left side for a full view of all my movie/tv show posters, but I’m sure this could be toggled on or off in the settings. Overall, looks really good!

To be honest, this is the Infuse I would like to see on tvOS. I hope James and his great team will bring Infuse more closer to this.

Impressive, awesome, wonderful, it would be great if Infuse was like that, without a doubt it would be the best player on Apple TV and surely Firecore managed to sell a lot more.

Love this! +1

+1
I love the current Infuse Client, but I can most certainly get behind this as I love the new TVOS design.

Just wanted to drop some updated visuals! It’s mostly just a handful of tweaks but I’m also working on implementing Reaos’s request of a library sidebar toggle. Additionally, I’ve added three home screen modes: Standard (similar to what Infuse uses now), Theater (which mimics the Apple TV home screen), and Details (which borrows inspiration from both Standard and Theater mode.) Feedback/criticism is welcomed!

3 Likes

Totally love this!

Great job! Love it.

+1

+1

It’s time for infuse, the best tvOS player, to be also the best looking one.

Time passes and now Infuse looks dated, definitely not in line with the tvOS 13 look and feel.

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+1
Looks amazing

Wow! This is exactly what I hope this moves towards! After upstanding from Kodi on an RPi, I miss having having fan art backgrounds. Also I had a quick look at Plex and love how they play the theme music in the menu; that would also be a cool addition.

I think the current look for Infuse 6 looks better. I like the combination of colors and the icons.
In case of a change, I hope it would be with adding elements from the new Apple TV app on how you present content. Not changing color, style or icons.

This is a fair point. My redesign certainly sacrifices Infuse’s current bold color scheme, but I’d argue it does so to provide a more simplified, more organized library structure. (It also conforms a little more to tvOS’s new design guidelines.) Right now, if you want to filter your movies by genre, you can’t actually do that in the Movies bookmark: you have to go to Library > Movies > Genre, which seems like more taps than it needs to be. In my version, everything about movies is in Movies—no splitting the difference.

Also, hello! I haven’t abandoned this project in the slightest. The big thing I’ve been working on in this redesign (which I’m calling Infuse 7) is adding a much-requested feature: movie trailers.

I don’t have a Plex Pass so I don’t know how trailers work in the app, but from what I can tell, they are enabled globally—this is probably fine for many, but for myself, that seems a bit tedious. (If I’m wrong, let me know!) I don’t need to see movie trailers EVERY TIME I watch a movie; the only time I want them is if I’m having a movie night. So, instead of having a system-wide trailers feature, why not a specific mode? Hence, Movie Night!

Movie Night is a mode in Infuse 7 that, when activated, does three things:

  1. First, prior to watching a movie, it plays trailers! How many and what kind can be configured via Settings.
  2. Second, if you initiate Movie Night through a playlist, it will automatically add intermissions between movies—extra time to use the bathroom, get snacks, whatever. I’ll be using a fullscreen splash image and optional trivia (pulled from IMDB). Intermission length can be adjusted, or turned off entirely, via Settings.
  3. Finally, with the upcoming HomeKit support, it will automatically dim and un-dim your lights for you.

This is still entirely a WIP, but it’s going to be the major feature I’ll work on in my social distancing time. I’m mostly writing this to keep you all updated and hold me to actually doing it.

I’m sure there will be a lot of hiccups with adding trailers, and I’m always happy to take suggestions/feedback, so please, keep it coming! Right now I’m just focused on getting Movie Night working in the playlist section, and my current draft is attached below. As always, let me know what you think!

P.S. The icons are just placeholders for now—I don’t have access to Firecore’s icon library (???), so I’m just using what I can. The second draft will be a little more polished!

1 Like

Just to clarify a bit the suggestions area is used to post s specific request or specific suggestion or improvement not develop an entire redesign. Each individual item needs to be in a thread by itself so others who like that specific idea can up vote the original post and show support for that feature or improvement.

When you add multiple ideas in a single thread users can not vote for a single item out of the bunch and not vote for others they may not agree with.

If you want to brainstorm an entire overhaul of infuse then you probably should start a thread in the lounge area.

Again, one suggestion per post will allow that idea to stand on it’s own merit and not based on grouping with others.

Oh shoot, I didn’t realize there were restrictions for suggestions! I’ll make a new thread in the lounge area. Considering how much is changing, making separate posts for each individual change seems counterintuitive, especially since they’re all connected.

It’s not “restricted” but the way the suggestions forum seems to works is that it gives users a place to bring up a specific suggestion or feature that others can up vote in the first post if they agree with the feature or suggestion. This also gives a single place for Firecore to view user response for each feature or suggestion instead if culling through a single thread looking for a specific feature that may be being considered to gauge interest.

It’s kind of like a buffet for features, people prefer the ability to choose each item they like instead of choosing the “blue plate” special and taking the Brussels sprouts flavored ice cream with the steak. :wink: It also makes it easier for the chef to see what items on the buffet are more popular.

That’s a really disappointing response from someone who putatively represents Infuse – criticizing this guy for violating some forums technicality when he’s just redesigned your entire app to be more modern and functional. The Infuse UI is really dated and navigates poorly, users bring this up constantly but the updates we keep paying for end up being minor tweaks or unnecessary features.

There are numerous existing threads from users clamoring for specific UI improvements: adding the ability to navigate by actor / director, RT/IMDB ratings, etc., but those haven’t really elicited a response or attention from the devs.

3 Likes

Totally agree, this seems rather petty. No comment on the actual design. The infuse design is dated and indeed navigates poorly. This redesign incorporates many of the updated features that tvOS delivers as well as plex’s superior navigation. Some comment on any of these potential features would be great, instead of unnecessarily picking up on forum rules…

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Love your proposed redesign.

I go back and forth between the Plex beta app, and Infuse. Plex makes it easier to switch between content filters, less clicks, less back arrows. So I use it for less critical viewing, TV shows mostly. For Movies I prefer Infuse, because of it’s ability to direct play nearly anything, 7.1 audio, and video quality.

But the gap between the two in quality is rapidly shrinking, IMO. And I end up just using Plex most of the time, until my home theater brain kicks in and pushes me back to Infuse for movies. :slight_smile:

The infuse favorites/icon method of organizing content is functionally and aesthetically very limiting. Plus the bright colors are pretty old school and jarring, IMO. The day glow, florescent highlighter colors are anything but “elegant.”

Another area I would like to see change, is the chapter section of movies. Right now it’s a boring drop down of text titles, vs the thumbnails that Plex can display. I can’t remember the name of chapters, but I can probably remember which chapter I want to see based on a picture. Could you add how a chapter thumbnail screen might look to your design?

Hopefully this thread will get some traction and Infuse will look beyond under the hood tweaks for version 7, and do a full UI redesign.

4 Likes