So this will be a bit of a ramble regarding the current state of Infuse and some suggestions that I believe could lead to be a better experience. I’ve noted some of these things before but I figured that I should go ahead and put them all in a post. Note: I’ll be referencing the Apple TV app a lot because I feel that Infuse already pulls a lot of good UI features from there, and it could honestly pull a lot more from it.
Firstly, I believe that Infuse has fallen behind in regards to algorithmically-created “smart” features such as smart suggestions to suggest movies and shows to the user based on their previously watched media. This could be used throughout the app of course, but will likely feel right at home in its own “Watch Now” tab similar to the TV app. Heck, I wouldn’t mind a straight copy of the TV apps version of this. Basically a smart tab with different rows of suggestions, collections, movie showcases, and general quick-access buttons.
Moving along the bottom tabs of the app, I’d suggest only a small change to the search tab. Currently, it’s rather bland so I believe a simple fix would be to move the beatiful icons when you tap on “By Genre,” “By Rating,” etc. to the main search screen for quick access and possibly place them intelligently and dynamically. The "All Movies and “All TV Shows” buttons on this page can likely be moved to the previous “Watch Now” page at the very top similar to the TV app.
Moving along, the “Files” tab can honestly be removed as it can already be accessed through the settings. Those of us with media servers such as Jellyfin have little to no use for this after initial setup and it just seems out of place, especially if you have other users on your server. I suggest replacing this with a “Library” tab where you can simply browse through your entire library in similar fashion to the main tab we have today.
All of this including all the smaller features that I’ve seen users clamor for since Infuse 7 came out would be great. Better handling of data surrounding actors (pictures, and being able to tap on them to view other movies), possibly a slight redesign of the video player, I see no reason why a big popup needs to come up and stop your media when you decide to turn on/off subtitles, for example. Maybe relegate the player gestures to the edges of the screen with a visible bar similar to Netflix’s brightness control. When tapping on a show under “All TV Shows” there should be a description page with a prominent poster similar to movies and a drop-down to simply choose the season you want to watch similar to basically any streaming service instead of having to tap a show > tap a season like it currently is. Better description data for movies and shows for easier discovery of content for users on your server, if applicable. An easy “play next/continue watching” button like I’ve seen suggested before. Support for Live TV would be huge as well, can likely implement TV Everywhere support so users with cable or a supported TV service can watch media in one place (honestly just copy the Channels app, I’d happily pay monthly on top of my lifetime sub for DVR functionality).
Lastly, not sure if it’s just me, but tapping on a show under “recently added” on the main page takes you to a page with some random episodes from that show with no rhyme or reason as to what episodes show up (I’ve added the most recent episode of a currently airing show only for the recently added page for that show to show only episodes 2 and 6, neither of such was the most recent).
In short, just copy the TV app and hire that guy that made the Infuse 7 concept a few months back, it would be greatly appreciated.