GUI & Tray
TisVlay has two desktop frontends: a settings window for setup and configuration, and a tray icon for quick day-to-day control. Both talk to the same background service, so a change in one shows up live in the other (and in the command line).
The TisVlay window
Launch TisVlay from your application menu. Launching it again focuses the existing window. The window follows your desktop’s light or dark theme and accent color.
The sidebar has four pages (TVs, Profiles, Settings, About) and, at the bottom:
- Reload, which re-reads the configuration files from disk. You only need it if you edit them by hand; see Hand-editing and reloading. If a file can’t be applied, a banner above the page names the file and the problem until you dismiss it or a later Reload succeeds.
- Three status dots for the Daemon, Session, and Tray services. A filled dot means the service is running: green if it works with this window, amber if it’s on a slightly different patch release (still compatible), red if it can’t be used. A hollow dot means it isn’t running.
Two banners can appear above any page:
- Enable TV control: your account can’t reach the service yet. Click the button, then log out and back in; see Access.
- Version mismatch: a service is on a different release than the window, usually right after an upgrade. See Troubleshooting.
Tips. An ⓘ button reveals a longer explanation of the option beside it (click it, or press OK on it), and icon-only buttons show a short tip when you hover, or when the focus ring rests on them. Alt+← and Alt+→ (or your mouse’s back and forward buttons) step through the pages you’ve visited, like a browser. They’re inactive while the pairing wizard or a TV edit form is open. The whole window also works without a mouse: see From a remote or gamepad.
TVs
The list on the left shows each TV with a green dot when it’s connected, and whether it’s Managed, Automated (managed, and currently being acted on), or Unmanaged. The header counts how many are connected, and the + button opens the wizard to add a TV. Select a TV to see its details:
| Group | What it has |
|---|---|
| STATUS | Power on / Power off, with the current state (including transitional states like Warming up…), and the Managed switch. |
| PROFILES | The System and User profile this TV uses, with a pencil that jumps to that profile in the editor. See Automation. |
| PICTURE | Backlight and Screen (on/off). Turning the screen off blanks the panel while the TV stays powered. |
| AUDIO | Volume and Mute. |
| INPUT | The Current input (changing it switches the live input) and the Primary input, which is the one your PC is on. Automation uses the primary input to avoid interrupting you when the TV is showing something else. |
| CONFIG | The TV’s name and connection details (for an LG TV, its IP and MAC). Click the pencil to edit, then Save or Cancel. Clearing an optional field puts it back to its default. |
| INFO | Read-only details: TV ID, Make, Model, Serial, Connector, and anything else the TV reports. Each value has a copy button. |
| DANGER ZONE | Re-pair to refresh the TV’s credentials, and Remove TV. See Adding a TV. |
Groups and controls the TV can’t use are hidden: an HDMI-CEC TV has no backlight, volume, mute, or input controls, for example. If a TV is off the network and TisVlay has no MAC address for it, Power on is disabled and says why; see The Wake-on-LAN MAC.
When the TV list is empty, it says why: Daemon offline, TVs hidden: version mismatch, Loading (the service just started or came back, and its TVs are still arriving), or No TVs configured.
Profiles
Create, rename, duplicate, and delete profiles, and edit what each event does, in one place. See Automation.
Settings
The Settings page controls the tray’s desktop notifications and has a Send test notification button to check that your desktop’s notification system works. If the tray service isn’t running, the switches are dimmed and a banner says so. Its COUCH MODE group sets how the window behaves on a TV across the room; see From a remote or gamepad.
About
The version, the status and version of each component (daemon, session, tray, GUI, and CLI), and links to the release notes, third-party notices, and the issue tracker. Diagnostics copies a report to your clipboard; paste it into bug reports. Each component with a configuration file has a Config button that opens it in your file manager.
From a remote or gamepad
The window can be driven without a mouse: from a keyboard, or from a TV remote or gamepad under a TV shell that turns their buttons into keys. Plasma Bigscreen does, and so does a TV that forwards its own remote’s keys to the desktop (The remote’s keys). An accent-colored ring marks the control the keys act on. It appears with the first key press and hides again when you use the mouse.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| ↑ ↓ | Move along the sidebar, down a list, or between the rows of a page. The sidebar switches pages as you move, and a list shows the TV or profile under the ring. |
| ← → | Move along a row, from its control to the buttons beside it, and between the sidebar, the list and the page. On a slider they change the value. |
| OK / Enter | Activate: enter a page from the sidebar, open the TV or profile under the ring, press a button, flip a switch, open a choice, start typing in a field. |
| Back / Esc | One level out: close a help bubble, stop editing, leave the page for its list and the list for the sidebar. In the pairing wizard it’s Back, or Cancel; while editing a TV’s config it’s Cancel, asking first if you changed something. On the sidebar it returns from a jump you made with a pencil or a Used by link. |
| Menu | Help for the row under the ring, the same as its ⓘ. |
| Tab / Shift+Tab | The next or previous control; in couch mode, the next or previous page. |
Under Plasma Bigscreen, a gamepad’s D-pad, Cross and Circle are the arrows, OK and Back, Square is Menu, and the shoulder buttons are Tab and Shift+Tab; a TV remote’s arrows, OK and Back are the arrows, OK and Back. On any desktop, a TV that forwards its remote’s keys (Remote keys reach the desktop, see TV Controls the PC) gives the same arrows, OK and Back, and its Info key is Menu. Help is also on each row’s ⓘ, at the end of the row.
Couch mode. On a TV across the room the window opens maximized and scaled up, and the keys are arranged for a remote: a text field, slider or number waits for OK before it takes the arrows, so moving between rows never changes a value by accident (OK or Back finishes), Tab and Shift+Tab step between the pages, and Back on the sidebar closes the window. It turns on by itself under Plasma Bigscreen, the TV shell it recognizes. To use it on an ordinary desktop driving a TV, or to keep it off, set Settings → COUCH MODE → Couch mode to On or Off (Follow the session is the default), and adjust Scale, a percentage on top of your display’s own scale: larger for a farther couch or a smaller screen. Changes apply at once and are kept for the next launch.
Tray applet (tisvlay-tray)
The tray applet starts with your graphical session. Click its icon for a menu with one submenu per TV, and a Settings entry that opens the window. The icon is in color while the service is running and at least one TV is connected, and a flat monochrome glyph otherwise. Each TV’s own menu entry also has an icon showing whether it’s connected and automated, connected but not automated, or disconnected.
GNOME users: vanilla GNOME (Fedora and others) ships no system-tray host, so the icon won’t appear until you install the AppIndicator extension (
gnome-shell-extension-appindicator; the.deband.rpmsuggest it, and Ubuntu bundles its own). Without it the tray still runs: notifications work and the window is unaffected. Only the icon and menu are missing. KDE Plasma needs nothing.
A TV that is on and reachable offers:
- Power Off
- Profiles, with User and System submenus to pick each profile
- Unmanage (or Manage)
- Input, if the TV reports its inputs
- Backlight, showing the current value, with Backlight Up (+10) and Backlight Down (-10)
- Screen Off (or Screen On)
- Volume, showing the current value, with Volume Up (+10), Volume Down (-10), and Mute (or Unmute)
Controls a TV doesn’t support are left out. A TV that is off or unreachable, including an HDMI-CEC TV in standby, offers only Power On (Wake), Profiles, and Manage/Unmanage. If the service isn’t running the menu says Daemon unavailable, with no TVs added it says No TVs configured, and right after an upgrade it may say Version mismatch and name both releases: see Troubleshooting.
Hover over the icon for a summary of each TV.
Scroll over the icon to change volume or backlight; each notch moves it by 1, where the menu’s Up and Down move it by 10. The wheel adjusts whichever control you last used from the menu. Before you’ve used either, it adjusts backlight if any powered-on TV offers it, and volume otherwise. It acts on the TV you last used from the menu, or else the first powered-on TV that supports that control. A ► in the tooltip marks the current target. Middle-click cycles through the powered-on TVs that support it. If no TV can be adjusted, scrolling does nothing.
While a stream has any TV armed, the menu shows a read-only Stream active line, so you can tell at a glance that TV wakes are being suppressed. See Streaming.
Notifications
The tray shows desktop notifications for changes that happen while it’s running (not for the state it finds when it starts). Each category can be switched on or off under Settings → NOTIFY ME ABOUT, and all are on by default:
| Setting | Notifies you when |
|---|---|
| TV connection | a TV connects or disconnects |
| Pairing outcome | pairing or re-pairing completes or fails |
| Wake outcome | a wake from standby starts, succeeds, or fails |
| Daemon offline | the TisVlay service goes offline or comes back, or was upgraded to a release the tray can’t talk to until you log in again |
Starting the app from a terminal
The window is the tisvlay-gui command, and the tray applet runs as the tisvlay-tray user service:
tisvlay-gui
systemctl --user status tisvlay-tray
With the window closed, TISVLAY_COUCH_MODE=on tisvlay-gui (or off) opens it in or out of couch mode for this launch, whatever the setting says. While a window is open, a second launch only brings it to the front.