Twitch app removed from Samsung TVs, here’re some alternatives you can try

Winning medals wasn’t the point of the Olympics. It’s the participating that counts.

This famous quotation from Pierre de Coubertin (father of modern Olympic games) has a number of derivatives.

With the advent of broadcasting and live streaming, people prefer to stick with the following variant: participating in the games isn’t the point, rather watching the game and cheering the players are!

I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but that’s the actual situation. Even in the world of electronic sports, gamers do not limit themselves to hooking their consoles with a big screen and passing some hours – rather they prefer to stream the gameplay to a wider audience via internet.

Among various streaming platforms, the Amazon owned Twitch (stylized as Twitch.tv) is one of the most popular one. Users can watch streams from players across the world, can stream their own gameplay sessions, chat with other players and visitors and a whole lot of other things.

Availability on different platforms is a prime reason behind the success of Twitch. The official Twitch.tv app is available on Playstation 4, Xbox One (even 360 as well), Android, iOS, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV as well as handheld consoles like the NVIDIA Shield.

In case of smart TVs, the situation is a little bit complicated. Majority of TV makers are switching to Android TV, but major players like LG is still backing up webOS in their TVs. On the other hand, Samsung continues to use Tizen as the operating system for their smart TVs.

Samsung TVs used to have a Twitch app in their app source. Well, ‘used to’, as that particular app is no longer available for usage – as reported by Samsung smart TV owners.

Seems like Twitch took away their app from Samsung servers this morning/Night? All tv’s at home and also at work it auto uninstalled itself, you can find it in app Store but not install via server.

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I have a Samsung Smart TV and I’ve always watched Twitch through the app on there and now the app has been “terminated” and I’m no longer able to click on it… is this happening to other people?

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As a matter of fact, the app for Samsung TVs running Tizen was not officially made by Twitch. Rather it was created by an indie developer named Andrey Kulik aka Gesha87. Some users have noticed it as well, bu looking at the support email address ([email protected]).

Just noticed it to. Says it has been terminated.

I’m also guessing it wasn’t an official twitch app. If you ever hit the support button a Russian email address was the support email. Also see https://www.twitch.tv/p/platforms/ it isn’t mentioned

So maybe twitch had it removed and are planning there own app?

It would be good since chat stopped working months ago on the old one. And you couldn’t log in to skip ads on subbed channels and so on.

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According to Samsung officials, they had to remove the unofficial app as per Twitch’s request.

After speaking with our specialists, the Twitch apps have indeed been removed from our TVs per Twitch’s request. For more information, you are welcome to reach out to Twitch directly: https://help.twitch.tv/s/contactsupport?language=en_US

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There is a possibility that Twitch is planning to introduce an official version of Twitch.tv for Samsung Tizen powered TVs. The official Twitch app for Android TV has recently got a huge overhaul after being abandoned for almost 2 years.

If you are like me and use twitch on xbox and androidtv/nvidia shield you would of noticed something odd in the last couple of month. While other versions of twitch got new features and new interface, the androidtv version was left behind.

Well this morning I was going to turn on twitch and it messed up bad and not loading. After clearing data and cache, twitch loaded up with the newer interface. Also after logging in again I noticed they fixed alot of the most annoying bugs and problems from the old version.

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Samsung support has also hinted that the developer (i.e. Andrey Kulik) may take the app down. Amidst the uncertainty, people have started petitions to develop an official Twitch app for Samsung TVs.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Frustrated Samsung users have quickly spotted an open source Twitch client for Tizen, which can be compiled and sideloaded into Samsung smart TVs. Developed and maintained by Felipe Leon aka fgl27, the project is called smarttv-twitch.

Interested users need to create a (free) Samsung developer account, download Tizen Studio, grab the source code, compile and sideload it to the TV. Don’t worry, as the developer has shared an elaborate guide with plenty of pictures.

After the initial hiccups, the experience is reportedly better than the previous app.

Thank you for this, works perfectly on my Samsung ue40ku6072 , its even better than the “official” one they killed off. Now im glad they did, because i would have never found out about this superior one otherwise 🙂

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This one works for me. I think it’s even better then the one we had. Chat works and you can have it as an overlay and resize it.

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While it is possible to plug in a Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV dongle with the TV and use the Twitch app from there, a native solution is always preferable.

How often you use the Twitch app on your TV?

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