Using the Launcher

Using the new Television Simulator Launcher is the easiest way to install, update and manage TVS on Windows and Linux. It runs in the system tray and includes an integrated web server that serves TVS without the need for anything else. In addition, the launcher will manage your configurations and keep your user data separate when updating to a new release.

Installation

TVS Launcher is available currently for Windows, Linux and macOS. Download the latest version for your platform from the GitHub releases page.

Download Launcher for Windows

Download Launcher for macOS

Download Launcher for Raspberry Pi

Download Launcher for other Linux distributions on GitHub

Windows

1. Put tvs-launcher.exe in a folder where you want to run the launcher from.

2. When you run it for the first time, it will create the necessary folders and be ready to use.

Linux

1. Install the package appropriate for your distribution. For example, installing on Raspberry Pi OS would use the .deb package for arm64.

2. Once installed, you can run it from your application menu (under Audio / Video) or by running tvs-launcher from the terminal.

macOS

1. Open the downloaded DMG file and drag the Television Simulator Launcher app to your Applications folder.

2. Run the app from your Applications folder. The Television Simulator Launcher icon will appear in your menu bar.

Usage

First run

1. Click the tray icon to open the launcher. When you first run it, no releases will be installed yet.

2. Click the Update button at the top to download and install the latest version of TVS.

   

   Once updated, the server will start automatically, by default at http://localhost:3990

   You can change the server port and host in the settings.json file located in the root folder.

Configuration Management

All of your user data and configurations are stored in the configurations folder. When updating to a new version, your existing data will be preserved. New configurations and installations will start with the latest demo config file.

Choose “Open current configuration folder” to open the folder where your current configuration is stored and edit your config.tvs.yml file, and the changes should be reflected when you refresh TVS in your browser.

Supporter Features

Supporters of Television Simulator (GitHub Sponsors, Ko-Fi, Discord, etc.) can access prerelease versions of TVS to help test new features and provide feedback before public release. To enable this, make sure you’ve created a supporter account (join the Discord and message me if you need help getting an account), then log in via your Gitea account username and password.

Using the CLI

The launcher also includes a command-line interface (CLI) that you can use to control it from a terminal or script. This is also useful for running the launcher on Linux servers without a graphical interface.

Run tvs-launcher --help to see the available commands:

Note

On Windows, you will need to run tvs-launcher-cli.exe to use the CLI.