A list with tens of thousands of entries means every group you don't care about is still sitting between you and the ones you do, adding scroll time every single session. Past a certain size, roughly 18,000 visible channels, the app itself starts holding more in memory than it comfortably manages, which shows up as sluggish scrolling or occasional stalls that have nothing to do with your internet connection. The count of channels available and the count you actually need visible day to day are two completely different numbers, and treating them as the same one is what makes the list feel overwhelming.

Hiding a channel group removes it from view without touching the underlying playlist at all; the channels are still there in your account, just not cluttering the list you scroll through. This is reversible any time, so hiding groups you rarely watch, regional feeds in languages you don't speak, or categories that duplicate content you get elsewhere, costs nothing to try. It's the single most direct fix for a list that feels too big, and it's a specific, confirmed feature people cite when explaining why the upgraded version of TiviMate is worth it.

Favorites let you star the channels you actually watch regularly so they surface as their own short list instead of being buried inside a category with hundreds of others. Running more than one playlist at once, each with its own guide, means you can keep a second provider or a specialty line separate rather than merging everything into one confusing pile. Both features solve organization, not access; they change how much of your existing list you have to look at, not what's included in it. Used together, favorites and separate playlists mean you rarely have to open the full channel grid on a normal night.

If you genuinely need channels a single playlist doesn't include, like a niche regional package, adding a second line and keeping it as its own playlist in TiviMate is the reasonable move, since multi-playlist support exists for exactly that case. But if the real problem is that an existing list feels cluttered rather than incomplete, hiding groups and setting favorites solves it without paying for anything extra. Sort out which problem you actually have before assuming the fix is a bigger or different subscription. A quick way to tell the difference: if you can name specific channels you're missing, that's a coverage gap; if you just feel overwhelmed scrolling, that's an organization problem.