Profile Templates: Make Your TV Profile Look Like You
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A TV profile says a lot about a person. The trouble is building one. Choosing a banner, matching colours to it, picking a layout and deciding what goes first takes a while, and most people stop at the default.
Profile templates do it in one tap. Pick one and your profile takes its banner, its colours, its layout and its blocks. Your photo, your name and your shows stay yours.
Profile templates are part of OpenTV Plus. You can look through all of them without Plus.
Where to find them
Open the Profile tab and tap Edit. In Edit profile, under Your profile's look, there is a row called Profile templates: "12 ready-made profiles: banner, colours, layout and blocks."
Tap it. The screen opens with a short promise: "Pick one and your profile takes its banner, colours, layout and blocks. Your photo, name and shows stay yours, and you can change any part afterwards."
Built around how you watch
Each template is more than a colour scheme. It is built around a kind of viewer, and it decides what your profile leads with. Every template shows its persona's name and one line about what comes first. A few of them:
- The Binger: "Leads with what you're watching now and your longest binge."
- The Film Buff: "Leads with your favourite films and your highest rated."
- The Critic: "Leads with your highest rated and how it felt."
- The Curator: "Leads with your lists and favourites. No numbers up top."
- The Feeler: "Leads with how your shows made you feel."
- The Newcomer: "Leads with what you're watching now. Nothing that needs years of history."
There are others, including The Explorer, The Nostalgic, The Completionist and The Devotee. The ready-made looks have names like Midnight, Sunset, Neon, Forest, Ocean, Cinema, Noir, Gold, Pastel and Retro.
Four kinds of template
The screen is split into sections.
From your shows & films. OpenTV makes templates out of your own library: the artwork of a title you love, and the colours taken from it. While it works on them, you see "Making templates from your shows…". They are made once, and made again only when the set of titles changes.
Seasonal. Templates for the time of year, such as Halloween (The Spooky One) and Christmas (The Festive One). These also put the season's look on your picture.
Made templates. The ready-made ones, with OpenTV's own banner art.
From OpenTV. New templates added from time to time. They arrive on their own, with no app update needed.
Three layouts
Templates also set how your numbers are drawn. Each one uses one of three layouts:
- Classic layout
- Cards layout
- Poster layout
On an iPad, templates use the extra width and spread across more columns.
Applying one
Tap a template. OpenTV asks Use followed by the template's name, repeats what that persona leads with, and says what will change: "It replaces your banner, theme colours, layout and blocks. You can change any of them afterwards."
Tap Use it. That is the whole process.
Without Plus, tapping a template opens the Plus screen instead.
Making it yours afterwards
A template is a starting point, not a cage. Everything it set can be changed in Edit profile:
- Choose cover photo and Adjust banner to change or move the banner
- Theme colours to pick your own colours instead of the template's
- Arrange blocks to "Move, resize or swap the blocks on your profile"
- Avatar decoration for the ring and decorations around your picture
So a common way to use templates is to pick the one closest to you, then swap a block or two.
Who sees it
If you have joined the community, your profile can be seen by people who open it, and they see the new look. If you never join, your profile lives only on your phone, and the template is for you alone.
Either way, a template changes how your profile looks, not what it reveals. It does not publish anything new about your library. What appears on a public profile is still decided in Edit profile, under "What people see on your profile".
Why templates lead with something
A profile can show dozens of things. A template's job is to choose. A film lover's profile should open on films. Someone who has tracked for ten years has history worth putting first. Someone who started last week does not, which is why The Newcomer skips everything that needs years of data.
Is it free?
Browsing the templates is free. Applying one needs OpenTV Plus, and so does arranging blocks. Tracking, importing and your profile itself are free.
If you are new, bring your history first so your templates have something to work with. See how to get your TV Time history back.
Get OpenTV
OpenTV is free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android. Open your profile, tap Edit, and look through the templates.
Questions or ideas? Ask on Discord or r/opentv_app.