Ability to Hide / Collapse IPT​V Group-Titles & Support Multi-Layer Group Hierarchy (Current Flattens All)

[jkoreklaw 2]

Hi team — I’m working on a large IPTV consolidation project involving multiple M3U files, all cleaned and standardized. During the process, I’ve run into several structural limitations in how Emby handles group-title values. These limitations prevent any clean or modern IPTV organization, no matter how well-formatted the source M3U is.

I’m posting to (1) confirm current behavior, (2) request any available workarounds, and (3) ask whether hierarchical group support or tag filtering is planned.

Issue Summary

1. Emby flattens all M3U group-title values into one giant root-level list

Even when the M3U is fully cleaned and categorized, Emby displays hundreds of categories at the top level.

Intended top-level (example):

• USA
• Canada
• United Kingdom
• Mexico
• Brazil
• Europe
• Latin America
• International

What Emby actually produces:

• US ABC
• US CBS
• US FOX
• US NBC
• US PBS
• US Entertainment
• US News
• US Sports
• 24/7 Streams
• PPV Live Events
• Canada
• Mexico
• UK Entertainment
• Latino
• Local Now
• Others
• …plus hundreds more

Provider-specific folders also appear at the root instead of inside a country container:

• Spectrum
• DirecTV
• Cox
• Roku
• Tubi
• Paramount+
• Discovery+
• Amazon Prime Linear

Even if a channel is correctly labeled “US ABC”, it’s still placed directly at the root.

2. Emby generates additional categories that do NOT exist in the M3U

Examples that appear automatically:

• United States | Nigeria
• United States | Pakistan
• United States | Palestine
• United States | Ukraine
• United States | United Kingdom
• United States | Uruguay

These do not exist in the source playlists and do not match any channel grouping I created.

This happens even when:

✔ Every channel has a valid group-title

✔ All playlists are validated prior to import

✔ No blank or malformed groups exist

This makes clean country-based grouping impossible.

3. No Emby setting exists to hide or collapse categories

Right now, Emby does not allow:

• Hiding unwanted tags
• Collapsing groups under a country or provider
• Removing unused autogenerated tags
• Restricting the visible category list
• Preventing merged categories when multiple M3Us are added

Even with perfect M3U metadata, Emby merges everything into one massive tag list.

 

4. The built-in IPTV Library view shows “No items found”

Under:

Media Library → IPTV

…no channels appear at all, even though Live TV → TV Sources works and channels play normally.

This may be a separate bug, but it makes testing more difficult.

What I am Trying to Achieve

I’m attempting to create a clean, intuitive IPTV layout based on:

Layer 1 (Country Level)

• USA
• Canada
• United Kingdom
• Mexico
• Brazil
• Europe
• Latin America
• International

Layer 2 (Provider / Network Level inside each country)

Examples for USA:

• ABC
• CBS
• FOX
• NBC
• PBS
• CW
• MyTV
• Peacock
• Spectrum
• Roku
• Tubi
• Amazon Prime Linear
• Paramount+
• Discovery+
• MAX
• ESPN+
• DirecTV
• Cox
• Local Now
• Univision
• Telemundo
• Other

 

Rules I’m trying to maintain:

✔ Providers override network categories

✔ No genre-based folders

✔ No unrelated countries under “United States”

✔ No duplicate country containers

✔ No auto-generated “United States | X” groups

However, Emby currently forces everything into one flat list.

Testing Already Performed

I’ve tried:

• Multiple separate M3U sources
• One consolidated M3U
• Fully cleaned & standardized group-titles
• Removing all genre-based categories
• Provider-first naming conventions
• Country-first naming conventions
• Unicode normalization
• Re-importing from scratch
• Manually removing empty groups
• Deleting the Live TV DB and rescanning
• Confirming every channel has a valid group-title
• Verifying M3U syntax with validators

Result is always the same:

Emby still auto-generates a large, flattened tag set.

Questions for the Dev Team

1. Is Emby intentionally flattening all M3U group-title values by design?
2. Is any form of hierarchical grouping planned? (Country → Provider → Channels)
3. Can Emby disable or override auto-generated group merges (e.g., “United States | X”)?
4. Is there a hidden option or method to hide unwanted categories/tags?
5. Does Emby support tag filtering or restricting visible groups?
6. Is there documentation on how Emby internally interprets/combines group-title values?
7. Is the empty IPTV library view a known bug?
8. Are there future plans for improved IPTV organization including:
   • Multi-level grouping
   • Country containers
   • Provider containers
   • Tag hiding
   • Tag filtering
   • Better M3U parsing logic
9. This functionality would dramatically improve IPTV usability for anyone with large or provider-diverse playlists.

Thank You

I appreciate all the work that goes into the Live TV system. IPTV is complicated and inconsistent across providers, but the ability to organize group-titles (or hide them) would make a huge difference.

I’m happy to provide:

• Sample M3U files
• Screenshots
• Logs
• Cleaned and original M3Us
• Before/after comparisons

Thanks again for your time!

[Luke 42251]

Hi, this actually is not true:

Quote

Examples that appear automatically:

• United States | Nigeria
• United States | Pakistan
• United States | Palestine
• United States | Ukraine
• United States | United Kingdom
• United States | Uruguay

The server does not generate categories. If they are appearing then they are somewhere to be found in the m3u.

[jkoreklaw 2]

Thanks, that makes sense — I should’ve clarified that some of those United States | X categories were being created on my side before import.

My main request isn’t about Emby generating names, it’s about management once the M3U is loaded. With very large IPTV playlists (tens of thousands of channels) the Live TV category list becomes huge, and there’s currently no way to:

• hide certain groups,
• blacklist groups,
• or collapse them by region.

Even with a perfectly cleaned M3U, every single group-title still shows up in the main Live TV view. Is there any plan for:

• per-source or per-user group hiding,
• or some kind of “show only these groups” / “hide these groups” option?

That’s the big thing I’m trying to solve so the lineup is actually navigable.

[Luke 42251]

Quote

• hide certain groups,
• blacklist groups,

hi, have you checked the options on the m3u setup screen?

[jkoreklaw 2]

I’m not sure if I was looking where you suggested?

My goal was to have multiple layers for easy channel navigation for example:

Layer 1:

USA

Canada

United Kingdom

Mexico

Latin America

Europe

Asia

Africa

Middle East

Oceania

International

Layer 2:

United States → PROVIDER LEVEL

Only the U.S. has this level:

USA
 ├── DirecTV
 ├── Spectrum
 ├── COX
 ├── Xfinity (if detected)
 ├── Roku
 ├── Tubi
 ├── Peacock
 ├── Amazon Prime Linear
 ├── Paramount+
 ├── MAX
 ├── Discovery+
 ├── ESPN+
 ├── Local Now
 ├── ABC
 ├── CBS
 ├── FOX
 ├── NBC
 ├── PBS
 ├── CW
 ├── MyTV
 ├── Univision
 ├── Telemundo
 └── Others

Canada → PROVIDER LEVEL (Simplified)
 ├── Bell
 ├── Rogers
 ├── Shaw
 ├── Telus
 ├── Amazon Prime Linear
 ├── Sportsnet
 ├── TSN
 ├── CBC
 ├── CTV
 ├── Global
 └── Others

United Kingdom → PROVIDER LEVEL
 ├── Sky UK
 ├── BT Sport
 ├── Now TV
 ├── Amazon Prime Linear
 ├── BBC
 ├── ITV
 ├── Channel 4
 ├── Channel 5
 └── Others

Mexico → PROVIDER LEVEL
 ├── Izzi
 ├── Sky Mexico
 ├── TotalPlay
 ├── Amazon Prime Linear
 ├── Televisa
 ├── Azteca
 └── Others

CONTINENT MODEL for EVERYONE ELSE (No Providers)

Latin America
   ├── Argentina
   ├── Brazil
   ├── Chile
   ├── Colombia
   ├── Peru
   ├── Venezuela
   └── Others

Europe
   ├── France
   ├── Germany
   ├── Italy
   ├── Spain
   ├── Portugal
   ├── Netherlands
   ├── Belgium
   ├── Sweden
   ├── Norway
   ├── Finland
   ├── Romania
   ├── Poland
   ├── Turkey
   ├── Russia
   └── Others

Asia
   ├── Japan
   ├── South Korea
   ├── India
   ├── Indonesia
   ├── Malaysia
   ├── Philippines
   ├── Taiwan
   ├── Thailand
   └── Others

Africa
   ├── South Africa
   ├── Nigeria
   ├── Kenya
   ├── Morocco
   ├── Algeria
   └── Others

Middle East
   ├── UAE
   ├── Qatar
   ├── Saudi Arabia
   ├── Kuwait
   ├── Iraq
   ├── Jordan
   ├── Israel
   ├── Palestine
   └── Others

Oceania
   ├── Australia
   ├── New Zealand
   └── Others

I have tried to tag on multiple levels in the channels metadata:

 I also have tried to setup the view group by tag:

But every group or tag lands in the root default channel display group which causes a lot of scrolling from the beginning:

USA - ABC
USA - CBS
USA - FOX
USA - NBC
USA - PBS
USA - CW
USA - MyTV
USA - Peacock
USA - Spectrum
USA - Local Now
…
Canada - CBC
Canada - CTV
…
United Kingdom - BBC
United Kingdom - ITV
United Kingdom - Sky
…
Europe - France
Asia - Japan
Latin America - Mexico
Etc…

I was hoping to make navigating through my channel lineups easier but I don’t know if it’s already been implemented on Emby and I just don’t know what I am doing, or if it’s not an available feature, if it wasn’t was hoping that it would be taken into consideration as a feature request?

 

 

[jkoreklaw 2]

Is there any way for a folder view option to separate M3U categories from multiple live TV Sources into a folder for each M3U? That could also solve the current issue.

[Luke 42251]

13 minutes ago, jkoreklaw said:

Is there any way for a folder view option to separate M3U categories from multiple live TV Sources into a folder for each M3U? That could also solve the current issue.

If it’s vod then yes the web streams plugin can do that for you.

 If you need an epg then no, not really.