iptv-toolkit / M3U format

The M3U format explained

An IPTV playlist is a plain text file. Once you can read it, most "channel missing" or "no guide" problems become easy to fix.

#EXTM3U x-tvg-url="https://example.com/epg.xml"
#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="news.one" tvg-logo="https://example.com/news1.png" group-title="News",News One
https://example.com/live/news1/index.m3u8
#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="sports.one" group-title="Sports",Sports One HD
#EXTVLCOPT:http-user-agent=Mozilla/5.0
https://example.com/live/sports1/index.m3u8

Line by line

Part	Meaning
`#EXTM3U`	First line of an extended playlist. Can carry `x-tvg-url` or `url-tvg`: the address of the TV guide (EPG) in XMLTV format.
`#EXTINF:-1`	Starts one channel. `-1` means "live, no fixed length".
`tvg-id`	The id used to match the channel with the guide. Empty or wrong id = no programme info.
`tvg-logo`	Logo image shown by the player.
`group-title`	Category the player shows (News, Sports…).
text after the comma	Channel name shown on screen. It can contain commas.
`#EXTVLCOPT`	Player options for the next stream, often a user agent or referrer.
the URL line	The stream itself: `.m3u8` (HLS) or `.ts` (MPEG-TS) most of the time.

Common problems and how to spot them

No guide for some channels: run iptv-toolkit info and look at "No tvg-id".
Same channel listed twice: "Duplicate URLs" in info; remove them with clean.
Channel opens a login page: check reports DEAD with "HLS URL did not return a playlist".
Huge list, slow player: keep only the groups you watch with filter -g.

M3U or M3U8?

Same format. .m3u8 just means the file is UTF-8 encoded. The HLS stream URLs inside a playlist are also .m3u8 files, but those are a different kind of playlist that lists video segments.