Build a Tizen App for Samsung Smart TV in 5 Simple Steps

With almost 30% of the market share, Samsung Smart TVs consistently dominates the worldwide TV market for 16 years in a row. It is obvious that many Smart TV users own Samsung TVs for their households. Thanks to its amazing technology, attractive design, and superior user experience, Samsung continues to hold the top rank in the market for Smart TVs. If you wish to communicate with your users via Smart TVs, you will need to go for Samsung TV app development to get a Tizen app.

In a Nutshell: Tizen

In 2012, Samsung Electronics developed the Tizen operating system. It was exclusively designed by Samsung for their own goods, primarily mobile phones. Since entering the smart TV market, Samsung has only employed Tizen as its operating system. Due to the debut of Smart TVs and Samsung’s concomitant expansion in the Smart TV sector, OTT firms and anybody else wishing to engage with consumers utilizing the technology of Smart TVs has got to therefore create Tizen apps.

A Tizen app may be made in five simple steps. However, the procedure can occasionally be difficult due to Samsung’s demanding certification standards. Let’s look at the process!

1. Creating the Development Environment and Obtaining Certification

Before we begin working on a new Tizen project, we must first set up the project’s development environment. Installing the Samsung TV SDK is the first step since it is required to build Tizen projects. The Samsung TV SDK, a set of resources for building Tizen apps, contains the following components:

• Tizen Studio IDE
• TV Simulator
• TV Emulator
• Web Inspector

To set up the development environment, use the Tizen Studio IDE. As we shall see, the remaining components would be useful in the latter stages of designing an app. Before installing the IDE and beginning to develop with the Samsung TV SDK, we must ensure that all required hardware and software are available. The ensuing modules will need to be installed:

• Tizen Studio IDE
• Samsung TV Extensions
• Samsung Certificate Extension

You have to build up your IDE, Tizen Studio, using the Tizen Studio installer.

Tizen complies with a variety of rigorous certification requirements. Any Tizen project must have a certificate profile built before it can begin. All Tizen projects require the appropriate certifications and signatures before they can be deployed. Once your software is released, the signatures act as irrefutable evidence of its provenance. Therefore, you must create a certificate profile as well as upload your credentials before you can break ground on your Tizen project. Once you’ve downloaded the Samsung TV SDK, you can get the Device ID (DUID) of the device you want to deploy your software on as well as the Samsung Certificate Extension.

2. Making the App Design

Before we start building the app, it is essential to have a firm understanding of the app’s design. This includes the functionality you wish to include in your app as well as the user interface design. Having a list of the app’s aspects before you begin development is a simply smart practice. Your development pipeline will be very streamlined if you establish a specified schematic plan for the project, which helps to maximize the use of time and resources. Additionally, it’s important to refrain from altering the design too frequently while it’s being created. Create your Tizen application accordingly, setting aside some time and making an effort.

In this section, we’ll go through some of the key features that you’ll necessarily need to include in your Tizen apps.

• Minimal UI – When building an app, the UI is taken into careful attention. Consistency, user control, clarity, and simplicity are the four factors that should be taken into account while designing the user interface for your Tizen software. Ensure the UI design is minimalistic and easy to use to enhance user experience.
• Resolution Configuration – Samsung TVs always have a 16:9 aspect ratio. UHD TVs come with a 1920×1080 pixels resolution, compared to FHD TVs’ 1280×720 pixels. It is imperative to keep these numbers in mind while creating in order to ensure the best video quality and avoid sidebars on the screen.
• Web App-like Features – The majority of the functions you can envision for a web app are present in smart TV apps. Keep this in mind as you add features to your Tizen project.
• Functionality for Remote Controls – The majority of the time, your viewers will have a remote control to access their Smart TVs. Gamepads, keyboards, or mice are not typically utilized with Smart TVs although they have the ability to add inputs. This is an important consideration to have in mind while you develop your Tizen software. You would need virtual keypads, for instance, to input alphabetic or numeric data.

3. Developing the App using Tizen Templates

As soon as the development environment is set up as well as the project design is planned, you can start actively building your Tizen app. It’s fairly simple to construct a basic Tizen app. You can choose from a variety of customizable templates to integrate different desirable features when creating a Tizen app. Of course, more changes would require more work and skill to perfect. These are the templates:

• Basic Project: In the main.js section of this template, a keycode handling template is provided for managing remote controller keys. This template is only suitable for basic general applications, as its name suggests.
• CAPH empty jQuery Template: This template was created using the CAPH framework, which is used to create Smart TV apps. It is based on jQuery. You may make more complicated apps that you can customize by utilizing this template.
• Empty: Use this to start from scratch and design a whole new Tizen software. This is a blank template, as the name suggests, and it just contains the bare minimum of files, including an empty index.html page and the icon.png and config.xml.
• jQuery Navigation: This template uses jQuery Mobile-based app components for its interface.

4. Testing the App on Emulator, Simulator, and Samsung Smart TV

Your Tizen app is ready to be tested after it has been created, configured, and launched. To run your Tizen software, you can combine the Samsung TV Simulator, the emulator provided by Tizen Studio, as well as an intended target device—a Samsung Smart TV.

• To run a Tizen app on the TV emulator, you must launch Emulator Manager in Tizen Studio. In the emulator manager, you may select the device you want to emulate from a number of parameters. You can create an emulator instance if one doesn’t already exist on your target device.
• You must test the program through a Samsung TV simulator before deploying it on a genuine TV device. Tizen Studio has the option for this as well.
• You should run the final test of your software on a real TV after testing it on a TV emulator as well as a TV simulator. To do this, a TV device would need to be connected to the computer system.

After running the app for testing, if do not find bugs, it is set for release!

5. Releasing the app on the Tizen Store

The Tizen Store submission process for Samsung Smart TV Tizen applications is very straightforward. After you just followed the instructions, your app would go live in the Tizen Store.

• Join and send a partnership request
• Get registration for your application.
• Give all the necessary required standard app details.
• Check the information after publishing your software to the Tizen Store.
• Before submitting your application, review it.

Conclusion

For now, that was it! We went over each step in great detail that would be needed to construct a Tizen app. By exporting a web application made for Smart TVs to Tizen Studio, you can quickly generate a tailored Tizen app for your platform.