bug: Fire TV — remote input stops responding after submitting a search in Discover

[benhaddim]

Checklist

• My version of the app is the latest available
• I have checked open and closed issues
• I have checked the docs for a fix

Bug Severity

Usability is affected

Bug Area

User Interface

Bug Description / Steps to Reproduce

On a Fire TV Stick 4K running the TV build, remote navigation works normally
everywhere — tabs, the Anime library, the home screen and playback are all fine.
But submitting a search in Discover permanently kills remote input on that
screen.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open Discover on a Fire TV Stick and select the search field
2. Type any query (e.g. kaiji) using the on-screen keyboard
3. Press Enter / the search key
4. Results render correctly and are visible on screen
5. From this point no remote key does anything on that screen — no focus
   indicator appears, and the results cannot be scrolled or selected

Pressing Home and reopening the app recovers it, which is consistent with
useFocusEffect re-firing on screen focus. Everything else in the app continues
to work normally; only this screen is affected.

This is not the same as #27. There, nothing responds anywhere and the mobile
layout is rendered at the wrong scale. Here the TV layout renders correctly and
navigation works throughout the app — the failure is specific to the moment a
search is submitted.

Possible cause

I looked through the repo rather than instrumenting the app, so treat this as a
hypothesis, but three things in src/components/tv/tv-search-screen.tsx line up
with the symptom:

1. Focus is only requested when the screen gains focus, never when results
   change:

   useFocusEffect(React.useCallback(() => {
       const timer = setTimeout(() => { inputRef.current?.requestTVFocus() }, 100)
       return () => clearTimeout(timer)
   }, []))

2. submit only writes the atom — it does not move focus anywhere:

   const submit = React.useCallback(() => {
       setParams(current => ({ ...current, type: "anime", title: input.trim() || null }))
   }, [input, setParams])

3. The grid is emptied while loading, which unmounts whatever view currently
   holds focus:

   <TVMediaGrid media={search.isLoading ? [] : media} ... />

So on submit the focused view is destroyed and nothing re-requests focus. On
tvOS the native focus module would presumably recover this, but on Android
modules/expo-tv-focus/ contains only an ios/ folder — no android/ —
unlike expo-download-manager, expo-external-player, expo-mpv-player and
expo-offline-logger, which all ship both platforms. Since the module is loaded
with requireOptionalNativeModule and every call is optional-chained
(ExpoTVFocusModule?.setEnabled(...)), it resolves to undefined on Fire OS and
silently no-ops. That would explain why the app degrades on exactly this one
screen rather than failing outright.

If that reading is right, a narrow fix would be to re-request focus once results
settle, and/or to avoid clearing media during isLoading so the focused view
survives the refetch. The broader fix is presumably the missing Android side of
expo-tv-focus, which would likely also cover #27 — I'll leave that call to you.

I don't have an Android NDK toolchain set up to build and verify a patch, so I'm
reporting rather than sending a PR. Happy to test a build or an OTA if that helps.

Expected Behavior

After submitting a search, focus should move to (or remain somewhere that can
reach) the results grid, so the results can be navigated with the D-pad.

Logs

No crash and nothing logged — the app stays running and correctly rendered, it
simply stops responding to remote input on this screen.

Debugging Checklist

• I have included error messages
• I have included server logs (if applicable)
• I have included device / crash logs

App Version

v0.3.0-23-20260725-c8f8db6 (Android TV build)

Operating System

Android

Environment

• Device: Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K (Fire OS), app sideloaded
• APK: seanime-tenji-tv-v0.3.0-23-20260725-c8f8db6.apk
• Server: Seanime 3.10.2 (Saisei) on a Linux VPS, behind a Caddy HTTPS reverse
  proxy, with a server password set
• Playback source: Real-Debrid streaming — works fine, playback itself is
  unaffected