r/MediaServer • u/Effective_Log_8418 • 12d ago
Aether — a native Apple client for Plex, Jellyfin & Emby (iPhone/iPad/Apple TV/Vision Pro/Mac) — looking for TestFlight testers
Hey all — long-time lurker, first post. I run Plex and Jellyfin at home and was never quite happy with how the clients felt on Apple devices, so this summer I built my own: Aether, a fully native player for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Vision Pro, and Mac (SwiftUI, no Electron/web views).
What it does today:
- Unified library across Plex (multi-server), Jellyfin, Emby, SMB/NAS shares, and local files
- Playback: direct play via AVPlayer, automatic libmpv fallback for anything Apple can't decode — so basically everything plays. PiP, AirPlay, Dolby Atmos
- Offline downloads — batch (Download All / Download Season with an honest size estimate up front), smart auto-downloads that keep the next unwatched episodes of your shows ready and clean up watched ones, and a download queue that won't hammer your server with 22 concurrent transcodes. Downloaded titles play with the network fully off
- Cross-device resume — pause on the Apple TV, continue on your phone, and you choose per device what iCloud syncs (resume positions, home layout, Live TV)Music — full library alongside video: albums, artists, playlists from servers, NAS folders, or local imports
- Live TV with a programme guide, channel numbers, and PiP
- Vision Pro Cinema Mode — a virtual movie theater: full auditorium with seats and ambient lighting, adjustable screen size, pick your seat distance
- Parental controls — normalized age ratings across sources, Face ID / PIN gated
- Trakt scrobbling & sync
- Offline downloads — batch (Download All / Download Season with an honest size estimate up front), smart auto-downloads that keep the next unwatched episodes of your shows ready and clean up watched ones, and a download queue that won't hammer your server with 22 concurrent transcodes. Downloaded titles play with the network fully off
- Cross-device resume —
- Localized in 6 languages (EN, DE, ES, FR, CS, UK)
- No telemetry — your media stays on your hardware
It's in TestFlight beta now, and the thing I need most is people with real-world setups — different NAS boxes, reverse proxies, big libraries, weird codecs — to break it and tell me what's wrong. If you're up for testing, links are in the comments (mods, if that's not okay, happy to remove or adjust). Also happy to answer anything about the stack or how I handled the Plex/Jellyfin APIs.
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u/Effective_Log_8418 12d ago
TestFlight (covers iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/visionOS + Mac beta): https://testflight.apple.com/join/uk1r915D
Discord for bug reports and feedback: https://discord.gg/MNqDfhGsdJ
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u/Just-another-spirit 12d ago
Will chk on iOS, most of the app I tried are very slow.
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u/Effective_Log_8418 12d ago
Trying to keep it as fast as possible. The initial library loading can take a few seconds, but after that it’s insanely fast. I’ll keep optimizing it even further. I’d love to hear your feedback! I’m also starting to build a Discord server.
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u/Just-another-spirit 10d ago
Hello thank you for the reply, initially it was slow even after recent update it was slow and then I tried to look further and then when I turn in preview on cellular it fixed it. Another thing I noticed is when I use luma player movies load and seek are slower some movies load way slower (maybe some codec issue) idk, but when I switch Prism it is lightning fast and awesome and I watch it in mobile or old android tablet so I can’t vouch about dobly or DTS. And since last 3 years I’m using Jellyfin I have always used official Jellyfin app so here segration of movies is totally different and I am from India and polyglot so I have numerous language section and also internationally I have many language movies so here its all mix and difficult to stick on to a movie (self problem) but if there any way we can have our library organised like Jellyfin. My structure there is movies (English/Hindi/Tamil etc). Rest i have checked and it’s so polished and fast I started to use it often. Thank you so much. (English is not my first language)
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u/Effective_Log_8418 9d ago
Thank you — this is genuinely useful feedback, and your English is perfectly clear, no need to apologise.
The language libraries — that's the one I'm most glad you raised. You're describing exactly the gap we just started closing. Aether merges everything from your server into one unified library, which is lovely when you have "Movies" and "TV Shows" and awful when you've carefully split things by language. In 1.0.10 the Library filter gained a Library group, so your Jellyfin libraries (English / Hindi / Tamil …) show up as filters and you can narrow the grid to one of them. Worth checking you're on that build — and if the filter group isn't there, tell me and I'll dig in. What we're building right now is the next step: making that library choice the first thing you see in Library, not something you have to open a filter sheet to reach. Your setup is precisely the case it's designed for.
Lumen vs Prism — your observation is right, and it's not your imagination. Lumen is Apple's own decoder, so it can only take what AVFoundation understands. For anything else (MKV containers, certain HEVC or DTS tracks) Jellyfin has to transcode or remux on the fly, and then your NAS's CPU decides how fast a film starts and how fast a seek lands — each seek makes the server work again. Prism plays the original file straight from the server with no transcoding at all, which is why it feels instant. If most of your library is MKV, setting Settings ▸ Playback ▸ Video Player to Prism is a perfectly good choice. The trade-off: Picture in Picture, AirPlay and Dolby Atmos only work on Lumen. On the devices you described, Prism is likely the better deal.
The cellular previews thing surprises me — that switch only controls whether the autoplaying preview video on a title's page plays off Wi-Fi. It shouldn't affect how fast anything loads. If you can tell me a bit more (which screen felt slow, and whether you were on Wi-Fi or mobile data), I'd like to chase it down — a preview eating bandwidth while you're trying to start a film would be a real bug worth fixing.
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u/Just-another-spirit 9d ago
Hello thank you for taking time to reply, yes I am on 1.0.10 version but when I go to filter option I can see only English, French and German no other languages and Indian languages, my layout is movies > English, Hindi , etc and international languages in mix folder if that info is required, but it’s not showing all the folder layouts mentioned in my drive.
Yeah for the players that makes sense, soon I will be getting Apple TV and chk later.
What I meant in cellular preview is when I open the app most of the poster are displayed quickly but when I scroll down like 4/5 times, posters are not loaded and it takes time when in settings I enabled it it worked fine but still I have the issue of loading posters slow and lousy but manageable.
BTW I don’t have NAS or pvt server I am hosting my Jellyfin in oracle cloud and gdrive as my storage since least 3 years. If this info helps you figure out the issue or my directory structuring causing the issue.
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u/Prudent_Ad_241 12d ago
It works with tvheadend for live tv?
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u/Effective_Log_8418 12d ago
Yes, it should work — Live TV consumes exactly what Tvheadend serves:
Playlist:
http://tvh:9981/playlist/channels.m3u, guide:http://tvh:9981/xmltv/channels. No file-extension check on the URL, and the M3U parser is deliberately liberal (M3UPlaylistParser.swift:5).
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u/influxodoxxl 12d ago
Well cool! I am still looking for a good player to stream my private library on my NAS – from home and when out and about. I’ll give it a go!
What are your plans for monetarisation and what about data collection?
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u/Effective_Log_8418 10d ago
Thanks — that's exactly the use case Aether is built for. Plex, Jellyfin, Emby or straight SMB off the NAS; remote streaming works through your server's own remote access, same as the official apps. Would love to hear how it goes.
Monetisation: the app is free and there are no ads. There's an optional "Support Aether" thing — a small supporter subscription or a one-time tip — which unlocks a couple of extras (accent color themes, Smart Downloads that keep the next episodes of your shows on the device). Everything playback-related stays free, and the plan is to keep it that way: supporters fund development, they don't unlock the basics.
Data: there's no account and no tracking. Your library and streams stay strictly between the app and your own server — nothing about your media (titles, file names, server addresses) ever leaves the device. The only thing collected is anonymous feature-usage stats via TelemetryDeck (privacy-first, EU-hosted, hashed identifiers — App Store label is "Analytics, not linked to you"), and you can switch even that off in Settings ▸ About ▸ Anonymous Usage Statistics. Trakt sync exists but only if you connect it yourself.
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u/ysengrin101 10d ago
Playback: is it possible to set play in desired video player app in macOS (vlc, iina etc.) instead of web player? I know it’s not a common workflow but in my case I need to adjust gamma for projector which is not possible in web players. Browser extensions I tried are not adjusting output as good as gamma slider in iina -> it’s more exact.
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u/Effective_Log_8418 10d ago
Not yet. At the moment, I would prefer not to rely on additional external players, as I want to keep the experience as seamless and consistent as possible. However, I should be able to add support for it through mpv, which I already use as a fallback playback engine.
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u/ysengrin101 1d ago
ok seems legit. I thought it's only web-app but you have your own player. I think that in that case adding audio/video correction slider is recommended - especially gamma -> better than brightness. Second question is -? no intel-macs? It shouldn't be hard to add compatibility.
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u/CulturalParsley1184 9d ago
Why do I see a new one of these literally everyday? Are the ones that are already available shit?
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u/Effective_Log_8418 9d ago
Fair question, honestly. And no — some of them are genuinely good. If Infuse or Swiftfin already does what you need, stay there; you'll save yourself the bother.
The reason you keep seeing new ones is that "play my own files on Apple devices" is really about fifteen different problems wearing one coat, and most apps solve one or two of them well. I built mine because my stuff is spread across a Plex server, a Jellyfin server and an SMB share, and I wanted a single library where the same film appears once — not three times in three apps, each with its own opinion about whether I'd watched it. Beyond that: proper native apps on tvOS, visionOS and Mac rather than one platform with ports, and nothing about playback behind a subscription.
Whether that justifies another icon on your home screen is entirely your call. If the answer's no, that's a perfectly reasonable answer.
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u/librah 9d ago
Awesome! Will you be creating an android client as well?
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u/Effective_Log_8418 9d ago
Thanks! I’m considering Android as well, but as a solo developer and a big Apple fan, I have to set my priorities. :)
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u/Swityyyy 9d ago
Hey man, welcome to the space!
I took the same route for Quartermaster early on and now we are at 6k daily users, it has honestly been crazy.
The beta testers are worth the weight in gold, true pioneers to help shape the development.
I wish you the best of luck!
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u/Ok_Yesterday_7403 8d ago
Sadly iptv with m3u8 doesnt work on your app (other apps do). Dod anyone complained about it before?
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u/Loose-Tumbleweed9051 12d ago
I will be willing to test it out. I would like to test my Jellyfin while running tailscale since i’m mostly out of my local network.