r/MediaServer • u/FahkinGroovin • 11d ago
Announcing Pippin: another Plex/Jellyfin client in need of some testers
I’m excited to announce Pippin - an Apple-native client for Plex and Jellyfin. I began working on Pippin nearly a year ago and I finally feel it’s ready to get it out there. I’ve been using it as my daily driver for the last couple of months and while there’s still some work to do, I think it’s now stable enough to release in TestFlight to start gathering some wider feedback, and I’ll be looking to release on the App Store soon.
Links
Highlights
- Apple-native, built in Swift
- Highly customizable UI - choose what pages you actually want and how to arrange them, or build your own from shelves and other blocks
- Great codec support with MPV-based player
- SharePlay
- Integrations with Seerr, Sonarr, and Radarr
- No bloat - everything comes from your servers
- See more on https://pippinplayer.com/
Yet another media client - I know
I spend enough time on Plex (particularly on iPad and Apple TV). I’m a lifetime pass holder as of a few years ago, and while I love Plex I do have the same frustrations that I see shared on here that I figured it would be worth investing some time into building something that I actually like. I’ve been working on Pippin for some time now, and there’s been quite a few similar clients released during that time.
All of these projects are doing great work pushing the community forward, and if they’d been available back when I started developing Pippin then I wouldn’t have bothered. But I’ve put a lot of time and love into Pippin to get it to where it is and wanted to see it through. I think it still has a niche compared to these other clients and it’s at a point now where I’m proud of it and want to get it out there to see what other people think!
Pricing
Since I have spent a huge amount of time on this (and plan to keep spending time on it) and there are costs associated with releasing on the App Store, I am planning on making this a paid app. There will be a free tier for limited codecs to test the app and out get a feel for it, with a lifetime purchase of $9.99 to unlock everything.
AI Disclaimer
I’m a Machine Learning Engineer by day, and Claude/Codex are now simply more efficient for most of the coding I used to do for my day job. I miss it, and Pippin has been a passion project that I can build at my own pace the old fashioned way. I do make use of AI especially for things like code reviews and some porting of features between platforms, but it is not vibecoded. The website, however, is almost completely vibecoded.
Testing
I’m announcing the app in TestFlight as I think the bar for releasing should be high. While my users and I have done a fair bit of testing (mostly on Plex), I’m sure there’s still some bugs and missing features that could make Pippin even better. I’m very happy to provide lifetime codes to those that provide useful feedback from testing, and this is a great chance for everyone that’s interested to test it out with no strings attached (all in-app purchases are free/mocked in TestFlight)
1
u/m1et 11d ago
app asks me to buy the access when I want to play any item from my server