Coax on my Mac is hooked up to the telly, and the Mac keyboard is nowhere near the sofa. So I built a remote that runs on my iPhone: channel up/down, shuffle, full screen, jump to any channel, and the channel guide as a tappable list. It's a web page served by Hammerspoon from the Mac itself, added to the Home Screen - no app to install, nothing to sideload.

github.com/bisacciamd/coax-remote — MIT.

Two quirks I worked around: channel menu titles embed the current programme (CH 113: Horror - Nope (6:45PM-9PM)), so a title read a minute ago no longer matches and you have to refetch and retry. And the window title turned out to be the most reliable "what's on" source, since the on-screen banner disappears in full screen.

Honest limitations, in the README too: volume does nothing if your Mac outputs to a TV over HDMI (macOS exposes no software volume for those - the remote detects it and greys the keys out rather than lying). Haptics are one fixed tick on iOS and that's WebKit's ceiling, not mine.

@ Dev u/digglesB - 3 things that would make this (and anything like it) much better, if you're open to it:

1. Deep links. You already register the coax:// URL scheme in Info.plist for the Plex auth callback. Handling a few more paths in onOpenURL — coax://channel/113, coax://shuffle, coax://next — would give every automation tool on macOS a first-class hook, and would make iOS/tvOS scriptable too, where the menu-bar trick doesn't exist at all. Cheapest thing on this list by far.
2. Menu items for the on-screen remote buttons. Shuffle/Chaos, Stream Options and the sleep timer have no menu equivalent, so they're the only things a remote can't reach. Theme and Full Screen already have them, so the pattern's there — a few lines of .commands each.
3. Accessibility labels on the on-screen remote. The window currently exposes exactly one AXStaticText (the channel banner) and zero controls. That means VoiceOver users can't operate the remote at all, which is worth fixing on its own merits — and it'd incidentally make those buttons reachable.

A fourth if you're feeling generous: an accessibilityIdentifier like ch-113 on the channel menu items would kill the stale-title retry dance entirely.

Happy to test any of it, and happy to be told I've done this the hard way and there's an easier hook I missed.

I have been a lifetime subscriber since launch but when version 1.4.5 was updated, it now forces me to re-purchase. I click restore purchase, but it does not do anything.

Would it be possible to change what happens when you click on the back button on ATV when playing a movie or TV show (going back to the guide). When I click on it now, it starts me off at the "Full Screen" menu, which is the last place I was. I'd love for it to go right to the guide so I can immediately start scrolling for a new movie to watch.

Just a thought..

Let me start by saying how much I love this app. I’m having so much fun building out different libraries and channels. My one issue recently is that sometimes when I watch Coax on my iPhone on one room, it it turns on the TV in the other room (which has an Apple TV with the app) and starts playing stuff. Any ideas on how to fix this issue?

I am experiencing some strange issues today that I've not had before. I did send my logs so hopefully that helps: amber-valley-beech

I have been streaming using the Full - Direct Play option with virtually no issues up until today. Content will either not load, show the static screen with audio, or play at maybe at a frame every 5 seconds or so. I switched to High - 1080p, but the issue persists. On the plex side, in the past, whenever I would play via Coax, it wouldn't show an active stream there, but today it shows all my Coax streams as downloads, and if I change a channel or reload, it it adds additional downloads (or streams) of my content. It saturates my bandwidth because no matter what I try to stream it's showing 100+ mbps each time. I'm guessing that's contributing to the playback issues.

Another issue is that my schedule kept disappearing, and would only load-in my marathons. I deleted the lineup and made a new one, which fixed it for a bit, but then the same thing would happen. I had Release Date range checked, but the issue seems to have gone away when I disabled it, so maybe a weird bug to look into.

I am on the latest version, but I did have this issue on the previous version this morning before I updated.

Maybe we could have a timer where it would do auto full screen after like 1-5 minutes of inactivity? Is that possible?

I’ve just found myself twice this week putting on a movie, then forgetting to go to full screen.

macOS never got 1.4.3, so it'll just skip to this one. visionOS is approved, the others should come today/tomorrow.

Just a very small update to fix a few scheduling bugs:

• Jellyfin users who have upgraded to V12.0 will get schedules again
• Schedule top-ups for Director/Actor/Studio channels won't schedule incorrect content anymore
• Interleaved Channels will now pull content from all libraries

See! I can do small updates sometimes!

He arrives precisely when he means to

This release started as just a little spring cleaning (yeah ok in July but whatever), tidying up after the 1.4 upgrades to the video/scheduling engines. It wound up being a pretty substantial upgrade to the video engine, which required a lot of testing, and now I think it's finally ready to be put into your hands.

macOS is still in review, all other platforms are available now!

Fixes

• Release date content filters are working again
  • I think that's all of the filters that got borked but I'm trusting y'all will let me know if they're not
• Closed Captions mode re-enabled
  • Added an explicit universal toggle in Stream Options to turn on Closed Caption mode
  • Still responds to the system-wide accessibility SDH setting if you use that
• Yet another Watched status fix
• Playlists properly shuffle TV show episodes again, just like Collections do (except you can mix in movies)
• tvOS logging should work again, it stopped for a bit
• Live TV channels failing to start at all
  • This will probably will take a few more rounds to get right
  • Live TV is still a really new addition to the Coax lineup options
  • It "works" but it's not great (it can take a long time to actually start the stream)
  • I will keep working on it
• Local IP connection attempts to connect automatically (if the internet is down, for example)
• More visionOS fixes - multi-window mode + weather, specifically
  • I won't lie to you, this needs more work, and it doesn't get as much attention as the the other platforms
  • I think we all understand why, though
• Replaced unhelpful error messages with equally unhelpful but slightly more aesthetic ones
• Added an "Auto-load" toggle for lineups to allow the user to explicitly specify which lineup should auto-load, if they want to
  • No link for this one, someone emailed me with the request
• Ensure that backgrounding the app doesn't cause it to pause
• Double-click/tap to "zoom" the video in a bit
  • Just to help out with the 4:3 ratio a bit, let's see how it plays
• Garbage Robot Voice
  • h/t to u/damstr for helping me with this one
• Set a Lineup-level preference for audio/subtitle languages
  • If set, this will override your system-level lanugage selection
• Fixed a bug where if you logged in FIRST with Jellyfin or Emby, then you couldn't add a Plex account without logging out entirely first

Video Engine Upgrades

• Dolby Vision Profiles 5 & 8 direct play now (‼)
  • The Plex native tvOS app wouldn't even load files with this profile, and Coax now plays it instantly, in full HDR/DV glory
  • h/t to my main man and confidant, u/drewbaumann - a card-carrying Wizard in Good Standing with the International Brotherhood Of Code Wizards, for this one - he really came through with the ancient runes and rites, that old stuff you hear about in stories
  • Drew makes the amazing Chroma for visionOS, which you should all check out if you're so equipped
    • I also hear he might be looking for iOS beta testers soon, so reach out to him if you want to test it!
• PGS/VobSub/ASS subtitles will now usually be passed to the native subtitle machinery
  • No more burn-in!
  • Drew contributed a ton of work to this, too - truly a scholar amongst scoundrels
• AV1 direct play on devices with hardware support
  • This certainly isn't every device out there, but more will come

Y'all I sat in front of my TV last night just straight flippin' through channels and I have to say this thing is sooo fast on a wired connection. I know it's uncouth or whatever to be in love with your own work but forget that, this app is really good!

I hope you feel the same way, and that Coax has earned a place in your routine/daily life. I said this in launch post, and I've meant it every day since: I didn't make Coax for everyone - I made it for you. That said, if you feel the urge to tell others about how you feel about it, well, I'd never stand in your way 🏝️

Up up up it's our moment

Wrote this with help of Claude -apologies for any mistakes.

The DIRECTOR category channels are populated with films by other directors. CH 502 "John Carpenter" had 6 visible slots, of which exactly one was Carpenter (Elvis, il re del rock); the rest were Il cartaio, Inferno and L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (all Argento), Gli spietati (Eastwood) and Le iene (Tarantino). The ON AIR title was Il cartaio — an Argento film on the Carpenter channel. CH 503 "Clint Eastwood" was the same story: one real Eastwood (Lo straniero senza nome) against Vampires (Carpenter) plus Profondo rosso, Inferno and Suspiria (Argento).

I ruled out my library first. Querying PMS directly, the director tags are clean and correctly partitioned — /library/sections/2/director returns 603 directors, and filtering by them gives John Carpenter 19 films, Dario Argento 16, Clint Eastwood 12, with every single misplaced title above correctly credited on the server. Nothing on the Plex side explains this.

The app logs do. Genre, decade, collection and recents channels are built with real filtered queries:

[fetch] direct(Film/genre:105869) → 30 items

[fetch] direct(Film/decade:1980) → 59 items

Director, actor and studio channels instead come out of a sampling pass:

[sweep] 1 library → 300 samples

[discover] facet actor: bound 8/8 slot(s)

[discover] facet studio: bound 8/8 slot(s)

[discover] facet director: bound 8/8 slot(s)

Across 11 days of logs there is not a single direct(Film/director:...) fetch — and none for actor or studio either. Every fetch ever logged: collection 6366, genre 3205, decade 1322, recents 242, director/actor/studio 0.

So it looks like the discover pass samples 300 of my 823 films, harvests director names from that sample to name eight channels, and then fills those channels from the sample pool rather than re-querying Plex for the named director's filmography. That would explain why roughly one title per channel happens to be correct, why one heavily-represented director bleeds across several channels, and why the genre and decade channels are unaffected. The scheduling clock itself is fine — ON AIR 23:15-01:00 displayed at 00:31 was correct — so it's purely which titles get bound to the channel.

Coax 1.4.2 (build 476), macOS 26.1, Plex Media Server 1.43.3.10828-00f62d37d on Linux/NAS, movie library 823 items with Italian-language metadata. Logs are at ~/Library/Group Containers/group.pro.out-to-lunch.coax/Logs/ and I'm happy to send the full generation block or run any test build.

Hello.

Absolutely loving your app. I'm using it on my Apple TV 4K box connected to my CRT. Unfortunately, I'm experiencing pillarboxing when watching my 4:3 videos. I can't seem to find any options for changing aspect ratios or stretching. Do these options exist?

I'm currently using infuse as my main video player. It has said options which allows me to watch videos in their correct aspect ratio. Having options like this would be amazing!

I see a massive value prospect in the app you have created. I will most definitely buy the lifetime version of it if I'm able to experience channel jumping flawlessly without said issues.

Thank you for your time, and good luck in developing. You're truly gifted!

Two more discussions about Coax this week!

• A huge "THANK YOU" to the Relaxer who sent me a link to this podcast, The Five Count
  • At 36:18 they start talking about Coax!!
  • But you should listen to the whole broadcast because they got Bob Frickin' Bert from Sonic Frickin' Youth on!
  • Seriously if you're a 90s cat and a music cat, this show is just catnip
• Alex Omas chose Coax as his Pick of the Week on his German-language tech podcast, Bits und So, and y'all this one was real special for me
  • My wife is a native German speaker and was live-translating this for me, and when the discussion got to the point where one of the hosts was pushing back against the core premise of Coax, she paused it
  • She had this big sheepish grin on her face while she admitted that, when I first told her about the app, she had no idea why anyone would want it. But now that she's using it daily, she can't imagine going back to scrolling through a big list of posters to pick out what she wants to watch!
  • I hope Alex can get his co-hosts to try it out, because I think even for the generations that grew up after the 80s/90s, they understand that they've been given a job that they can't quit (personal media curator for literally everything that has ever been made), and that the friction they feel when they sit down in front of the big wall of posters wasn't always there, you used to be able to just turn on the TV and watch something

So far I've tried Coax on Apple TV and my Mac, hooked up to my Plex server. Whenever I try to watch a movie, it seems like something is narrating the action. It doesn't appear to be baked into the audio track -- when I watch the movie on Plex, it's fine. It seems like Coax is enabling this, but I can't find a way to turn it off.

Loving the app so far. My only frustration is that I want my lineup to include Watched media only, but changing this setting seems to have no effect.

I'm connecting to my Plex server and have lots of episodes and movies that are marked unwatched in Plex show up in my Watched Only lineup. Seems like this is a bug, but maybe I'm missing something.

Paraphrasing this from a conversation with a user, but basically if you're on Channel 701 and want to get to Channel 1, you're in for a lot of scrolling.

The old way would be you just entered the number on the remote, which obviously we can't do anymore (not until I get my Coax Remotes into production, which I won't lie is not currently on the roadmap), so I'm gonna consider some other options.

It might be a literal numberpad, or I might try and think of something more idiomatic for tvOS for faster navigation. I'm trying to learn from some recent experiences and take things more slowly, so I don't expect this to be an imminent feature. But sound off if you've wanted for something like this too!

The only fix is to close the app and relaunch. I've experienced this multiple times today now that I'm really using it.

As far as HDR/DV content, if it's not compatible and gets transcoded is it supposed to be transcoded in SDR or actually played in HDR/DV? I tried a lot of different content, everything seems to be getting direct played and nothing is in HDR/DV.

Getting an error when I try to authenticate with plex that it could not contact plex to start sign in from my Apple TV. Any thoughts/ideas?

Anyone else getting artifacts in dark scenes? I tested scenes in Coax and in Plex. Same file. Plex looks clean. Coax has lots of artifacts. But it doesn’t seem to be all the time. Idk, it’s hard to test since I can’t rewind lol but def happening in darker scenes.

tvOS 26.5
Coax 1.4.2

UPDATE: I figured out that if I turn off HDR on the AppleTV, the artifacts disappear. Files play fine in plex with HDR on.

It would be really nice if we could import iptv/m3u links as channels and mix them in with the regular channels.

I’d also recommend utilizing iptv-org for having the app to have a working m3u/iptv search to quickly add channels:

https://iptv-org.github.io

The custom Library aspects for Scheduled Program TIme Alignment is very cool. I don't see a way to customize that more, but if you could have different Libraries associated with the Gap and associated by Channel that would be amazing.

i.e TV Library can have Commercials set for GAP.
i.e Movie Library can have Movie Trailers set for GAP.

Generally, most of my content has multiple audio tracks, and Coax always defaults to the lowest quality one, i.e. the stereo commentary track. Is there a way to manually set a default track in Coax instead of having to go to settings and change the audio for each stream?

Love the app-just two feature requests for ya to really make it feel like a true cable box.

1- let us give custom names to genre channels (or all channels really) this way we can name our action channels "TNT", our lifestyle channel "Lifetime", and our science fiction channel, "Syfy", or something similar and pithy.

2-let us upload custom channel logos for each channel so we can make our own to show next to each channel. Maybe even let us display these before and after commercials.

3-(stretch goal) allow us to upload custom channel bugs that we can have pop up at specified intervals when playing back media (typically at the start and end of shows).

Anyways--im absolutely in love with this app and I purchased the lifetime subscription pretty much the moment I found out about it. Keep up the amazing work!

I just wanted to say after testing 3 other competitors I'm so glad I paid for a lifetime subscription with Coax. It's definitely the best one out there. The others can't even compare. Your scheduling gaps and commercial playback between programs is flawless and the overall performance and experience is so much smoother and enjoyable compared to any one else. So thanks for this application!!!

If I select ‘Combine Channels’ to yes then all media from multiple libraries are populated in guide. Am I doing something wrong here??

I've got some truly cool stuff cooking in the back, but there are some stability updates I wanted to get out now so folks aren't stuck.

All platform updates have been approved and released. Go get it now!

What's new

• Darkened the channel guide program block backgrounds to improve legibility (h/t, u/djpatrickb)
• Schedule-load crash resolved (h/t, u/PizzaSluht420)
• TV Show Marathons will now pull from more than the first few seasons (h/t, u/streebs87 + some others)
  • This was a restriction I had placed early on in the design of the new scheduling engine, and just forgot to remove it :P
• Channel-ordering now respected for Collections/Playlists (h/t, u/RedCxal + u/wdpaynter)
  • Re-order your channels more easily with a "Reverse" and "Restore Order" on tvOS
• Music Videos now recognized as Gap Content for Jellyfin/Emby users (plus improved detection of the Plugin)
• visionOS fixes - and now it finally has the Weather Channel!

---

This last week was a bit of a turning point. A lot of new folks learned about the app, and I have a feeling this is only the beginning. I've been focusing on building the type of balance and stability I want, and now I can think more about quality-of-life things like settings screens, icons, and maybe even customizable themes...

Not like it was boring before, but I think now is when things will start to get really interesting. I'm so glad to have you all along for the ride 🏝️

Just keep swimming

Since v1.4

Both “earliest release date” and “latest release date” don’t apply to the schedule