# Roadmap

Where VortX is headed, in the order we'll build it. No fixed dates; it ships when it's good.

VortX is the modern, native streaming app for Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac. We build on a native Rust engine and the add-on protocol, so the focus is everything around them: the best player and interface we can build. Apple TV came first, and as of 0.3.0 the native apps span Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with desktop and Android in active development on the same shared engine. The aim is an all-in-one media hub on every platform, done one solid piece at a time, on a path to VortX's own engine and server at 1.0. Along the way, a deep set of power-user features (profiles with a PIN, skip intro and outro, catalog management, keyword stream filtering, enriched metadata, a download manager, live subtitle sync) ships here free, with our own implementations that depend on nobody's gated backend.

## Have an idea?

Feature requests and bug reports are welcome, and they shape this list. Start a [GitHub Discussion](https://github.com/VortXTV/VortX/discussions) to suggest a feature or think one through, or [open an issue](https://github.com/VortXTV/VortX/issues) for a bug. Every released change is tracked in [CHANGELOG.md](CHANGELOG.md).

## The version path

- **0.2.x (shipped).** Skip intro and outro, the cinematic redesign, the living backdrop, ranked Watch Now with the two-level quality picker, instant preloaded auto-play next, and profiles.
- **0.3.0 (shipped).** Native iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps on the same engine and player as the Apple TV app, at full parity: the cinematic detail page, ranked sources with the quality picker, full settings and profiles, an interactive auto-rotating featured hero with a muted in-hero trailer, trailers on every device, **Live TV** (channels from tv / IPTV add-ons, rendered as channel tiles, with a now/next strip from the channel's EPG schedule and live-tuned playback), and torrents on the Mac (it now bundles the streaming server). This replaces the web-host iPhone and iPad build with native everywhere. Desktop (Windows, Linux, and Mac via Tauri) and Android (phone and TV) are in active development on the shared engine. A browser app is live at [web.vortx.tv](https://web.vortx.tv) (account sign-in, your add-ons and library and keys, local profiles, app-matching settings; it plays direct, debrid, and HLS in the browser, with torrents needing the apps) and updates continuously alongside the betas.
- **0.3.5 (shipped). The VortX name and look.** A new name, a gold-on-obsidian app icon, and an animated VortX intro across all four platforms, in place with nothing reset. Adds **Backup & Restore** (save your profiles, theme, and preferences to a file and restore them later) plus a smarter best-stream picker (a true remux beats a merely bigger file), reliability fixes for the Apple TV menu bar and source list, and a steadier streaming server.
- **0.3.8 (pre-release, Beta 10 is current). The VortX account, and a power-user wave.** A free, **end-to-end-encrypted account**: sign in and your profiles and settings sync across devices, with the server holding only ciphertext. Manage it on the web at vortx.tv/dashboard (backup/restore, two-factor, change password, connect Stremio). Across its betas through **Beta 9** the 0.3.8 line grew well past the account: cross-device sync that merges profiles instead of overwriting them, full profile management on the web dashboard, in-app updates with an AltStore source and **automatic update notifications** on every device, **64 languages** with an in-app language picker and right-to-left layout, **true Dolby Vision on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac** through Apple's AVPlayer with a fallback to the built-in player, **Dolby Atmos passthrough and AirPods Spatial Audio**, **per-profile add-ons** with health checks, **Kids Mode**, **in-app debrid keys**, one-tap **quality presets**, **regex source filters**, profile **library export and import**, **Import from Stremio**, **Where to Watch**, **anime skip**, an in-player **frame grab**, **poster rating overlays** (now served by VortX's own ratings service, no key needed), **fourteen seek-bar styles**, **in-app add-on install** by manifest URL, a **catalog manager**, optional **TMDB-powered "More like this"**, save-magnets-and-links for later, a max file-size cap, and background-playback keep-alive on iPhone and iPad. Beta 6 and Beta 7 added an in-app **add-on store** with live health, **source pinning** (pin a provider for a title, a show, or everywhere), a plain-language **reason for each auto-picked source**, the **Prefer AVPlayer player, with true Dolby Vision and in-player Episodes and Sources panels, reaching Apple TV and Mac**, and smarter recommendations. Beta 9 began the **account-owns-everything** work: your add-ons, library, and sources now load from your VortX account so a logged-out or slow Stremio session no longer empties the app, with granular per-category "Mirror from Stremio" toggles. It also made the shared **AVPlayer first-class on Apple TV** under the full player chrome (Dolby Vision, AirPlay, and Picture-in-Picture on Auto, with the built-in player as a true fallback), added an **Apple TV in-hero trailer** on the detail page, moved poster art to VortX's own **self-hosted ERDB** service (erdb.vortx.tv), added a **fanart.tv key**, and fixed YouTube trailers on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, synced-key preservation, durable cross-device profile deletes, exact-file magnet reopen, an Apple TV Dolby Atmos audio mitigation, and Discover pagination past a cursorless catalog. Beta 10 is the test-pass cleanup: the catalogs became wide, cinematic landscape cards on every platform, iPhone, iPad, and Mac trailers now play inside the app, settings sync across devices again, Apple TV Back returns to Home before it exits, ERDB posters became a no-token toggle with an optional fanart.tv source, and a batch of Apple TV focus and iPhone layout fixes landed.
- **0.3.9 (shipped, build 150).** Your language, everywhere, and a Discover you can shape. The interface now speaks **over 100 languages**, and **titles, posters, and logos localize across every catalog** from VortX's own metadata service. **Discover personalization** orders catalogs by your region, turns individual categories on or off, and localizes the rows. A **cleaner, more cinematic look** lands on iPhone, iPad, and Mac (full-bleed artwork, a bold Play button, a roomier layout, and a real desktop layout on Mac), with a **tap-to-expand Cast & Crew** section, **poster style presets** (width, corner radius, landscape art, hide-labels), a **combine Discover and Search** toggle, and a **YouTube-style buffered-ahead** scrubber. Playback and sources gain **Dolby Vision from MKV files**, **community subtitles** with an "also available in" language row and a working subtitle-sync control, **TorBox usenet and search**, a **debrid cache indicator**, **install add-ons by QR code**, a **trailer language pick**, and **resume timestamps**, plus **SSRF hardening**, **Apple TV focus fixes**, and **tap-the-active-tab to jump to the top**. **Trailers now play natively on your own device** at up to 1080p, **trickplay scrub previews** fill in from every title you watch, cached sources resolve faster, and paused or cancelled offline downloads survive an app relaunch. Apple TV gains a Settings **What's New** page. The Top Picks rail, MDBList ratings, seek-bar styles, and inline in-hero clips (#44) already shipped early across the 0.3.8 betas.
- **0.3.10 (shipped, build 151). The reliability hotfix over 0.3.9.** A focused pass that makes the daily path feel right. **Instant playback is back**: the source you pick starts straight away instead of stalling behind a pre-play resolve. **Continue Watching plays the exact source you chose**, reresolving that same debrid file on resume rather than re-running the cross-source auto-pick, so a source that plays fine no longer triggers a "tried N sources" cascade. **Trailers play from your own device** through the on-device YouTube path at up to 1080p (with the audio track played alongside the video), and a dead trailer says "Trailer unavailable" instead of quietly starting the movie. **Streaming-service logos fill the pill**, and a provider with no available logo shows its full name (Hulu, Peacock, BBC iPlayer), never a single-letter initial. **Trickplay now contributes from every device you watch on**: the mid-play upload fires as you go and no longer drops real captures from wide-gamut HDR frames, so the scrub-preview pool grows on Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV alike. We evaluated resolving trailers from debrid and add-on sources first and chose not to: those only surface a trailer when your keys or add-ons happen to carry one, and the ranker picks the best playback source, not a trailer, so YouTube on your own device stays the trailer path. Shipped as a hotfix by merging beta into main.

- **0.3.11 (in testing, build 152). A reliability follow-up to 0.3.10.** Ends the Apple TV playback lag and audio crackle that built up minutes into a stream (the ambient hero trailer and a streamed-remux subtitle job were running under the player), fixes a **Dolby Vision crash** a few minutes in, and now plays **Dolby Vision from MKVs that carry the DV signal inside the video stream** (not just a container tag). The **next episode prewarms** so it starts fast even on 4K debrid files that never report a length, a **Continue Watching resume no longer gets stuck** on an expired link (it hops to a fresh source), the community (Singularity) sources move **back inside the Apple TV source list**, and the Apple TV login works with the **Continuity keyboard**. Also: the Streaming Services row no longer double-counts a service, **trickplay uploads reliably**, a torrent and a debrid download can no longer collide, and a **broad security and reliability hardening pass** across all four apps. In testing on the prerelease before it moves to Latest.

- **0.3.11 build 154 (pre-release, in testing; becomes 0.3.12 when verified). A stability and playback follow-up over build 153.** Ends the **Mac source-list freeze** that could force you to quit the app (the list is now assembled and ranked off the main thread and published once, instead of rebuilt several times a second during loading), makes **Play from start** replay the exact source you were watching instead of jumping to another, makes **Continue Watching resume instantly** when you come back soon (the still-valid link is used at once rather than always re-minted), lights **true Dolby Vision on Apple TV** (the player lane that carries real DV now switches the TV into its Dolby Vision mode instead of leaving it on HDR10), and fixes iPhone/iPad **downloads that failed** with a false "not enough storage" or a locked-device cannot-create-file error. **Removing an add-on now also clears its sources** from open source lists right away, and community (Singularity) sources render **inline only**, sortable with your other sources. In testing on the prerelease before it moves to Latest.

- **0.3.12 (shipped 2026-07-08). Dolby Vision that actually shows as Dolby Vision, delivered as local HLS. Rolls up the whole 0.3.11 test line, builds 155 to 166.** The headline fixes (build 163): the Dolby Vision display-mode request itself was wrong (a mode number from years-old tvOS data that means HDR10 on current tvOS), so even a healthy true-Dolby-Vision session asked the TV for HDR10; it is now built through Apple's public display-criteria API with a genuine Dolby Vision descriptor, fires before the video mounts, and covers native Dolby Vision MP4/HLS routes that never switched at all. A Continue-Watching resume of a Dolby Vision title used to seek into bytes the on-the-fly rebuild had not produced yet, silently falling back to the built-in player (HDR10 plus plain multichannel) on every second and later watch; a resumed Dolby Vision title now starts from the beginning with a note, keeping the resume point safe, until the seekable remux lands. The built-in player is honest now (it requests HDR10 for the Dolby Vision it tone-maps and says "Dolby Vision title, HDR10 output" instead of mislabeling the panel), the true-DV lane prefers the E-AC3 track that actually carries Atmos ahead of raw channel count and verifies the produced stream's Atmos signaling in the log, and the silent-defeat paths speak up (a Match Dynamic Range OFF hint on screen, an Always-libmpv-override warning, always-on route/fallback breadcrumbs in the exportable log). Build 164 adds the "Cannot Open" fix: a Dolby Vision MKV that mounted and then failed with "Cannot Open" (some web-sourced single-layer rips keep the video's setup data inside the frames, and the rebuilt header came out empty) now rebuilds that header from the first video frame and plays as true Dolby Vision, or steps aside to the built-in player instantly with the exact reason recorded in the exportable log, instead of failing after a mounted-then-rejected item. Build 165 fixes two device-reported regressions from the build 163/164 test: an Apple TV playback stutter and app slowdown (the player re-picked its engine and wrote a diagnostic line on every screen refresh, several times a second, which piled up over a long 4K session; the engine is now latched once per stream like iPhone/iPad/Mac already do), and every Dolby Vision breadcrumb now writes to the log users export so any remaining case is pinpointable, plus Turkish, Dutch, Polish, and Swedish added to the default audio and subtitle language lists. Build 166 is the real Dolby Vision fix and the reason this ships as 0.3.12: the device logs proved tvOS only decodes Dolby Vision through HLS, never a progressive file, so the app now serves the rebuilt video to Apple's player as local Dolby Vision HLS (init segment, one-second segments, and a playlist carrying the DV codec, supplemental-codec, and PQ range), the way Infuse, Plex, and Jellyfin do it, fully fail-soft to the built-in player in about ten seconds if it does not frame (the earlier one-minute wait was reverted). Build 166 also gives audio and subtitle languages a first choice plus a fallback in any language (add-on subtitles auto-picked by language, with a match-audio-to-subtitle option). Also on the line: a Dolby Vision MKV whose debrid link contained a stray ".mp4" fragment no longer errors with "can't play this file"; a TrueHD/DTS-only Dolby Vision file converts that one track on the fly and keeps true Dolby Vision; the lane maps the real multichannel bed in the original language instead of a stereo or commentary track listed first; and the built-in player opens at the receiver's real channel count. Honest ceiling: a Dolby Vision file forced to stay on the built-in player (mainly torrents) shows tone-mapped HDR10 with multichannel surround, not DV/Atmos, until a later player-engine rebuild. Planned follow-ups: the seekable remux (native resume on the true-DV lane) and widening the remux lane to Atmos-labeled non-DV MKVs behind a beta toggle. Needs a real Apple TV plus a receiver to verify.

- **0.3.13 (shipped 2026-07-11). The community release. Rolls up the 0.3.12 test line, builds 167 to 174.** A player reliability series contributed by jbecker-it (his second contribution to VortX and his biggest yet), verified on real hardware: the pause-shortly-after-start crash is gone (the player trims its read-ahead after a minute of pause and answers the system memory warning, restoring the full buffer on resume), watch progress saves on streams that never report a duration, heavy scrubbing can no longer save a stale position or falsely mark an episode watched, audio stays clean after big seeks and track changes (one short honest buffering pause scoped to exactly those moments), and Continue Watching refreshes the moment playback exits with resume falling back to the account record when the engine has no answer. Community-reported fixes alongside it: add-on HTTP and HLS streams now appear (both engine stream surfaces are read and merged), a removed add-on no longer ghosts the Home customize list, the diagnostic log saves or shares directly without a QR code, stream rows fit narrow iPhones, and where-to-watch logos are legible everywhere. The line also carries the builds 167 to 173 work: the Dolby Vision recovery series, the launch profile picker on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and Liquid Glass on the floating controls. Held for a later pass: the honest Streaming-cache presentation, re-landing across tvOS and iOS/Mac together.
- **0.3.14 (in testing, Beta 9 build 200). A large feature line over 0.3.13, and the biggest Android release yet.** VortX becomes the front door on every platform (sign in with your VortX account first, Stremio optional), with **Trakt and SIMKL** as first-class integrations: sign-in by code, scrobble, watchlist and history sync, your lists as catalog rows, plus **Trakt check-in, one to ten ratings, a resume suggestion, and your personal lists** and your **SIMKL plan-to-watch on Home**. Adds **Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby** servers as source and catalog providers, **bring-your-own Live TV** (M3U and Xtream with EPG), **Smart source selection** (prefer, only, and avoid chips with a live preview and optional auto-pick), an **Apple TV Top Shelf** for Continue Watching, **Match Frame Rate** for judder-free 24p, **auto-delete watched downloads**, season and range **batch downloads** with per-episode retry, an offline landing, and a **glass design language** completed across the Apple apps. Beta 5 lands the correctness pass: **episode identity proven end to end**, so the episode you pick is the one that plays, shows its details, and saves your progress, even across season packs, cached debrid sources, and fast episode switches; and the Beta 3 field reports fixed, Continue Watching no longer empty (#149), add-on subtitles back with an optional my-languages filter (#148), subtitles no longer stuck on Loading, and **Dolby Vision holding instead of dropping to HDR10** (#148, #147). A major **Dolby Vision reliability series** keeps true DV and Atmos on more titles and confirms the stream at the byte level. Under the hood, a **sync data-loss fix (#145)** stops one device from overwriting another, the webapp settings vocabulary is reconciled so a change made on the dashboard lands correctly on the app, and the Apple TV **focus platter** is fixed at the shared cause with glass that lifts off the canvas. **Android arrives as a sideload APK for phone and Android TV**: VortX account sign-in with realtime profile sync (library, settings, and API-key sync, plus sign-in on the TV itself, still porting), an in-process torrent streaming server, a first Android TV surface, profiles with per-profile watch isolation, preference-driven source ranking, offline downloads (phone and tablet), IPTV playlists, Picture-in-Picture with gestures and system media integration (phone), 1080p trailers and subtitle fetching, and a long list of player fixes. A first **webOS and Tizen** TV surface for the web app lands in source as a preview, pending packaging and device validation before it reaches web.vortx.tv. In testing on the prerelease; Top Shelf and Trakt/SIMKL arrived ahead of their 0.4 and 0.7 roadmap slots. **Beta 6 through Beta 9 then took the line somewhere it was not planned to go: we stopped taking the player engine as a prebuilt package and now build the whole stack ourselves** from pinned upstream sources (mpv at master, 895 commits past its last release, libplacebo built from source at API 371, nine slices across Apple TV, iPhone, iPad and Mac, two patches of our own), which is what made Dolby Vision Profile 7 enhancement-layer compositing and a real Dolby Digital Plus encoder possible on the built-in player. Alongside it: **a Mac can act as the engine for another device** over a paired connection, doing the container work for Dolby Vision MKVs while the Apple TV spends its whole chip on the picture, which also makes those files fully seekable; the Dolby Vision lane got its startup, rewind, track-selection and Atmos passthrough correctness pass; **image-based (PGS) Blu-ray subtitles are read on the device and turned into ordinary subtitles**, arriving well ahead of their 0.5.0 slot below, though as a first pass with real limits recorded in the changelog's known issues; and the app began moving its behaviour server-side so most fixes no longer need you to reinstall anything.
- **Android, now in beta.** The native Android app (phone and Android TV in one build) runs on the shared engine and the same libmpv player the Apple apps use, and ships as a sideload APK in the 0.3.14 line with VortX account sign-in and realtime profile sync, an in-process torrent server, preference-driven source ranking, offline downloads, IPTV playlists, and Picture-in-Picture. Still ahead before it reaches Apple-level polish: sign-in on the TV itself, the rest of the library, settings, and API-key sync, and a Play Store flavor listing. The platform's own player is kept as a Dolby Vision and Atmos-passthrough fallback.
- **0.4.0, VortX expands.** Native **debrid** deepened: the in-app keys (Real-Debrid, TorBox, Premiumize, AllDebrid) already shipped in 0.3.8, so this adds **cached-torrent checking**, **usenet/NZB** resolution, and a **browsable debrid library**, with no separate configuration site; a **trust filter** that drops cam rips, dead links, and fake quality labels; **in-app add-on install** on every platform; a curated **Home** of collection rails; **auto-play trailers** in our own player; the rest of the rebrand under the hood (the move to the com.vortx identifiers); and the start of **VortX cloud sync** for profiles and settings. (In-app debrid keys, keyword filters, and picture-in-picture already shipped in the 0.3.8 line.)
- **0.5.0, the player, finished.** Seek-preview thumbnails on the scrubber; dual subtitle tracks; image-based (PGS) subtitles (a first pass landed early in the 0.3.14 line; this slot is now the quality pass: sizing, full-length coverage, every language, and time-shifting); anime skip coverage through a second timestamp database; an auto-skip option with a cancel countdown; contributing skip timestamps back from the player; cross-device playback sync so you can pause on the TV and pick up on the iPad; sleep timer; picture-in-picture on iPhone and iPad.
- **0.6.0, discovery and metadata.** Our own metadata enrichment (multi-source ratings, cast and crew with photos, studio badges, trailers); advanced search with real filters; poster rating overlays; HD logos and art; a release calendar and a "this week" rail; catalog management (move, hide, rename, merge into groups); pick which metadata add-on drives the home screen so one provider's outage never takes the app down.
- **0.7.0, sync, casting, offline.** Trakt sign-in, sync, scrobbling, and calendar; AirPlay; a download manager for offline viewing (debrid and direct sources); live subtitle auto-sync; backup and restore of your whole setup as a shareable file.
- **0.8.0, the theme studio.** Custom colors beyond the eight built-in accents; full player theming down to the seek bar; home layout variants; show-and-hide for tabs you never use; shareable theme files; backgrounds tinted from the focused title's artwork.
- **0.9.0, hardening.** Cross-device QA, performance passes, and complete documentation of every page and setting. The 1.0 beta.
- **1.0.** Our own engine and our own streaming server, replacing the pieces we currently inherit: our own ranking core, a built-in torrent engine so torrents work without debrid, a scraper runtime, and our own metadata service. The app's codec edge (TrueHD Atmos 7.1, DTS-HD MA, subtitles that render properly) becomes the headline rather than the surprise. The VortX identity already arrived at 0.3.5; 1.0 is when the engine and server underneath become ours too. A community **scraper runtime** (sideloadable JS sources, beyond add-ons) starts here and grows through the 1.x line.

## After 1.0

The bigger pieces, each its own chunk of work:

- **1.1, sources expanded.** Usenet; sideloadable scrapers from community repos; WebDAV and FTP sources.
- **1.2, live TV done properly.** A real channel guide (EPG), catch-up and timeshift, recording, multiview, and in-guide previews.
- **1.3, beyond video.** Music, podcasts, and audiobooks in the same app; first-class anime tracking with season merging and a release feed; watch-together with synced playback and chat on a relay you can host yourself.
- **1.x niceties.** Casting beyond AirPlay (Chromecast, DLNA, Roku); shader upscaling and tone-mapping for SDR screens; audio and color profiles; Discord presence; a built-in ad and tracker blocker; a taste-scored discovery feed.
- **2.0, everywhere.** Apple Vision and the remaining platforms on the shared core, building on the native Mac, desktop, and Android foundations laid in 0.3.0.

## Future directions we're exploring

These are aspirational, not commitments, and the order may change. The idea is one unified, ranked source list that pulls from more than add-ons alone:

- **Your own media servers (arrived in the 0.3.14 line).** Surface streams from a personal Plex, Jellyfin, or Emby server right next to add-on streams in the same ranked Watch Now list, so your own library and your add-ons live in one place. Works on Apple TV too, including the Lite (no-server) build for direct and debrid playback.
- **Community JS scraper plugins.** A sideloadable scraper runtime so community JS scraper plugins can run inside VortX on every platform, Apple TV included, by pasting your own manifest URL (no curated or bundled source list, to keep VortX a neutral client). This is the same scraper runtime the version path lists at 1.0, broadened across surfaces.
- **Trakt and SIMKL watch sync (arrived in the 0.3.14 line).** Sign in and mirror your watch history and watchlist to Trakt or SIMKL, so progress follows you across the apps you already use.

## Shipped

- **The 0.3.10 reliability hotfix (build 151).** Instant playback restored (no pre-play resolve stall); Continue Watching replays the exact source you chose instead of re-running the auto-pick; trailers play from your own device with a clear "unavailable" when there is none; full brand-colored Streaming Services tiles with a full-name fallback; trickplay contributes from every device including 4K, HDR, and Dolby Vision; dual-layer Dolby Vision Profile 7 from MKV plays as true DV; Continue Watching clears finished titles; ranked Singularity sources; an account-sync conflict retry so a simultaneous save is not lost; reliable posters with off-main artwork decoding; and a hardened source-you-pick-plays path with capped, cached-first failover.
- **The 0.3.9 localization, Discover, and cinematic wave (build 150).** Over 100 languages with an in-app picker and right-to-left layout; titles, posters, and logos localized across every catalog from VortX's own metadata service; Discover personalization (region ordering, per-category on/off, localized rows); a cleaner, more cinematic look on iPhone, iPad, and Mac with a real desktop layout on Mac; poster style presets (width, corner radius, landscape art, hide-labels), a tap-to-expand Cast & Crew section, a combine-Discover-and-Search toggle, and a YouTube-style buffered-ahead scrubber; Dolby Vision from MKV files; community subtitles with an "also available in" language row and a working subtitle-sync control; TorBox usenet and search; a debrid cache indicator; install add-ons by QR code; a trailer language pick; resume timestamps; trailers that play natively on your own device at up to 1080p; trickplay scrub previews that fill in from every title you watch; faster cached-source resolution; offline downloads that survive a pause, cancel, and app relaunch; an Apple TV What's New page; SSRF hardening; Apple TV focus fixes; and tap-the-active-tab to jump to the top.
- **The 0.3.8 account and power-user wave (betas through Beta 9).** A free end-to-end-encrypted account with cross-device profile and settings sync; the account now owns your add-ons, library, and sources (the app hydrates from it independent of a live Stremio session, with per-category Mirror-from-Stremio toggles); 64 languages with right-to-left support; true Dolby Vision through Apple's AVPlayer (with a fallback to the built-in player), now first-class on Apple TV under the full player chrome (AirPlay and Picture-in-Picture on Auto); per-profile add-ons with health checks; Kids Mode; in-app debrid keys; one-tap quality presets; regex source filters; profile library export and import; Import from Stremio; Where to Watch; anime skip; an in-player frame grab; poster rating overlays (served by VortX's own ratings and self-hosted ERDB art services); a fanart.tv key; fourteen seek-bar styles; in-app updates with an AltStore source; and inline in-hero trailers behind the art on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV.
- **Native everywhere on Apple (0.3.0).** iPhone, iPad, and Mac join Apple TV as fully native apps on the native Rust engine and libmpv, at parity, replacing the iOS web host. Torrents now play on the Mac too (it bundles the streaming server).
- **The featured hero (0.3.0).** An interactive auto-rotating hero on Home, Library, and Discover cycles the top titles over their artwork with logo, rating, year, runtime, genres, and synopsis, and plays a muted trailer behind it. Reduced-motion aware.
- **Live TV (0.3.0).** Channels from your installed tv / IPTV add-ons get their own tab as logo channel tiles, with a now/next strip from the channel's EPG schedule on the detail page and live-tuned playback. (A full channel guide and M3U import are still ahead, in 1.2.)
- **Reliable torrents, at last (0.2.41 to 0.2.44).** Every torrent announces over TCP and TLS trackers as well as the usual ones, so swarms form even where plain UDP peer discovery is blocked, and the player's read-ahead is now sized to the source, so a torrent no longer grows in memory until the streaming server is killed. Debrid and direct links play straight through.
- **Automatic performance mode (0.2.44).** The app detects a memory-constrained Apple TV (the Apple TV HD) and takes a lighter path on its own, so the remote stays responsive while a weak CPU is busy; every Apple TV 4K stays full. Overridable in Settings.
- **Smarter Watch Now and smooth scrubbing (0.2.43).** Ranking now weighs file size and lossless audio, so it plays the genuinely best release instead of the first one that loaded, and holding to seek glides at an even, predictable pace.
- **Sound that reaches your soundbar (0.2.43).** The player claims a movie-playback audio session, fixing setups that had no sound over HDMI eARC and letting decoded multichannel audio reach a receiver.
- **Add to Library, QR hand-off, HDR toggle (0.2.41).** Save any title from its page or Continue Watching, show the playing stream as a QR code to keep watching on your phone, and tone-map Dolby Vision to SDR on displays that mishandle it.
- **Two builds and Direct Links Only (0.2.35 to 0.2.44).** The VortX build bundles the embedded server, a lighter Lite build drops it for debrid and direct links only, and a Direct Links Only switch in the VortX build turns torrents off on demand.
- **Seamless binge and per-series quality memory (0.2.25 to 0.2.35).** The next episode is fetched, ranked, and warmed up before the credits and locked to the same release group, and Watch Now reopens a series in the quality you last played it.
- **The embedded streaming server and Play a link (0.2.x).** Torrents stream through a bundled server on the Apple TV, and you can paste any magnet, direct URL, or resolved debrid or usenet link to play it.
- **Profiles (0.2.6).** A "Who's watching?" picker at launch, per-profile themes and avatars, an optional 4-digit PIN, and the choice of sharing the main Stremio account or signing into a separate one per profile. Switching keeps every session valid.
- **Playback flow fixes (0.2.5).** Leaving the player returns to the exact page playback started from. Auto-play next ranks every add-on's sources instead of taking the first answer, and preloads the next episode in the background at the halfway mark so it starts instantly. Real-Debrid sources rank last. The Watch button waits (with a live counter) until your add-ons finish answering.
- **The living backdrop (0.2.2 to 0.2.4).** Home, Discover, and Library put the focused title's full artwork and details behind everything, on every row and grid, with content tucking underneath as you browse.
- **The two-level quality picker (0.2.2).** Pick a tier (4K, 1080p, 720p, Others), then the flavor inside it (Dolby Vision, DTS-HD, BluRay, Atmos, WEB and the rest).
- **Skip intro and outro (0.2.0).** A skip pill the moment you enter a known segment: crowd-sourced timestamps looked up by IMDB, TMDB, or TVDB id, merged with the file's named chapters, with sanity guards and on-device caching.
- **The cinematic redesign (0.2.0).** Movie and episode pages went full-bleed: the artwork fills the screen, the details sit over it, and the dead space is gone. The focused tab follows your accent.
- **Watch Now and stream ranking (0.1.7.x).** Sources ranked with cached and direct streams first, one press plays the best, and the full per-add-on list stays one button away.
- **Themes (0.1.7.x).** Eight accents plus a true-black OLED mode, persisted, with the whole app repainting live.
- **Player resilience (0.1.7.x).** Bounded auto-retry with a reconnecting indicator when a stream hiccups, and an in-player source switcher that keeps your position.
- **Library management (0.1.7.x).** Long-press menus on posters everywhere: dismiss from Continue Watching, add to library, mark watched and unwatched, remove from library. Finished titles leave Continue Watching on their own.
- **Smart track selection (0.1.7.x).** Audio and subtitles picked from your preferred languages automatically.
- **Apple TV, native on the engine.** Home with real Continue Watching and every catalog, plus Discover, Library, Detail, the full per-add-on source list, Search, and add-on management. Watched state, resume, and live progress all run through the engine.
- **The player.** Full-screen libmpv with dependable focus and controls, a seekable scrubber with hold-to-seek, an options panel split into Audio, Subtitles, Aspect, and Episodes, audio and subtitle sync, aspect modes, language-grouped tracks, subtitle fonts for every script, and add-on load progress while streams arrive.
- **The basics.** Sign-in, smooth 4K with TrueHD and Atmos and HDR that actually play, posters that load, solid caching, and a player you can always back out of.
- **Native iPhone, iPad, and Mac (0.3.0).** The full native app on the native Rust engine and libmpv, at Apple TV parity: the cinematic detail page, ranked sources, profiles, the featured hero, trailers, Live TV, and torrents on the Mac. This replaced the earlier iOS web-host build (a web UI with a native libmpv player and external-player handoff).

## Distribution and onboarding

A self-hosted update channel is coming early, so the app can update itself rather than expire like an ordinary sideload. A friendly first-run setup rides along with it: sign in, and a one-step import pulls in your existing add-ons (and, once in-app debrid lands, your debrid keys), so switching over costs you nothing.