VortX 0.3.14 Beta 1 is the first public build of the 0.3.14 line, and it is a big one. VortX becomes the front door: sign in with your VortX account on every platform and every tab treats that as signed in, with Stremio, Trakt, SIMKL, and Nuvio moved into one optional Integrations screen. Trakt and SIMKL are live (device-code sign-in, scrobbling, watchlist and history sync, your lists as catalogs). You can bring your Nuvio add-ons in, tap any cast member to open a person page with a bio and their filmography, and connect your own Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby servers so their libraries and files join VortX as ranked sources. The Dolby Vision player reached parity with the built-in player, and the whole app took on a warm liquid-glass look with a real macOS surface pass.
This beta also closes the issues from the last test build. The Apple TV install failure is fixed (the build was targeting a tvOS version newer than any shipping Apple TV, so it refused to install). Your main profile now comes back in seconds after a reinstall instead of minutes. And series episodes find their sources again.
It is labeled Beta 1 on purpose: it went out on build-and-review verification rather than a long soak, so if something is off, the Please test section below is where to look, and a diagnostic log plus a GitHub issue helps us land Beta 2 fast. In-place update, nothing resets.
New in 0.3.14
- VortX becomes the front door. Sign-in leads with the VortX account on every platform, and every tab treats a VortX sign-in as signed in, so a VortX-only user no longer hits Sign in on Home, Discover, Library, Live, Search, or Add-ons. In Settings the VortX account sits at the top and a new Integrations screen holds Stremio, Trakt, SIMKL, and Nuvio as optional imports. VortX keeps its own account, add-ons, and library. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Trakt and SIMKL are live. Device-code sign-in with no password typed into the app, scrobble on play, pause, and stop, watchlist and history sync, and your Trakt and SIMKL lists as catalogs, in Settings, Integrations. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Nuvio import. Paste the add-on link you use in Nuvio and its catalogs and streams join VortX through the same hardened install path as every other add-on. This first beta covers Nuvio's Stremio-compatible add-ons; running Nuvio's own provider plugins is planned next. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Cast and crew pages. Cast members on a title page are tappable and open a person page with a short bio and a grid of their other movies and shows, tapping through to each. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- QR backup on Apple TV. Back up and Restore in Settings carry your account and data to a fresh install via a short-lived pairing code that holds only the pairing handle, never your data. Apple TV.
- Media servers: Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby. Connect your servers (Plex PIN link, Jellyfin Quick Connect or password, Emby password) and their libraries join Home and Discover as rows, while matched titles list your server's own copies as direct-play sources, ranked alongside everything else and badged per server. Playback goes straight from your server to your device, credentials stay in the keychain and your encrypted sync only, and with no server connected the feature is invisible. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- The liquid-glass redesign. A shared VortX glass material (warm translucent fill, lit top edge, soft shadow, ember active state) floats the navigation, the title hero buttons, and the in-player controls on every system, upgrading to Apple's real Liquid Glass on the newest ones and standing down to an opaque legible surface under Reduce Transparency. Appearance only: every control and its wiring are unchanged, and poster art is never glassed. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- A real macOS surface pass. The profile picker fills the window instead of clipping, the Home and title-page heroes use nearly the whole window, the hero trailer autoplays, title pages pin the artwork while episodes and sources scroll on their own, colored buttons take the warm glass treatment, and the top navigation has room to breathe. Mac.
- Smart Source Selection. One panel in Settings, Streams gathers source filtering as chips (Prefer words, Only words, Avoid words with hide-or-rank-down), plus an opt-in auto-pick that starts your best match and a live preview that reorders a real source list as you type. Per-profile, synced, and Kids profiles always hard-hide avoided words. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Live TV playlists: M3U and Xtream. Add an M3U URL or an Xtream portal login and its channels appear in the Live tab with their program guide. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Decade catalog cover art, picked fresh each day from the titles inside each decade. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Watched badges on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The per-profile check badge and dimmed cover from Apple TV now appear on every Home rail and browse grid. iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Android Phase A (contributed by jbecker-it, #128). The Android app went from a skeleton to a real engine-driven client: sign-in, catalogs, Continue Watching, add-on management, Discover, Library, Search, and full detail pages over the shared engine, with a Play-Store-clean flavor. Still in development. Android.
Fixed in 0.3.14
- Your main profile comes back in seconds after a reinstall, not minutes. A device that silently restored your sign-in from the keychain was not starting its sync pull until it was next brought to the foreground (on Apple TV that is the screensaver dismissal, up to several minutes), so you sat on a default Main profile until it caught up. The pull now starts at launch and at session restore, and a guard stops a not-yet-hydrated device from pushing its placeholder Main over your real profile in the cloud, so your other devices are never overwritten by one that has not synced yet. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Series episodes find their sources again. An identifier-matching bug returned no streams at all for some series episodes; episode ids now normalize to the show id plus season and episode, so a well-sourced episode shows its full source list. Movies are unchanged. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- The Dolby Vision player now matches the built-in player everywhere but Dolby Vision itself. The AVPlayer path matches the built-in player on playback, seeking, every audio and subtitle control, skip segments, trickplay, scrobbling, binge auto-advance, chapters, and speed; a new Player engine switch in the in-player settings flips between the two mid-title, carrying over your position, tracks, and speed. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- More Dolby Vision titles keep true Dolby Vision and their Atmos. A title whose file name carried release-group text was disqualified from the Dolby Vision lane before it was tried; the gate now probes the real bytes. And the fixed twenty-second no-first-frame timeout that demoted a heavy, still-downloading 4K title (losing Dolby Vision and Atmos in one step) is now progress-aware, so a slow 4K title keeps both. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Trailers play in the right language and to the end. A trailer with multiple audio languages now selects yours instead of whichever was listed first, and a streaming fix keeps trailers from stopping partway through. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Apple TV binge tracking stays on the right episode. After auto-playing through several episodes, backing out now shows the episode you actually reached, Watch Now plays that episode with its own subtitles, and each finished episode is marked watched. Apple TV.
- The streaming server survives a background suspension (#130). Leaving the app backgrounded no longer strands the embedded server offline with no reconnect; the re-listen is restored, gated so it only fires on a real suspension and never mid-stream. Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad. Thanks to konrepo.
- A malformed source can no longer crash the app during ranking (#127). An add-on stream advertising an absurd size or seeder count could overflow an internal calculation and take the app down while a source list sorted; those figures are now clamped. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- A round of Mac refinements. The round player buttons lost a soft dark halo and the top-row controls read crisply over bright video, a Settings description that was cut off now wraps in full, decade shelves load their cover art, and the leftover grey bar with its dead back control at the top of fullscreen playback is gone. Mac.
Android, very early
An Android build is attached for the first time, and it is early. This is Phase A: the Android app runs on the same engine as the Apple apps, with account sign-in, catalogs, Continue Watching, Discover, Library, Search, add-on management, full movie and series detail pages, and a working player. It does NOT have the liquid-glass redesign or full parity with the Apple apps, and it is a debug build, so expect rough edges and missing polish. Sideload VortX-Android-v0.3.14-beta.1.apk on an Android phone (enable install from unknown sources for your browser or files app). This is the libmpv player build. Android phone.
Please test
This is Beta 1, verified by build gate and code review rather than a long soak, so real-hardware reports matter. If anything is off, export the diagnostic log (Settings; on iPhone, iPad, and Mac you can save it straight to Files) and open an issue.
- Install on Apple TV. The whole point of this beta: it should install cleanly now, no white icon, no unable to install. If it still refuses, tell me your Apple TV's tvOS version.
- Reinstall and your profile. Delete and reinstall (or install fresh over the top): your real profile and settings should return within a few seconds of launch, not after minutes, and you should not get stranded on a default Main profile. Your Mac and iPhone copies should stay put throughout.
- Series sources. Open a series episode you know is well sourced (a popular show): it should show its full source list, not zero.
- The new look. Glass chrome should read clean and legible over bright content, colored buttons should stay readable, and nothing should be clipped on Mac (profile picker, hero, fullscreen player).
- Integrations. Sign in to Trakt or SIMKL with the device code, play something, and check it scrobbles and your lists appear as catalogs. Connect a Plex, Jellyfin, or Emby server and confirm its libraries and direct-play sources show up.
- Dolby Vision, still owed from the test line: Match Dynamic Range ON, play a 4K Dolby Vision MKV, the TV should read DOLBY VISION and the receiver Dolby Atmos, and it should hold past the five-minute mark. If it drops to HDR10, export the log and send it.
Install
Mac (.dmg, easiest, never expires). Download VortX-macOS-v0.3.14-beta.1-ci.dmg, drag VortX into Applications, then clear Apple's one-time quarantine: open it once, click Done, then System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway (or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/VortX.app). Full guide: Install on Mac.
iPhone, iPad, Apple TV (sideload the IPA). The IPAs are unsigned, because VortX is open-source and distributed outside the App Store with no Apple Developer ID yet, so you re-sign them yourself with Sideloadly, AltStore / SideStore, or Signulous. No jailbreak. Full guide: Installing on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.
Each asset lists a SHA-256 checksum (SHA256SUMS-ci.txt) so you can confirm your download matches what the public GitHub Actions workflow built from this code.