The big one (build 128): the Apple TV crash/hang fix, offline downloads, our own skip database with an in-player editor, community scrub-preview thumbnails, grouped Home collections, a configurable streaming cache, and a wave of sync and add-on improvements. In-place update, nothing resets. Please install it and report anything off, especially the Apple TV stability on real hardware.
Fixed
- Apple TV no longer hangs the whole device after finishing or stopping a title and opening another. This is the main crash, and it hit debrid (and direct-link) playback, not just torrents. When you left a title, the player kept its full video buffer and decoder alive until the system happened to clean it up later, so the moment you opened the next title there were briefly two players running, which pushed a 2 GB Apple TV past its memory limit and the system killed the whole app (menu bar frozen, Back drops to Home, server shown offline on reopen). The player now shuts down immediately when you leave a title, before the next one starts, so the two never overlap. The 2 GB Apple TV also keeps a smaller rewind buffer for extra headroom.
- Apple TV no longer hangs the whole device after watching a torrent. A separate path: the streaming server keeps a memory cap that protects the Apple TV from running out of memory, but it was only set once at startup, with no confirmation it actually took. On a slow start it could silently miss, and the server then ran with a 2 GB cache that pushes the app past the Apple TV's memory limit. The cap is now confirmed and retried until it sticks, and re-applied right before each torrent starts.
- A finished movie leaves Continue Watching on every profile. A movie watched to the end could stay pinned in Continue Watching, most often on a second profile. It clears now.
- Smoother second profile. Watch progress was nudging the cross-device sync on every tick while you watched; it now waits until you pause or stop, which keeps a second profile from feeling laggy.
- Apple TV: a movie's page opens on Watch Now again, not the Trailer button. When you opened a movie while its sources were still loading, the focus landed on the Trailer chip instead of Watch Now. The page now seats focus on Watch Now from the moment it appears and keeps it there as the sources settle.
- The player's top-right now shows the episode title, not just the season and episode number.
- Mac: arrow keys move focus on Home again.
Added
- Upcoming Episodes on Home. A new rail shows the next episode of the shows in your library that air within the next 45 days, soonest first, on Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It uses the same air-date data the new-episode reminders already gather, routes to the show when you open a card, and simply does not appear when nothing is upcoming.
- Offline downloads. Download movies and episodes to your iPhone, iPad, or Mac and play them with no connection, from debrid, direct links, or torrents. Downloads live in their own section with progress, pause and resume, and storage management.
- Self-hosted skip database with an in-player editor. Skip-intro, recap, and credits times are now fetched first from VortX's own database, then the open community sources. You can mark and submit segments yourself from a built-in player editor, and a submission goes to VortX and the open SkipDB at the same time. You can also add an API key for any other compatible provider to contribute there too. Thanks to @OrigamiSpace who created the open SkipDB and contributed the in-player editor this builds on (#98, #100).
- Community scrub-preview thumbnails. Seek-preview thumbnails are now shared across devices: once anyone has generated a title's previews, everyone else sees them instantly with no local work. It always falls back to your device's own capture, so there is never a regression. Thanks to OrigamiSpace, who contributed the original scrub-preview thumbnails.
- Play straight from a cached debrid link. If a source is already cached on your debrid account (Real-Debrid, AllDebrid, Premiumize, or TorBox), VortX now plays it directly from the cached link instead of starting the torrent, and cached sources show a "cached" chip and rank higher in the list. Without a debrid key nothing changes.
- Grouped Home collections. Home rails are now grouped (streaming services, genres, top new, and just new) for a cleaner browse, with a browse-by-streaming-service view.
- Configurable streaming cache. A new Settings option lets you set an on-disk streaming cache size (default off), so seeking back in a long title stays instant. KEEP THIS TURNED OFF IN APPLE TV, ITS CAUSING CRASHES, INVESTIGATING
- Add-on improvements. Removing an add-on on one device now removes it everywhere, like settings sync. Add-ons also gained a Configure button, a change-URL option, drag-to-reorder on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and better compatibility with AioManager (logo, order, and update-on-reinstall).
- Logos on more art. fanart.tv clearlogos now show across Apple TV, iPhone, and Mac.
In progress
- Trailers and hero clips play where they resolve today; broader coverage is still rolling out.
- Jellyfin media-server support is groundwork only and not usable yet.
Install
Mac (.dmg, easiest, never expires). Download VortX-macOS-v0.3.8-beta14-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 so you can confirm your download matches what the public GitHub Actions workflow built from this code.