0.5.0 Beta 4 - Cinema polish and smoother detail screens

Build 265. Local Apple builds, uploaded directly here. One IPA supports iPhone and iPad; the DMG is for Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or newer.

This includes the fixes in the tested build 264, plus the changes from the latest Mac screenshots. It is an Apple test prerelease, not a full all-device rollout. The TV and Android builds and automatic update feeds have not been changed by this release.

New in this build

• Removed the black gap between Home's menu and featured artwork. The extra artwork strip behind the menu now fades away as you scroll past the title's hero.
• Add-ons use the full window for scrolling, with a centred, readable content area rather than a panel stuck on the left.
• Mac settings text is larger. Episode cards and source rows have a restrained profile-colour glass tint, with readable accessibility fallbacks.
• The add-on tabs in Sources have small Previous/Next buttons for mouse navigation. Selecting a tab brings it into view; swipe and trackpad navigation still work.
• The Mac player uses the selected seek-bar style again, including Wave and the profile accent. Bottom controls have larger hit areas, white labels and quieter glass instead of solid coloured buttons.
• Removed a costly conversion of playback data during detail-screen rendering. This fixes one confirmed source of interface stutter; it is not a claim that every playback freeze is resolved.

Included from build 264

• Search-as-you-type with separate Movies, Series and Collections rows.
• A closeable title popup with the Watchlist action, improved episode sizing, episode navigation and watched/unwatched actions.
• Add-on responses can refresh links, headers, file selection and ordering even when their result count does not change.
• Profile switching preserves saved profile settings. Pending settings do not hold up unrelated Watchlist, library and Continue Watching uploads; interrupted changes remain pending rather than being silently discarded.
• Bounded offline settings edits, stale-upload protection and a refreshed last-success display after an accepted forced sync.

These changes passed controlled add-on, encrypted sync, profile-switch and rendering checks. Real-account sync and sustained provider playback still need device testing; please send the full build-265 diagnostic if something fails.

Installation

• iPhone/iPad: the IPA is unsigned. Use your usual sideload/re-sign tool.
• Mac: the app is ad-hoc signed, not notarized. Drag VortX to Applications. macOS may ask for permission to use your existing saved VortX login in Keychain; approve only a prompt that names VortX.

If macOS blocks the trusted downloaded app, use Open Anyway in System Settings. For the installed app, the quarantine command is:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/VortX.app

Still being worked on

• Further Usenet throughput/refill and accelerated AVPlayer recovery changes are not in these packages. Sustained Usenet playback, AIOStreams/decoder freezes and automatic episode handoffs are not declared fully resolved.
• Trakt/SIMKL connection client IDs and the auxiliary Edge build input are not provisioned in these local packages, as with the previous local test builds. Do not use this build to accept those connection/auxiliary QR flows. Native add-on URL loading and VortX account sync use separate paths.
• TV/Android parity and the remaining native-engine work are separate from this Apple upload. This release does not make itself Latest or change dl.vortx.tv/AltStore/automatic update feeds.

Both Apple packages report version 0.5.0 (265). Source: 56460f299f0f466c386de6841852aa95c9d2565d. Native engine: dd520b0c9e540e11b9e115467b4fe5ec0ccb3fb2. Player: reviewed MPVKit-DVFEL v3.