VortXTV/VortX v0.5.6-beta.5

VortX 0.5.6 beta 5: DO NOT INSTALL

on GitHub

DO NOT INSTALL, CRITICAL BUG THAT STOPS ADDONS FROM WORKING

Build 278 across Apple and Android. Beta 5 builds on beta 4 with Mac playback and player fixes, self-hosted
add-ons and less background work while you watch.

Fixed and improved

• Mac playback that would not resume after a pause. A recovery after pausing could leave Play waiting indefinitely and show the replacement player's temporary position. Recovery now completes, keeps your original position, and Play is no longer held behind it.
• Skip Intro and Skip Credits hidden by the controls. Moving the mouse brought up the controls and removed the Skip button. It now stays visible and sits above the controls as they appear.
• Mac player controls use a lighter translucent glass instead of an opaque grey panel; the solid fallback for Reduce Transparency is kept.
• Self-hosted add-ons. Add-ons on your home network, localhost or Tailscale install normally instead of being refused as private addresses, on Apple and Android, and they are no longer marked unreachable or dropped when restored from sync. Certificate checks and size limits stay in place.
• Apple TV keyboard from iPhone. Typing into Apple TV search from an iPhone keyboard no longer erases what you typed (thanks to the contributor of PR #274).
• Subtitles from some public sites whose names begin with "fc" or "fd" were wrongly refused as private addresses. They download now.
• Playback badges no longer publish a track list before the audio and subtitle choices have loaded.
• Much less uploading while you watch. Your place was saved every 20 seconds, and each save uploaded your whole account, about every 25 seconds of playback. Saves now batch: while you keep watching the account uploads once every five minutes, and a pause or stop uploads it within a minute so your other devices pick up where you left off.
• Mac quits reported as crashes. Every Mac launch recorded the previous session as ending unexpectedly after 0 seconds. Normal quits are now recorded as normal, and the session length is tracked, so diagnostics only flag real problems.

Betas 3 and 4 were not published, so this release also carries their changes:

Also fixed since beta 2

• A faster start. VortX waited to download, decrypt and merge your whole account before opening it, and at launch it did that twice. It now opens from this device's saved copy and catches up with the cloud right after. A first sign-in, or a device without a saved copy, still downloads first.
• Stremio library and watch history (#267). Connecting Stremio carries the owner's library and watched history through the native account path, not just add-ons. Import, reconnect and sync keep the account and profile that started them; a late result cannot replace a different account, and a failed save never acknowledges changes it did not keep.
• Older accounts carried over without losing saved data (#262). Valid older library titles are no longer mistaken for unsafe data. Unknown fields, pending changes and the original account copy are kept, and unreadable data is never treated as an empty account.
• Interests saved to the right profile. Changing profile while the For You interests picker was open could save one profile's choices into another. The picker now saves only for the profile it opened for, and closes when the profile changes.
• Saved Collections kept when storage cannot be read. Signed-out edits no longer replace unreadable saved Collections with an empty copy.
• Top Shelf stayed static after re-signing. A signing service re-signs VortX under its own team and gives the app and its Top Shelf a shared group of its own, but VortX only looked for the group it ships with, so the two never found each other and the shelf showed the static image under every signing service. VortX now uses the group your signed copy was actually given. Movies and series that share an ID no longer collide, a long queue is trimmed to fit instead of being rejected, and progress, artwork and queue changes trigger an update. Full includes Top Shelf in the normal app; there is no separate extension to install.
• Apple TV player controls. Up reveals the controls before checking Up Next and skip prompts, so less work runs first in the credits window.
• TV previews and playback audio. Silent previews cannot reopen an audio output, and their wake-ups and recovery are bounded.
• History updates. Trakt history reads follow every page before replacing the saved result, cancelled SIMKL reads keep the last complete snapshot, and account changes keep newer local edits.
• Android login and sync (#270). A realtime connection that fails to start no longer discards the saved session, and malformed Stremio rows are held without losing their valid neighbours.
• Clearer Trakt connection failures (#271). Authentication failures are classified without exposing credentials.

Also new since beta 2

• Richer Collections (#269). Collections can carry nested groups, ordering, artwork and richer presentation inside the existing Collections editor.
• Optional Xperience import and refresh. Bring in a compatible Xperience collection export and refresh it when you choose; your own edits are protected from an older refresh.
• Playback badges with icons and the selected audio language, from the video and audio actually playing. They clear when a new item starts.
• Apple TV Settings categories (#268). Settings is split into focused categories, with search kept.

Also changed since beta 2

• Updated player components. Apple uses the updated custom mpv with FFmpeg 9.0.2. Android's native player includes mpv 0.41 and FFmpeg 8.1.3 with maintenance updates to its subtitle, font and codec libraries, and Media3 1.11.1.
• Tighter certificate checks in the native player and engine.

Still being worked on

The main apps are not yet fully migrated to Swift 6, some component upgrades remain, and smoothness, Top Shelf and the open customer reports still need checking on real devices.

Please test

• On Mac, pause and resume a few times during playback, and check that Skip Intro or Skip Credits stays visible above the controls when you move the mouse.
• If you use a self-hosted add-on on your home network or Tailscale, install it by URL.
• Close and reopen the app: your profile should open within a few seconds, then pick up any changes from your other devices.
• Connect Stremio using your existing VortX account, check add-ons, Library and watched history, then reopen the app and check they are still there. If something fails, export diagnostics before changing anything; do not reset the account or remove history as a workaround.
• With VortX Full in the Apple TV top row, play something, return Home and check that Top Shelf now follows Continue Watching after signing with your usual service. If it stays static, export diagnostics and include the topshelf lines, the variant and the signer.
• Change audio tracks, start another video and seek: the playback badges should follow the current item.
• On Apple TV, check Settings search and moving in and out of each category.

This is a prerelease for testing, not a replacement for the current release. Stable update feeds and download redirects are unchanged.

Install

Mac (.dmg). Download VortX-macOS-v0.5.6-beta.5-ci.dmg and drag VortX into Applications. If macOS blocks the app downloaded from this official release, use System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway, or run:

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

The command removes the download quarantine flag; it does not notarize the app or change its signature. The Mac app is for Apple silicon, needs macOS 14 or later, and is ad-hoc signed rather than notarized. macOS may ask for your password so VortX can use its saved sign-in information in Keychain after replacing the app; approve only a prompt that names VortX. Step-by-step guide: Install on Mac.

iPhone, iPad, Apple TV (sideload the IPA). The IPAs are unsigned and need to be re-signed with a compatible sideloading tool or signing service, such as Sideloadly, AltStore / SideStore, or Signulous. No jailbreak. Use VortX-iOS-v0.5.6-beta.5-ci.ipa for iPhone and iPad. On Apple TV, VortX-tvOS-v0.5.6-beta.5-ci.ipa is VortX TV with Top Shelf, and VortX-tvOS-lite-v0.5.6-beta.5-ci.ipa is VortX TV Lite without it; both need tvOS 18 or later. Step-by-step guide: Installing on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.

Android phone, tablet and TV. VortX-0.5.6-full-mpv-universal.apk includes VortX Player. VortX-0.5.6-play-media3-universal.apk is the Media3 variant. Each APK contains both the phone and the Android TV interface. Choose the variant you already use so it installs over your current version. The Play bundle is also attached for its distribution workflow.

All seven packages are built by the public release workflows from v0.5.6-beta.5. SHA256SUMS.txt lists the package checksums, and VortX-Hosted-Direct-Beta-Provenance.json records the source, build and package verification details.