What it does.

All your media in one place

Connect Plex, Jellyfin, Emby and Silo, VOD - all at the same time. Home and Search cover everything you have connected, so you look in one place instead of four.

• Search everything at once, or select one library
• Open an actor and see their whole filmography, wherever it happens to be stored

A proper video player in its own right

Photon does not need a server to be useful. Double-click a video in the Finder, or press ⌘O, and it plays - the same picture and the same sound as everything else in the app. Make it your default video player and it will handle the files QuickTime won't.

• Opens MKV and the formats QuickTime turns down
• Open Recent remembers your files, and where you got to in each
• On iPhone and iPad, open videos straight from the Files app

Play from a drive, with no server at all

Point photon at Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or a network share and your films are there - nothing to keep running. Pick the folders that hold them and those become your shelves; the rest of the drive stays out of the way.

• Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and any WebDAV share - Nextcloud and ownCloud included
• Download from a drive for a flight, the same as from anywhere else
• On Apple TV: OneDrive and network shares.

It plays the file you actually have

Dolby Vision, HDR10, MKV, lossless soundtracks. Photon plays your files as they are rather than settling - nothing is re-encoded, so nothing is lost on the way to your screen. 4K, MKV and the high-resolution Dolby and DTS soundtracks need Pro - the first five of them play free, so you can try it on your own library first.

• Dolby Vision and HDR10+, not a simplified version
• TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, lossless, in full surround
• Subtitles drawn over the picture instead of burned into it

A TV guide, not a wall of channels

Add a Live TV subscription and you get a real schedule to browse: categories beside the grid on Apple TV and the Mac, favourites and channel groups on iPhone. Its films and shows can join the rest of your library, or stay out of the way.

Take it with you

Download anything before a flight. The audio tracks and subtitles come with it, and it looks and sounds exactly as it does at home. Your lock screen shows how the download is getting on.

Where you expect it to be

Find a film in Spotlight from the Home Screen. Start something on your phone and pick it up on the Apple TV exactly where you left off.

• Top Shelf on Apple TV, Live Activities on iPhone
• A real menu bar on the Mac, with keyboard shortcuts
• Whatever you are part way through, on whichever device you pick up

Zero data collection, no place to call home

There is no account to make, no analytics, no tracking, and nothing of ours sitting between you and your films. Passwords go in your keychain. Your list of servers syncs through your own iCloud, with the addresses encrypted.

One app, four platforms

Built in SwiftUI for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac, and laid out properly for each one rather than shrunk down from the last. Larger text, VoiceOver and Reduce Motion all work the way they should.