iptvS

The Modern, Native IPTV Experience for macOS.

iptvS is a high-performance, native macOS application built with SwiftUI and VLCKit. Designed for power users who want a seamless, aesthetic, and fully-featured way to consume IPTV content — Live TV, Movies, and Series — on their Mac.

What's New in v0.4

Arctic Liquid Glass Theme — Unified full-glass aesthetic using native macOS materials with sapphire blue accents and smart depth layering.
Universal Global Search — Single search bar that instantly finds Live Channels, Movies, and TV Shows across all content simultaneously.
Category Management — Hide unwanted categories and drag-to-reorder them for a fully personalized sidebar. Settings are saved per-playlist.
EPG Reminders — Set native macOS notifications for upcoming programs directly from the Guide timeline. Get alerted 5 minutes before a show starts.
Keyboard Navigation — Full ⌘1–⌘6 shortcuts for instant section switching without touching the mouse.

Features

Playback Engine

Powered by VLCKit (LibVLC) supporting virtually every format: HLS, MPEG-TS, MP4, MKV, RTMP, and more.
Hardware acceleration via macOS VideoToolbox for maximum efficiency on Apple Silicon and Intel.
Choose between the built-in VLC engine or launch any stream directly in the VLC.app external player.
Dual-row player controls separating playback actions from utility menus (Subtitles, Audio Track, EQ).
Hover-activated smooth volume slider.

Live TV

Full channel browser with category filtering.
Electronic Program Guide (EPG): XMLTV support with two view modes — a scrollable List and a classic Timeline Grid.
Automatic EPG channel mapping for both Xtream Codes and M3U sources.
Live TV hero banner with current program info and rich artwork.
One-click channel launch from search results, favorites, or the guide.

Multi-View

Watch up to 4 live channels simultaneously in the same window.
Four layouts: Grid (2×2), Focus (1 large + 3 small), Dual (side-by-side), and Triple (1 large + 2 small).
Zero-freeze slot swapping — player stop operations are offloaded to background threads.
Shared VLCLibrary context prevents resource contention between windows.
Unified audio control: select which slot plays audio without restarting other streams.

Movies (VOD)

Full TMDB integration: high-quality posters, backdrops, plot summaries, cast, trailers, and recommendations.
Exact resume logic — movies save playback position to the second. Detail pages offer Resume and Restart buttons.
Visual progress bars on every card for at-a-glance viewing status.
Hero banner with TMDB backdrop and smooth transitions.

TV Shows (Series)

Season and episode browser with rich TMDB metadata.
Seamless season flow — playback automatically continues from the last episode of one season into the first of the next.
Smart history mapping — episode progress is linked to the parent series so it appears correctly in Continue Watching.
Ultra-robust decoder handles season/episode numbers as Strings or Integers from inconsistent servers.
Manual JSON salvage mode for providers with non-standard or malformed series data.

EPG / Guide

List Mode — scrollable per-channel program schedule with current program highlighted.
Timeline Mode — classic TV grid with a precision scrollable timeline and real-time "now" indicator.
EPG Reminders — schedule native macOS push notifications for any upcoming program. Notified 5 minutes before start.
Search channels within the guide.
One-click refresh to pull the latest EPG data from your provider.

Recordings

Zero-break recording — records directly from the active player connection. No second stream is opened, so providers with a 1-connection limit are fully supported.
MPEG-TS native zero-copy saving for maximum speed and near-zero CPU overhead.
Custom configurable output folder via Settings.
Recordings are saved with a sanitized channel name and timestamp (.ts format).
Dedicated Recordings library view for browsing and managing saved files.

My Library

Dedicated Favorites view organized by content type: Live Channels, Movies, Series.
O(1) fast favorite lookups using a high-speed dictionary map.
Toggle favorites from any channel card, detail view, or search result.

Universal Global Search

A single search field in the sidebar searches Live Channels, Movies, and TV Shows simultaneously.
Results are grouped by type in a clean grid layout.
Play, favorite, or open in VLC directly from search results.

Home Screen

Continue Watching row — resumes movies and series from where you left off.
Trending and recommended content rows powered by TMDB.
Real-time error dashboard with server connectivity feedback and detailed error reporting.
Cache-first loading — the app populates instantly from local storage while network updates run silently in the background.

Multi-Protocol Support

Xtream Codes API — full integration for Live TV, VOD, and Series with category support.
M3U / M3U8 Playlists — local files and remote URLs, with auto-routing of channels into Live, Movies, and Series sections.
UTF-8 and ISO-Latin-1 encoding support.
Smart metadata extraction: logos, EPG IDs, and groups even from non-standard M3U formatting.

Category Management

Show or hide any category with a single toggle.
Drag-and-drop to reorder categories in the sidebar.
Settings are stored per-playlist so each source has its own layout.

Settings

Section	Options
General	Clear viewing history, clear local cache
Playlists	Add, edit, activate, or remove IPTV sources (Xtream or M3U)
Playback	Switch between VLC Internal engine and external VLC.app
Categories	Hide/show and drag-to-reorder per-playlist categories
Recordings	Set a custom recording output folder

Technical Stack

Component	Technology
Language	Swift 5.9+
UI Framework	SwiftUI (macOS 13.0 Ventura+)
Playback Engine	VLCKit 4 (LibVLC)
Metadata	TMDB API
EPG	XMLTV
Notifications	UserNotifications framework
Image Caching	Custom disk-backed cache
Persistence	UserDefaults + local JSON
Hardware Decode	macOS VideoToolbox

Requirements

macOS 13.0 Ventura or later (macOS 14 Sonoma / 15 Sequoia recommended)
Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) or Intel Mac
An active IPTV subscription (Xtream Codes or M3U)

Installation

Binary (Recommended)

Download the latest iptvS.dmg from the Releases page.
Open the .dmg and drag iptvS.app into your /Applications folder.
On first launch, right-click the app and choose Open to bypass Gatekeeper (unsigned build).
Launch iptvS and open Settings → Playlists.
Click Add Source and choose your provider type:
- Xtream Codes — enter the server URL, username, and password.
- M3U — paste a remote M3U URL or load a local .m3u file. Optionally add an EPG XMLTV URL.
Click Save Source, then Activate the playlist.
The app loads your content. Navigate using the sidebar or press ⌘1–⌘6.