Plex, done right on iPhone and Apple TV
[Entertainment] Free open source
released 2026-03
Crucible is a fast, native Plex client for iPhone and Apple TV — and a love letter to building iOS apps without a Mac. The iPhone app is Swift 6 and programmatic UIKit, cross-compiled on Arch Linux and deployed straight to an iPhone over USB. No Xcode, no storyboards, no macOS anywhere in the loop. The Apple TV app runs on the same engine and is built with Xcode. Home opens on a Resume hero for whatever you were watching, then Continue Watching, Up Next, your week in watch time, and Recently Added. Library grids have filter chips for Unwatched and In Progress, genre and sort, unwatched badges, an A–Z scrubber, and raw folder browsing for unindexed content. Search groups results by type with a Top Result. Skip Intro and Skip Credits straight from Plex markers, Picture-in-Picture with background audio, lock screen and Control Center controls, and Up Next that rolls the next episode as the credits start. Direct play when your device can handle the file, automatic HLS transcoding when it can't. On Apple TV a cinematic Home follows focus, every library gets its own tab, the system player carries Skip Intro and Skip Credits as native actions with an Up Next card, and long-pressing any card opens a native context menu. Liquid Glass controls on tvOS 26, the classic look with the same layout on older systems, and a Top Shelf extension for Continue Watching and Up Next. On iPhone, download movies, whole seasons, or single episodes at the quality you pick — Original, High, Medium, Low, or Data Saver. Background transfers keep going when the app is closed and resume after interruptions, downloads stay Wi-Fi-only unless you allow cellular, and a dedicated Downloads tab shows a storage summary, the live queue, and everything ready to watch — with one-tap cleanup of watched titles. A season sheet downloads all, unwatched, or the next three episodes, and can keep the next episodes downloaded as you watch. A Live Activity tracks live progress on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island — a WidgetKit extension compiled and signed on Arch Linux via xtool — while downloads run in the background, auto-resume from where they left off, and ping you when they finish. Offline playback runs through the same player — Skip Intro/Credits, resume, Picture-in-Picture, background audio, and lock screen controls all work with no network. The You tab shows your server and connection status, Watch History grouped by day, and a Year-in-Review dashboard: watch time, streaks, an activity heatmap, top shows, and a shareable card built from your own Plex history. Cast and crew, More Like This recommendations, subtitle and audio track selection, and adjustable playback speed. Hand a title off between your devices and find what you've watched in Spotlight. Crucible is free and open source under the GPL-3.0 license, with one third-party dependency, GRDB, for the statistics store — everything else is pure Apple frameworks. Read the code, file an issue, or build it yourself.
features
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A Resume-first Home on both: Continue Watching and Up Next lead, the artwork does the rest
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Apple TV: a cinematic Home, the system player, native menus and Top Shelf
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iPhone: offline downloads with a Live Activity, Skip Intro, Picture-in-Picture and background audio