Cove

Discover, organize, and play your media in one native application.

Cove brings a personal library, rich discovery, extensible sources, and hardware-accelerated playback to Linux, Windows, macOS, and Android phones, tablets, and televisions.

Installation · Build from source · Architecture · Documentation · User guides · Contributing

Important

Cove is a media player and organizer, not a content host or provider. A fresh installation contains no third-party stream sources. You are responsible for the addons and plugins you configure and for following the laws that apply in your jurisdiction.

Screenshots

Desktop

_{Home  ·  Title details  ·  Discovery}

Android

_{Home  ·  Discovery  ·  Library}

Features

Discovery and organization

• Personalized recommendations informed by watch history, ratings, and taste.
• Search, trending and upcoming titles, genres, curated collections, and people.
• A profile-scoped library with favorites, progress, continue watching, and spoiler protection for unwatched episodes.
• Multiple local profiles, with optional account sync and Trakt or Simkl tracking.

Playback

• Native, hardware-accelerated mpv playback on desktop and Android.
• Direct HTTP and torrent playback with subtitles and live buffering progress.
• Automatic stream selection by quality, size, reliability, or measured connection speed, plus full manual sorting and filtering.
• Configurable intro, recap, and credits skipping, with progress saved as you watch.

Sources and extensions

• Stremio-compatible addons for catalogs, streams, subtitles, and metadata.
• Opt-in Nuvio-compatible scrapers executed behind platform-specific isolation.
• Signed desktop plugins with per-profile permissions and isolated workers.
• Legal watch-option discovery alongside configured playback sources.
• Local-first profiles and settings: signing in is optional.

Platform support

Platform	Status	Distribution	Update path
Linux	Available	AUR, Flatpak, tarball	cove-bin through pacman; Flatpak bundles and tarballs are replaced manually
Windows	Available	Installer, portable ZIP	Verified in-app updates for both forms beginning with 1.0.0
Android phone/tablet	Available	APK, Android 9+	Verified APK through Android's package installer
Android TV	Preview	Same APK, Android 9+	Verified APK through Android's package installer
macOS (Apple silicon)	Available	Ad-hoc signed DMG, not notarized	Manual release replacement

One APK serves both phones and televisions: leanback is declared optional, and the app selects the touch or ten-foot shell at runtime from FEATURE_LEANBACK.

Installation

All downloadable packages are published on the GitHub Releases page.

Arch Linux and CachyOS

Install the AUR package with your preferred helper:

yay -S cove-bin

Updates remain managed by pacman and your AUR workflow.

Flatpak

Download cove-linux-amd64.flatpak from the latest release, then run:

flatpak install --user cove-linux-amd64.flatpak
flatpak run io.github.coveninja.Cove

Standalone Flatpak bundles are replaced manually when a new version is released.

Other Linux distributions

Download cove-linux-amd64.tar.gz from the latest release. It carries its own Java runtime and expects libmpv from your distribution. An installed yt-dlp is preferred for YouTube extras; when none is available, Cove can download and maintain its own copy unless that setting is disabled. The bundled bin/cove launcher resolves the application through an absolute /usr/lib/cove path, so /usr is the only prefix it works under:

sudo tar -xzf cove-linux-amd64.tar.gz -C /usr
cove

Tarball installations are replaced manually when a new version is released.

Windows

Download one of the following from the latest release:

• cove-windows-amd64-setup.exe for a conventional installation.
• cove-windows-amd64-portable.zip for a self-contained portable copy.

Both distributions support signed, verified in-app updates beginning with 1.0.0.

Important

Upgrading to 1.0.0 from a pre-1.0.0 Windows build is a manual step. 1.0.0 replaced the previous Qt and Go application with a single native one, so the two installations share no layout. Download the installer or portable ZIP above and install it yourself; those older builds will not offer 1.0.0 in-app, by design. Your library, profiles, and settings are preserved.

macOS

cove-macos-arm64.dmg is an Apple-silicon build that bundles libmpv and its native runtime dependencies, so you need neither Homebrew nor a separate API key. Intel Macs are not supported.

The DMG is ad-hoc signed rather than notarized, because Cove has no Apple Developer ID. macOS attaches its quarantine flag to whatever a browser downloads, and that flag is what triggers Gatekeeper — so fetching the DMG from a terminal avoids the whole thing:

curl -LO https://github.com/coveninja/cove/releases/latest/download/cove-macos-arm64.dmg
open cove-macos-arm64.dmg

Drag Cove into Applications and it launches normally, with no prompt to approve.

Note

Downloading the DMG in a browser instead is fine, but Gatekeeper will then refuse the first launch with "Apple could not verify 'Cove' is free of malware." Clear the flag and it starts:

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

Or approve it once under System Settings → Privacy & Security, scrolling to the message naming Cove and choosing Open Anyway. On macOS 15 and newer that is the only click-through route left — right-click → Open no longer bypasses the check.

Ad-hoc signing is not a trust credential; it is what lets the binaries execute at all on Apple silicon, which refuses to run a wholly unsigned one. macOS gets no in-app updates either way, so replace the DMG by hand.

Android phone, tablet, and TV

Download and install cove-android.apk on Android 9 (API 28) or newer. The same APK serves phones, tablets, and televisions, and picks the touch or ten-foot shell to match the device it lands on. Android may ask you to allow installs from Cove when applying the first in-app update. Cove verifies the package name, version, release manifest, payload checksum, and installed signing certificate before handing the APK to the system installer.

Upgrading from a pre-1.0.0 APK works in place and keeps your data, because the release is signed with the same key and carries a higher version code.

Building from source

Prerequisites

• JDK 21
• libmpv (mpv on Arch/CachyOS and Homebrew, or libmpv-dev on Debian/Ubuntu)
• Android SDK platform and build-tools 37 for Android builds
• A TMDB API key for live catalog data

Clone the repository, create your local configuration, and launch the desktop app against the real backend:

git clone https://github.com/coveninja/cove.git
cd cove
cp .env.example .env
# Set TMDB_API_KEY in .env
cd app && ./gradlew :desktop:run --args="--backend-mode kotlin"

Note

--backend-mode kotlin is what selects the real in-process backend. With no --backend-mode the desktop app falls back to a canned fixture library, so make run on its own will not show live data no matter how .env is set. A fixtures run labels itself with a Fixture data badge in the top corner.

Common development commands:

Command	Purpose
make run	Build and launch the desktop application with fixture data
make mobile	Build the Android debug APK (phone, tablet, and TV)
make hot	Start the Compose hot-reload loop with fixture data
make run-tv	Launch the television shell in a desktop window
make test	Run the Kotlin test suites
make test-build	Build the desktop image and Android debug APK
make test-all	Run the broadest local approximation of CI

On macOS, Homebrew provides both required local dependencies and Gradle can create a native application bundle for the current Apple-silicon Mac:

brew install mpv
brew install --cask temurin@21
export JAVA_HOME="$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 21)"
cd app
./gradlew :desktop:createDistributable --no-daemon
open desktop/build/compose/binaries/main/app/Cove.app

Desktop configuration is loaded from environment variables, the nearest .env, and then bundled release properties. Android receives the same deployment values through BuildConfig at build time. See .env.example for the supported keys. COVE_DATA_DIR overrides the desktop data directory; Android always uses app-private storage.

Architecture

Cove is a Kotlin Multiplatform application with two native hosts over one shared application graph:

• app/shared defines domain models, repository contracts, and the app graph.
• app/backend owns local persistence, integrations, addons, discovery, sync, media boundaries, and host-specific runtime composition.
• app/ui contains the shared adaptive Compose presentation.
• app/desktop owns the desktop window, native mpv surfaces, lifecycle, and packaging.
• app/mobile owns Android lifecycle, system integration, native playback, and APK packaging.
• app/benchmark generates Android startup and baseline profiles; it is not an application host.

Ordinary UI operations stay in-process. An embedded, authenticated Ktor boundary is retained only where URL semantics are required—for example media proxying, torrent delivery, diagnostics, and optional LAN clients. SQLDelight provides the shared database contract with platform-native drivers, while libmpv provides the playback boundary on both shipping hosts.

For the detailed module and security model, read ARCHITECTURE.md.

Documentation

• User guide hub — installation, everyday use, settings, integrations, and troubleshooting
• Application and presentation guide
• Architecture
• HTTP compatibility API
• Desktop plugin development
• Application updates and signing
• Testing and release checks
• Contributing guide

The website serves version-matched user guides from docs/site/ at the latest stable Cove tag. Contributor references above follow the active master tree and can describe behavior newer than the current release.

Translations recovered from Cove's former frontend remain under app/i18n/messages/; they are not yet connected to the current Compose UI.

Contributing and support

Contributions are welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow, architecture boundaries, and validation expectations.

• Report a bug or request a feature
• Ask a question or start a discussion

Star History

License

Cove is free software licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.