Skip to content

0.3.14 Beta 7

Choose a tag to compare

View all tags
@mamaclapper mamaclapper released this 23 Jul 05:34
· 849 commits to main since this release
v0.3.14-beta.7
f20df4d

0.3.14 Beta 7

VortX 0.3.14 Beta 7 is the big one: a whole line of things that looked broken in the field turn out to have one honest story each, and every one of them is fixed in this build. Signing in with the QR code works for the first time since the feature shipped: the code pointed at a page that could never show the approval, so the TV waited forever. The community (Singularity) source pool is collecting and serving again, now for every kind of source, torrents, direct links, and usenet, each shown only to people whose own services can play it and always resolved through your own account, never anyone else's link. Dolby Vision stops flickering on the Home screen, starts titles at the beginning, keeps true Dolby Vision on hi-res TrueHD releases, and a binge advance no longer plays seconds of the previous episode. Watched history flows in from Trakt and SIMKL the moment you switch the import on. JioHotstar, ZEE5, and other regional services fill their catalogs wherever you are. Picture-in-Picture works on ordinary files on iPhone and iPad. Ratings show on the cinematic landscape cards, not just portrait posters. And a setting you change now stays changed instead of being quietly reverted by sync.

Honest note up front: this beta is verified by build, by adversarial review of every change, and by hundreds of new deterministic checks, but not device-verified by us this round; you, the beta testers, are the hardware pass. In-place update, nothing resets.

New on Apple

  • Add an add-on by QR, and it installs itself. Scan the code on the TV with your phone, paste the add-on's link on the page that opens, and the add-on installs on the TV with no further taps; the Install button remains only as a retry if an install fails, and sending the same link twice can never install it twice. Apple TV.
  • Reorder your add-ons on Apple TV. Move add-ons up and down with the remote, exactly as on iPhone and Mac; the order belongs to your account, syncs to your other devices, and decides which add-on answers first for a title's details. Apple TV.
  • Titles watched on Trakt or SIMKL show as watched here. Turn on the import for either service and its watched history appears on your covers within seconds, including titles that are not in your library; turning the import off, or disconnecting, removes only that service's marks. SIMKL import is new; the Trakt import used to wait several minutes before its first pull and now runs the moment you ask. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • Rate titles on SIMKL, and see your plan-to-watch in Upcoming. The detail page gains a SIMKL rating control beside the Trakt one, your scores sync both ways, and shows on your SIMKL plan-to-watch surface their next air dates on the Upcoming screen. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • A grey subtitle colour and a subtitle brightness control. For OLED screens where bright white subtitles glare on dark scenes: pick the new Grey, or dim any colour to 80, 60, or 40 percent. Applies on both player engines, syncs with your profile, and changes nothing unless you touch it. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • Dolby Vision: choose a title's audio track, and its built-in text subtitles appear in the menu. A Dolby Vision title with a surround or Atmos bed alongside a stereo downmix, a commentary, or another language now offers all of them in the audio menu on the true Dolby Vision lane, and text subtitles carried inside the file can be turned on like any other. Apple TV.

Fixed on Apple

  • Signing in with the QR code works (#153). Scanning the code took you to a page that never showed the approval, so the TV waited forever; the code now opens the approve page correctly, the TV tells you when it is having trouble instead of waiting silently, and a stale code refreshes itself. The web approve page also now recognises links from older builds, so a TV still on Beta 6 can sign in too. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • Community (Singularity) sources are collecting and appearing again, for every kind of source (#152). Nothing was being contributed to the pool at all, for four separate reasons, all fixed; and the pool now carries torrents, direct links, and usenet alongside the provider seen to have each one cached. You are shown only what your own services can play, and everything resolves through your own account and keys, never anyone else's link. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • The Home screen stops flickering while you scroll. The ambient previews were asking the TV to change display mode as you moved, and every request renegotiates the HDMI link; previews no longer touch the display mode at all, and a genuine playback switches it once. Apple TV.
  • A binge advance shows the next episode, not the last seconds of the old one. The next episode's identity always committed correctly, but the screen kept showing the outgoing episode until the incoming one rendered; the transition now holds a clean cover, so the first thing you see is the episode you are getting. Apple TV.
  • Dolby Vision titles start at the beginning instead of about fourteen seconds in, and resume where you left off. Apple TV.
  • Hi-res TrueHD titles keep true Dolby Vision. A Dolby Vision file with 192 or 176.4 kHz TrueHD or DTS-HD audio failed a conversion step and silently fell back to HDR10; the conversion now handles hi-res rates, proven end to end against real files, so those titles play true Dolby Vision with their full surround sound. Apple TV.
  • Caching no longer dies about forty seconds in. On memory pressure the player used to clamp its cache to a sliver for the rest of the title; it now halves the cache first and only clamps fully if pressure continues, so long titles keep buffering ahead. Apple TV especially.
  • JioHotstar, ZEE5, and other regional services fill their catalogs. A service you select now also looks in the regions that service actually operates in, not only your own, so an India-only service shows its real catalog wherever you are; nothing is hardcoded to any country, and an empty page says why it is empty instead of always blaming your region. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • Ratings show on the cinematic landscape cards too. Show ratings on posters used to bake the star only onto portrait posters, and the default landscape look quietly skipped it, which read as ratings that had stopped working. Landscape cards now carry the same rating as a clean badge, and a title with no rating shows none. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • Add-on catalog ratings show again. A catalog add-on that sends its own rating alongside its own links row used to lose the rating on the way into the app; the engine now folds the rating into the links it keeps, so titles from community catalogs show their scores. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • A setting you change stays changed. Flipping a setting and then relaunching could silently revert it: the relaunch pulled your account's older value over the change before the change had synced up. A local change now survives every pull until it has been pushed, then your account and your other devices follow it. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • Watch Stats fills in from your real history. The screen could sit empty even with a full history behind it; it now draws from your account's own watch history, the same one behind Continue Watching and the watched checks, so your hours, titles, top genres, and longest binge show up. iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • Picture-in-Picture works on ordinary files. Plain MKV and MP4 sources on iPhone and iPad now play through the player that supports Picture-in-Picture and AirPlay by default, with an automatic fallback that keeps anything unusual playing exactly as before; your own engine choice always wins. iPhone and iPad.
  • Downloads cannot loop forever on a save failure. A download whose save kept failing used to re-download from scratch on every app open, silently burning data; it now retries a bounded number of times and then fails honestly, with the exact cause named in the diagnostic log. A download that completes while the device is locked still saves itself the moment you unlock. iPhone and iPad.
  • Contribute skip times from the Dolby Vision player. The skip editor could not submit on the Dolby Vision lane because that lane does not report a conventional duration; it now reads the title's own runtime, so a fresh episode's intro can be contributed from any player. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • The diagnostic log you send us carries far less about you, and only you can fetch it. Every line is cleaned as it is written and again when you export it, and the Apple TV export serves your one scanned link once and turns away everything else. Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
  • Home customization is reachable again on Apple TV, the Add-on Discover and Catalog customize screens fit portrait on iPhone, and release packaging now rejects unsafe app-bundle links.

Backend, quietly

Some of this beta already reached you before you installed it: the community pool's screening was hardened so a shared link can never carry anyone's credentials, its nightly import no longer overwrites community contributions, and the web approve page was fixed so even a Beta 6 TV can complete a QR sign-in today. That is the direction of travel: more of VortX upgrading server-side, without waiting for you to update the app.

Please test

This beta is verified by build and adversarial review; real-hardware reports are what close it. If anything is off, export the diagnostic log (Settings; on iPhone, iPad, and Mac you can save it straight to Files) and open an issue.

  • QR sign-in, the main ask. On a signed-out Apple TV, scan the code with your phone and approve; the TV should sign in within seconds. Try a stale code (leave it a few minutes) and confirm it refreshes itself.
  • Home calm. Scroll the Apple TV Home screen with Dolby Vision content in the rails and confirm the screen no longer flashes as you move.
  • Dolby Vision. Play a 4K Dolby Vision title, confirm the TV switches once and holds DOLBY VISION; play a hi-res TrueHD release and confirm it stays Dolby Vision; binge two episodes and confirm the advance shows no old-episode frames; resume a partly-watched DV title and confirm it continues where you left off.
  • Watched imports. Connect Trakt or SIMKL, flip the watched import on, and confirm the checks appear on your covers within seconds, including titles not in your library.
  • Regional catalogs. Add JioHotstar or ZEE5 and confirm the catalog fills with real titles.
  • Ratings. Confirm the star badges show on your Home cards, portrait and landscape both, and that a community catalog's own scores show on its titles.
  • Settings stickiness. Flip any setting, relaunch, and confirm it stays; confirm it follows to your other devices.
  • Subtitles on OLED. Pick the Grey colour or a lower brightness and confirm the change applies live on both players.

Install

Mac (.dmg, easiest, never expires). Download VortX-macOS-v0.3.14-beta.7-ci.dmg, drag VortX into Applications, then clear Apple's one-time quarantine: open it once, click Done, then System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway (or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/VortX.app). Full guide: Install on Mac.

iPhone, iPad, Apple TV (sideload the IPA). The IPAs are unsigned, because VortX is open-source and distributed outside the App Store with no Apple Developer ID yet, so you re-sign them yourself with Sideloadly, AltStore / SideStore, or Signulous. No jailbreak. Full guide: Installing on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.

Android. This beta is Apple-only; the current Android build remains Beta 6. On Android TV or Fire TV, the Downloader app with dl.vortx.tv still fetches the newest APK. The Android line continues in the next wave.

Each Apple asset lists a SHA-256 checksum (SHA256SUMS-ci.txt) so you can confirm your download matches what the public GitHub Actions workflow built from this code.

Assets 7
Loading