Roadmap

Roadmap

Where VortX is headed, in the order we'll build it. No fixed dates; it ships when it's good.

The engine and add-on protocol already work, so the focus is everything around them: the best player and interface we can build, first on Apple TV and then across the rest of our devices. The aim is an all-in-one media hub, done one solid piece at a time. Along the way, everything Stremio moved behind its paid tier (profiles with a PIN, skip intro and outro, catalog management, keyword stream filtering, enriched metadata, a download manager, live subtitle sync) ships here free, with our own implementations that depend on nobody's gated backend.

Have an idea?

Feature requests and bug reports are welcome, and they shape this list. Start a GitHub Discussion to suggest a feature or think one through, or open an issue for a bug. Every released change is tracked in Changelog.

The version path

• 0.2.x (shipped). Skip intro and outro, the cinematic redesign, the living backdrop, ranked Watch Now with the two-level quality picker, instant preloaded auto-play next, and profiles.
• 0.3.0 (shipped). Native iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps on the same engine and player as the Apple TV app, replacing the web-host build, plus the featured hero and Live TV, with torrents on the Mac too.
• 0.3.5 (shipped). StremioX is now VortX. The rebrand reveal: a new name, a gold-on-obsidian icon, and an animated VortX intro across all four platforms, in place with nothing reset. Adds Backup & Restore, a smarter best-stream picker (a true remux beats a merely bigger file), and Apple TV menu-bar and source-list fixes.
• 0.4.0, VortX expands. Native debrid built in (Real-Debrid, TorBox, Premiumize, AllDebrid keys in-app, with cached-torrent checking and a browsable debrid library); a trust filter that drops cam rips, dead links, and fake quality labels; keyword include and exclude filters; same-release-group auto-play; in-app add-on install on every platform; a curated Home of collection rails; auto-play trailers in our own player; picture-in-picture; an Apple TV Top Shelf; routing Dolby Vision and adaptive HLS through Apple's AVPlayer pipeline so DV plays with our own controls; plus the rest of the rebrand under the hood and the start of VortX cloud sync.
• 0.5.0, the player, finished. Seek-preview thumbnails on the scrubber; dual subtitle tracks; image-based (PGS) subtitles; anime skip coverage through a second timestamp database; an auto-skip option with a cancel countdown; contributing skip timestamps back from the player; cross-device playback sync so you can pause on the TV and pick up on the iPad; sleep timer; picture-in-picture on iPhone and iPad.
• 0.6.0, discovery and metadata. Our own metadata enrichment (multi-source ratings, cast and crew with photos, studio badges, trailers); advanced search with real filters; poster rating overlays; HD logos and art; a release calendar and a "this week" rail; catalog management (move, hide, rename, merge into groups); pick which metadata add-on drives the home screen so one provider's outage never takes the app down.
• 0.7.0, sync, casting, offline. Trakt sign-in, sync, scrobbling, and calendar; AirPlay; a download manager for offline viewing (debrid and direct sources); live subtitle auto-sync; backup and restore of your whole setup as a shareable file.
• 0.8.0, the theme studio. Custom colors beyond the eight built-in accents; full player theming down to the seek bar; home layout variants; show-and-hide for tabs you never use; shareable theme files; backgrounds tinted from the focused title's artwork.
• 0.9.0, hardening. Cross-device QA, performance passes, and complete documentation of every page and setting. The 1.0 beta.
• 1.0. Our own engine and our own streaming server, replacing the pieces we currently inherit: our own ranking core, a built-in torrent engine so torrents work without debrid, a scraper runtime, and our own metadata service. The app's codec edge (TrueHD Atmos 7.1, DTS-HD MA, subtitles that render properly) becomes the headline rather than the surprise. The VortX identity already arrived at 0.3.5; 1.0 is when the engine and server underneath become ours too, and a community scraper runtime (sideloadable JS sources) starts here.

After 1.0

The bigger pieces, each its own chunk of work:

• 1.1, sources expanded. Usenet; sideloadable scrapers from community repos; WebDAV and FTP sources.
• 1.2, live TV done properly. A real channel guide (EPG), catch-up and timeshift, recording, multiview, and in-guide previews.
• 1.3, beyond video. Music, podcasts, and audiobooks in the same app; first-class anime tracking with season merging and a release feed; watch-together with synced playback and chat on a relay you can host yourself.
• 1.x niceties. Casting beyond AirPlay (Chromecast, DLNA, Roku); shader upscaling and tone-mapping for SDR screens; audio and color profiles; Discord presence; a built-in ad and tracker blocker; a taste-scored discovery feed.
• 2.0, everywhere. Mac, Apple Vision, and Android, on the shared core.

Shipped

• Reliable torrents, at last (0.2.41 to 0.2.44). Every torrent announces over TCP and TLS trackers as well as the usual ones, so swarms form even where plain UDP peer discovery is blocked, and the player's read-ahead is now sized to the source, so a torrent no longer grows in memory until the streaming server is killed. Debrid and direct links play straight through.
• Automatic performance mode (0.2.44). The app detects a memory-constrained Apple TV (the Apple TV HD) and takes a lighter path on its own, so the remote stays responsive while a weak CPU is busy; every Apple TV 4K stays full. Overridable in Settings.
• Smarter Watch Now and smooth scrubbing (0.2.43). Ranking now weighs file size and lossless audio, so it plays the genuinely best release instead of the first one that loaded, and holding to seek glides at an even, predictable pace.
• Sound that reaches your soundbar (0.2.43). The player claims a movie-playback audio session, fixing setups that had no sound over HDMI eARC and letting decoded multichannel audio reach a receiver.
• Add to Library, QR hand-off, HDR toggle (0.2.41). Save any title from its page or Continue Watching, show the playing stream as a QR code to keep watching on your phone, and tone-map Dolby Vision to SDR on displays that mishandle it.
• Two builds and Direct Links Only (0.2.35 to 0.2.44). A Full build with the embedded server, and a lighter Lite build for debrid and direct links only, plus a Direct Links Only switch in the Full build.
• Seamless binge and per-series quality memory (0.2.25 to 0.2.35). The next episode is fetched, ranked, and warmed up before the credits and locked to the same release group, and Watch Now reopens a series in the quality you last played it.
• The embedded streaming server and Play a link (0.2.x). Torrents stream through a bundled server on the Apple TV, and you can paste any magnet, direct URL, or resolved debrid or usenet link to play it.
• Profiles (0.2.6). A "Who's watching?" picker at launch, per-profile themes and avatars, an optional 4-digit PIN, and the choice of sharing the main Stremio account or signing into a separate one per profile. Switching keeps every session valid.
• Playback flow fixes (0.2.5). Leaving the player returns to the exact page playback started from. Auto-play next ranks every add-on's sources instead of taking the first answer, and preloads the next episode in the background at the halfway mark so it starts instantly. Real-Debrid sources rank last. The Watch button waits (with a live counter) until your add-ons finish answering.
• The living backdrop (0.2.2 to 0.2.4). Home, Discover, and Library put the focused title's full artwork and details behind everything, on every row and grid, with content tucking underneath as you browse.
• The two-level quality picker (0.2.2). Pick a tier (4K, 1080p, 720p, Others), then the flavor inside it (Dolby Vision, DTS-HD, BluRay, Atmos, WEB and the rest).
• Skip intro and outro (0.2.0). A skip pill the moment you enter a known segment: crowd-sourced timestamps looked up by IMDB, TMDB, or TVDB id, merged with the file's named chapters, with sanity guards and on-device caching.
• The cinematic redesign (0.2.0). Movie and episode pages went full-bleed: the artwork fills the screen, the details sit over it, and the dead space is gone. The focused tab follows your accent.
• Watch Now and stream ranking (0.1.7.x). Sources ranked with cached and direct streams first, one press plays the best, and the full per-add-on list stays one button away.
• Themes (0.1.7.x). Eight accents plus a true-black OLED mode, persisted, with the whole app repainting live.
• Player resilience (0.1.7.x). Bounded auto-retry with a reconnecting indicator when a stream hiccups, and an in-player source switcher that keeps your position.
• Library management (0.1.7.x). Long-press menus on posters everywhere: dismiss from Continue Watching, add to library, mark watched and unwatched, remove from library. Finished titles leave Continue Watching on their own.
• Smart track selection (0.1.7.x). Audio and subtitles picked from your preferred languages automatically.
• Apple TV, native on the engine. Home with real Continue Watching and every catalog, plus Discover, Library, Detail, the full per-add-on source list, Search, and add-on management. Watched state, resume, and live progress all run through the engine.
• The player. Full-screen libmpv with dependable focus and controls, a seekable scrubber with hold-to-seek, an options panel split into Audio, Subtitles, Aspect, and Episodes, audio and subtitle sync, aspect modes, language-grouped tracks, subtitle fonts for every script, and add-on load progress while streams arrive.
• The basics. Sign-in, smooth 4K with TrueHD and Atmos and HDR that actually play, posters that load, solid caching, and a player you can always back out of.
• iPhone and iPad, for now. A web UI with a native libmpv player and external-player handoff, until the native client replaces it (0.3.0, in progress).

Distribution and onboarding

A self-hosted update channel is coming early, so the app can update itself rather than expire like an ordinary sideload. A friendly first-run setup rides along with it: sign in, and a one-step import pulls in your existing add-ons (and, once in-app debrid lands, your debrid keys), so switching over costs you nothing.