Plugins

Plugins

Much of what RerunTV does comes from plugins: every special channel, the overlays, the remote control, weather and show-info lookups, even the themes. The app ships 51 bundled plugins (26 features and 25 theme packs, listed on Themes). Turn any of them on or off in Setup > PLUG-INS; a change takes effect after a restart.

Plugins that need more than basic access (talking to the network, starting a program, opening a port) list exactly what they need, and you approve it before they run. A plugin that asks for approval again after an update has changed its permissions or been renamed: check the list and approve it again.

Virtual and special channels

Plugin	What it does	Runs isolated	Needs permission to
Video In (AUX)	Virtual CH 0 — lets a window/app running on this machine (KaraFun, PiKaraoke, anything) show up as a channel, the way a real cable box's AUX input shows whatever's plugged into it.	yes	talks to the app, system actions
Preview Guide Channel	Virtual CH 1 — a continuously scrolling broadcast guide with a rotating live spotlight, program progress, and NOW/NEXT listings.	no	-
Public Access Channel	Virtual CH 2 — a community bulletin-board channel, rotating your own announcement slides.	no	-
Local Weather	Virtual CH 3 — a generated local-weather barker channel (deterministic synthetic forecast, upgraded to a real api.weather.gov forecast when a location is set via the NOAA Weather & EAS plugin).	no	-
Party Channel	LAN guest page for PARTY_CH — photo/video bulletin, TTS announcements, soundboard, trivia, caption contest, vote-for-next, check-in, visual effects, and reactions.	yes	talks to the app, starts programs, network
Tape Deck	Records what a channel actually broadcasts — the shows plus the bumpers and commercials that air between them — into one playable file, then plays the results back on CH 101 as a shelf you load into a VCR or a disc player.	yes	talks to the app, starts programs
Channel Mosaic	Virtual CH 100 — a paging grid of still frames showing what is airing on every channel right now, the way a cable system's mosaic preview channel did.	no	-
Pay-Per-View	Virtual CH 98 — a parody scrambled PPV channel: order a fake event, confirm the purchase, and the picture unscrambles for 30 seconds.	no	-
Teletext Arcade	Virtual CH 99 — a parody 90s teletext-style teletext service (news/sports/weather pages) plus a playable arrow-key Snake game on page 999.	no	-
Digital Music Channel	A retro '90s/2000s digital-cable-style audio channel — configure genre "stations" backed by your own music folders, flip between them live like a real digital-cable music channel grid, and tune in to a full-screen now-playing…	no	talks to the app

On-screen overlays and broadcast effects

Plugin	What it does	Runs isolated	Needs permission to
Breaking News Alerts	Random or on-demand "breaking news" overlays in four visual styles, with a custom headline bank and text-to-speech readout.	no	-
Emergency Alert System	A full-screen Emergency Alert System interrupt — attention tone, alert slate, optional text-to-speech readout, then auto-resume.	no	-
Film Reel-Change Cue Marks	The real projectionist's reel-change dot that flashed in a movie's top-right corner every ~20 minutes — for movies only.	no	-
Ambient Signal Glitches	Rare, brief static/tearing bursts with no real-world trigger — the antenna having a bad day, not tied to weather or anything else.	no	-
SMPTE Test Pattern	Classic color-bar test pattern shown instead of a plain "NO SIGNAL" card when you tune to a channel number that isn't configured.	no	-
Sponsor Billboard	Classic single-sponsor-era "brought to you by" card, shown once per airing on any channel with a configured sponsor.	no	-
Idle Screensaver	A bouncing brand mark (or an era-appropriate idle state — test card, stand-by slate, promo scroll, diagnostics readout — depending on the active theme) shown after a period of no interaction.	no	-
Text Ticker	Continuous bottom-of-screen scrolling text ticker — a static configured message, guest party-feed captions, or both concatenated.	no	-
Closed Captions	Real closed captions via the browser's native API — sourced from a sidecar .srt/.vtt file next to the video, or an embedded subtitle stream inside the container (extracted with the bundled ffmpeg).	yes	talks to the app, starts programs

Audio

Plugin	What it does	Runs isolated	Needs permission to
SAP / Alternate Audio	Switch between a file's embedded audio tracks (e.g. a dubbed language track) with U, when a file actually has more than one.	no	-
Vintage Audio Texture	Theme-tied ambient audio texture — analog tape hiss/crackle, wood-console hum, UHF static, or satellite carrier tone, depending on the active guide/OSD theme.	no	-

Services and integrations

Plugin	What it does	Runs isolated	Needs permission to
NOAA Weather & EAS	Fetches active weather alerts and forecasts from api.weather.gov (NOAA/NWS) for the real EAS interrupt feature and the AUX weather channel.	yes	talks to the app
TMDB Metadata	Looks up movie/TV metadata (poster, description, cast) from TheMovieDB for the TITLES tab's MATCH TMDB feature.	yes	talks to the app
Cast to TV	Mirrors the complete RerunTV window or a selected desktop display to one Chromecast/Google TV, with lower-latency program-only casting as a fallback.	no	talks to the app, network, system actions
Companion App	Unified responsive control surface for the Android Companion and any phone browser — full remote and guide navigation, Time Machine, channel management, live alerts/ticker, every box-wide and plugin setting, and channel-folder…	no	talks to the app, network
FFmpeg Transcode	Publishes a resolved ffmpeg binary's path for other features to spawn: core video-codec compatibility transcode, party channel thumbnail capture, and any plugin that pipes live audio through it.	yes	-

Runs isolated means the plugin's code runs in its own separate process, so a crash or misbehavior cannot take the app down with it, and what it may touch is enforced. Plugins that are not isolated run inside the app's main process, which is why you should only install plugins you trust.

Plugins that can flash or flicker

If you are sensitive to flashing, you may want to turn off Ambient Signal Glitches, Breaking News Alerts, Emergency Alert System and Film Reel-Change Cue Marks. See Comfort and Photosensitivity.

More

• How the PLUG-INS tab works: Manual: The Plug-ins Tab
• Writing your own: Plugin Development
• Security model for plugins: Security