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I wanted Nuvio on my 2019 LG OLED (C9, webOS 4) and the web app was too heavy for it. So I rewrote the TV client in C, on top of SDL2 and GLES2, talking to the TV's own video pipeline. On the C9 the home screen runs at 60 fps with zero janks. The same code also runs natively on Samsung Tizen (TVs from 2018 on), builds for Samsung as WebAssembly, and there's an experimental Hisense VIDAA build.

This is an unofficial fork. It's not affiliated with NuvioMedia, and all the credit for Nuvio itself goes to them. It uses the same account, addons and settings as the official app: sign in once and your stuff is there.

The easiest way is the Homebrew Channel. Add this repository in the channel's settings and the app shows up in the list, with updates:

https://github.com/iqui27/nuvio-native-legacy/releases/latest/download/repo.json

Or grab the .ipk from the releases page. Each release has two packages:

• space.nuvio.native.legacy_X.Y.Z_arm.ipk: the normal one. The texture budget follows the TV's RAM.
• space.nuvio.native.legacy_X.Y.Z_arm-highcache.ipk: a 300 MB texture cache, for TVs with 2 GB of RAM or more.

After the first install you don't need the PC anymore. When a new version is out, the app shows a card with the release notes and Update now, and it installs through the Homebrew Channel right on the TV.

Developer Mode (ares-install) works too; the steps are in INSTALL.md.

Two builds, both on every release. Install either with Apps2Samsung, which signs the package for your TV's DUID (packages ship unsigned on purpose: a distributor certificate would lock the install to a fixed list of TVs).

The same C app as on LG, running directly on the TV (OpenGL ES, no web engine underneath). Pick the file for your TV:

Not sure which Tizen you have? Apps2Samsung shows it when it connects.

• Updates itself (new in 1.5.4, so the first real run is the next release): when a new release is out, the app downloads the new native library, checks its SHA-256 against the release and switches to it on the next launch — no reinstall. If a release changes the app shell itself, the notes will say to reinstall. (Coming from a preview or test build? Install 1.5.4 once by hand.)
• On 2018–2020 sets the TV blocks native code loaded from the app folder, so the app loads it straight into memory instead. A normal (Public) certificate is enough; no Partner certificate needed.
• Settings › Advanced › Visual effects: Automatic measures the TV in the first seconds and turns off the heaviest effects if it can't keep up; you can force Full or Light.
• Samsung TVs don't support Dolby Vision; the player labels the source's HDR type instead (HDR10, HDR10+, HDR).

NuvioTV-X.Y.Z-tizen.wgt, for Tizen 5.5 or newer. The same app compiled to WebAssembly, running in the TV's web engine. Samsung doesn't let a web app install itself, so here the update card only tells you there's a new version. Tizen 4 doesn't run the .wgt (#96) — use the native NuvioTpk40 instead.

Follow the Samsung work in the Samsung native project board and issue #137.

VIDAA apps are hosted pages, not packages. Bookmark https://nuvio-recomendacoes.henriquef29.workers.dev/tv/ in the TV browser, or sideload it in developer mode with tools/vidaa-instalar/instalar.py (see tools/vidaa-instalar/LEIAME.md). It picks a multithreaded build when the browser supports SharedArrayBuffer and falls back to single-threaded otherwise. Nobody has run it on a real VIDAA TV yet, so reports are very welcome. Known limits: no Dolby Vision in MP4, no AV1, no plain-HTTP video from the HTTPS page, and YouTube trailers only in the single-threaded build.

On webOS 3, keep in mind that many of those sets can't decode H.265 or HDR, and have little free RAM (around 300 MB), so pick H.264 sources when you can.

About root on LG: the app itself doesn't run as root, and installing through the Homebrew Channel doesn't need it. What I haven't been able to measure is video on a TV without root, because the app talks straight to the TV's media service. If you have a non-rooted TV and video is a black screen while the UI works, please tell me.

Account and profiles

• QR sign-in on the TV; the session survives reboots
• Profiles with PIN; each profile has its own addons, home order, Continue Watching and progress
• Trakt and Simkl linked from the TV, per profile
• Addons, home catalog order, collections, library, watched items and settings come from your Nuvio account

Home

• Hero with trailers (Apple TV first, then YouTube), logos and backdrops from several sources (TMDB, metahub, Apple TV, fanart.tv, anime sources)
• Continue Watching, Trakt rows, collections, director pages, an Explore page
• Opens from a local cache in about a second, then updates from the network
• Magic Remote pointer on LG

Playback

• The TV's own video pipeline: HDR10, Dolby Vision on MP4, Atmos passthrough where the TV supports it
• Sources from your addons, with debrid (Real-Debrid, TorBox, Premiumize). Uncached TorBox torrents can be sent to download from the Sources sheet
• Automatic source: Best source or First in list (like Nuvio's auto-play first source), checked one at a time, with a limited number of retries
• ASS/SSA subtitles embedded in MKV (anime) drawn by the app with libass, read in the background over HTTP ranges while the video plays
• Addon subtitles, preferred subtitle/audio language that turns on by itself, subtitle style
• Up Next / More like this at the credits (MKV chapters and TheIntroDB), skip intro, resume
• Seek shows only the progress bar when the controls are hidden

Also

• Live TV (Xtream and Stalker portals) with a guide
• Blur unwatched episodes (spoiler protection)
• Recommend a title to a friend
• A Diagnostic that measures your TV and tunes the app for it (below)

What it doesn't do yet: Nuvio plugins (JavaScript scrapers). This app runs Stremio addons, but it has no JavaScript engine for plugins (#134).

Almost everything that made this app faster came from real logs, and I only own one TV. So there's a Diagnostic in Settings › Diagnostics › Diagnostics and optimization. It takes about a minute. It measures your TV (addons, sources, every artwork source, memory, frame times), picks the best settings for it, checks before and after, and keeps the new profile only if it's clearly better than network noise.

Then it sends an anonymous report: timings and sizes. No passwords, tokens, addon URLs or personal lists. Each report tells me the right memory budget, network threads and image sizes for another TV model.

This project grew out of wanting a smooth, beautiful Nuvio experience on my LG C9. It now reaches more TVs, with help from people testing builds and sharing feedback.

If you’d like to support the time and care behind it, visit CraaazyDevs on Patreon. Support is entirely optional. Bug reports, testing, and helping other users matter too.

This is an independent, unofficial project, not affiliated with NuvioMedia. Credit for Nuvio goes to its original creators.

1. Right after the problem happens, send the log from the app: Settings › About › Send log (on LG you can also open the log panel from the remote).
2. Open an issue with your TV model, the app version and what you did.

The log never carries credentials. Logs are kept for 30 days and are only used to fix bugs. You can also turn on automatic log sending in Settings.

bash tools/mac.sh              # build and run on macOS (UI only, no video)
bash tools/arm.sh              # cross-compile for LG in Docker and deploy over ssh
bash tools/arm.sh --ipk        # also produce the .ipk
bash tools/tizen.sh            # build the Samsung target (WebAssembly)
bash tools/tizen-wgt.sh        # package it as an unsigned .wgt
bash tools/tpk.sh              # native Samsung: the four .tpk (Docker + .NET 8)
bash tools/release-samsung.sh  # every Samsung package for a release, checked
bash tools/hb-repo.sh <ipk> <dir>   # Homebrew Channel repo files for a release

Tests are shell scripts in tests/ (bash tests/<name>.sh); most of them build a piece of src/ on the host with the network or the TV faked.

Server URLs and client ids are not in the source. They come from a local.properties file through tools/env.sh. The build refuses to package any credential file and deletes the .ipk if one shows up (tools/testa-ipk.sh checks by extracting the ar archive).

Each one of these cost me at least a day:

• The video plane sits behind the GL surface and shows through an alpha hole. glReadPixels and the TV's screenshot never see it, so a capture during playback is black. That's the design, not a bug.
• StarfishMediaAPIs calls exit(0) when the process doesn't match exeName in its LS2 role. Silent, no crash. Talking to com.webos.media over LS2 directly is what works.
• webOS 5 removed libAcbAPI. The app carries both paths: ACB on webOS 2–4, SDL's exported window on 5+, picked at startup.
• When SAM launches a native app, stdout and stderr go to /dev/null. Nothing you print survives until you freopen a log file.
• The Back button doesn't arrive until the window asks for it, through the SDL_WEBOS_ACCESS_POLICY_KEYS_BACK hint, and only if it's set before the window is created. It then arrives as scancode 482.
• Don't link libcurl. The SDK has .so.4, the TV has .so.5, and the binary won't start. dlopen it at runtime and try both.
• The TV's libcurl (7.53) is old: reusing connections helps a lot, but only after a transfer finished cleanly.
• Firmware symbol dumps from webosbrew tell you whether a binary will load on a TV you don't own. They don't tell you it works. That's how webOS 3 support was checked: exactly one missing symbol (SDL_CreateRGBSurfaceWithFormat, SDL 2.0.5), replaced in src/sdlcompat.h, so the same package runs on webOS 3 and up.

And on Samsung, where the app is WebAssembly in the TV's browser: one busy main thread and the whole app waits. Most of the Samsung speedups came from moving work off it (image decoding in a Worker, no synchronous storage writes, no per-frame file checks).

Most design notes are in Portuguese, because I wrote them for myself: PORT-LEGACY.md, PLANO-CONTA-SYNC.md, MEDIDAS-WEB.md, FERRAMENTAS.md. Release notes live in docs/releases/. INSTALL.md and this file are in English.

GNU General Public License v3.0.

The C in src/ is written from scratch, but the interface icons in deploy/app/art/icones/ come from the SVGs of the upstream web app, which is GPLv3, as is the web fork this grew alongside. So the whole thing goes out under the same terms.

Settings icons: Lucide, ISC license. The unmodified SVGs and the license text are in deploy/app/art/icones/lucide/; the aj_*.png next to them are rasterized by tools/icones-lucide.sh.

"Nuvio", the logo and the wordmark belong to the original authors. The GPL covers the code, not the name or the branding. They appear here only to say which project this one comes from.

Artwork fetched at runtime (TMDB, Trakt, Apple TV, addon CDNs) belongs to its owners and isn't covered by this license.