Aniwhere runs on a home server and is reachable from your devices anywhere through
Tailscale, with HTTPS and no open ports. On a phone it installs to the home screen and
behaves like an app. Everyone you let in gets their own lists, progress and settings.
Features
- Browse like a streaming service: trending, this season and all-time popular (metadata from AniList), title
search with genre/format/status filters, "Because you watched" and "More like this" recommendations
- A real player: skip intro/credits (AniSkip, optional auto-skip), Up-next countdown with autoplay and
next-season handoff, quality and speed per device, keyboard shortcuts (
?), double-tap to seek, subtitle styling
- Sub or Dub per show: dub by default, falls back to sub
- Resume anywhere: progress is kept on the server, so you can stop on your phone and continue on your TV
- Lists: Watching, Plan to watch, Completed, On hold, Dropped, Rewatching, with scores, notes and history;
two-way AniList sync
- Episodes kept on the server: the next episodes of everyone's Watching shows download nightly and play from disk
- Collections: franchises (with story-order guides) and studios
- Profiles: each Tailscale login has its own lists, progress, history and settings; the owner adds people in Settings
- Push notifications for new episodes (on iPhone, from the home-screen app)
- Filler tags and "Skip filler", stats and a yearly recap, TV mode for remotes (
?tv=1)
- Looks after itself: ani-cli updates daily, nightly database backups (last 7 kept), a Server health panel
Install
You need a Linux server that's always on (a mini PC, NAS, Proxmox container or VPS) and a free
Tailscale account.
Updating, backups and moving between versions are covered at the end of each guide.
Releases and what changed in each are on the Releases page
and in CHANGELOG.md.
How it works
your devices ──HTTPS over Tailscale──▶ Aniwhere (FastAPI, port 8000)
├─ AniList GraphQL: metadata, lists
├─ bridge.sh ─▶ ani-cli functions: search, episodes, stream links
└─ HLS proxy: fetches playlists and video segments for your devices
bridge.sh loads ani-cli's own scraping functions (without its menus or player), so updating ani-cli updates
how streams are found. The app pulls the latest ani-cli daily, and Settings has an "Update ani-cli" button.- AniList shows are matched to the stream source by title search, then verified by MAL ID.
- All video goes through your server, so your devices only ever talk to your server.
- Access is checked against Tailscale identity: only the logins you list (and people the owner adds) get in.
| Path | What it is |
|---|
app/ | FastAPI backend: API, playback, HLS proxy, AniList sync, background jobs, SQLite storage |
static/ | Single-page frontend (vanilla JS; the player is player.js), service worker, manifest |
bridge.sh | The bridge to ani-cli |
deploy/ | Manual installer, systemd units, icon generator, HTTP→HTTPS redirect |
Dockerfile, docker-compose.yml | The Docker image and a ready-to-run compose file with Tailscale |
Disclaimer
Aniwhere doesn't host, store or distribute any video. It's a front end that uses ani-cli to find streams that are
already publicly available on third-party sites, the same way a web browser would. You're responsible for how you use
it and for following the laws where you live. Aniwhere isn't affiliated with AniList, ani-cli or any streaming site.
Contributing and support
Bug reports and ideas are welcome in Issues. See
CONTRIBUTING.md. Security problems: see SECURITY.md.
License
MIT, © Navam Goyani (navam.dev). Keep the copyright notice when you share or build on it.
bridge.sh is GPL-3.0, because it loads code from ani-cli (GPL-3.0). See LICENSE.
