Arc TV is a modern media center for your Mac. Content comes from Stremio addons rather than a fixed catalog, so you choose the addons you want, the same way Stremio itself works. Arc TV ships with no content of its own.
It is a native Mac app (not a web page in a window) for Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 14 or later, and it uses the same account as the Fire TV, Firestick and Android TV app, the phone app and the web app, so your list and addons are already there when you sign in.
✨ Features
- Addon-powered: discover movies and series from whichever Stremio-protocol addons you install, and add, switch off or remove them from the app
- Sync everywhere: your My List, Continue Watching, settings and addons follow you between your Mac, your TV, your phone and the web
- A player that plays more: the built-in player plays 4K, HEVC, HDR and Dolby Vision files that the Mac's own player can't, with audio, subtitle and speed menus, a full-screen button, next episode and autoplay, and it remembers your volume and speed
- Torrents inside the app: torrent sources play right inside Arc TV, with settings for the buffer size and how much disk space a torrent may use
- Made for the Mac: right-click any poster for a quick menu (Play, My List, Watched, Like and Not for me), search suggestions you can move through with the arrow keys, and a top bar that slides away as you scroll
- Easy sign-in: sign in with your email and password, or scan a QR code with your phone. Your sign-in is kept in a private file, so Arc TV never asks for your Mac password
- Browse your way: Home, Movies, TV Shows, Search and My List, with a title page showing the logo, trailer, rating, cast and more like it, and a source list with quality filters and sorting
- Picked for you: a Home row chosen from the movies and shows you like, finish and save, with the reason under each poster
- Stays up to date: Arc TV tells you when a new version is out and what changed, and you can check in Settings
- ArcTV Plus (optional; the app stays free): up to 5 profiles with kids profiles and PIN locks, Picked for you, Smart source picking, your watch stats, and a Download button that saves movies and episodes to your Mac
📱📺 Arc TV everywhere
Same account, same list, same addons on every device:
💻 Installing
- Download
ArcTV-0.2.0.dmg (or the newest ArcTV-<version>.dmg) from the latest release, open it and drag Arc TV into Applications.
- The app is not signed with an Apple Developer ID and not notarized, so macOS warns the first time you open it:
- macOS 14: right-click Arc TV, choose Open, then Open again.
- macOS 15 and later: try to open it once, then go to System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway.
- Or, in Terminal:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/ArcTV.app
(The exact wording differs between macOS versions.) The app does carry a free ad-hoc signature, which Apple Silicon Macs need to run it at all.
- Open Arc TV, sign in with your Arc TV email and password (or create an account), and add an addon if you don't have one yet.
❓ Questions
Where do the movies and shows come from? From the Stremio addons you add. Arc TV only plays what an addon provides and does not host or supply any content.
Is it free? Yes. Browsing, playing, My List, Continue Watching and addons are free. ArcTV Plus adds extras on top.
Is Arc TV affiliated with Stremio? No. Arc TV is an independent app that supports the Stremio addon format, so addons made for Stremio work in it. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Stremio.
Does it run on an Intel Mac? Not for now. It needs Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) and macOS 14 or later.
Why the warning when I open it? The app isn't notarized by Apple yet, so macOS asks you to confirm once. The steps above show how.
🛠️ For developers
The app is Swift and SwiftUI, built as a Swift package and talking to the same account backend and Stremio-protocol addons as the other Arc TV apps (the backend lives in the Fire TV repository's server/).
Building
Needs an Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14+ with Xcode's command line tools (Swift 5.9+) and brew install libtorrent-rasterbar (the torrent engine).
swift test # the tests (ArcTVCore: addon protocol, account API, Home rows)
swift run ArcTV # run it from the command line
scripts/package-app.sh 0.1.0 # build/ArcTV.app and build/ArcTV-0.1.0.dmg
The backend address is baked in from the API_BASE_URL environment variable when packaging (the release workflow reads it from a repository
secret of the same name). It can also be typed on the sign-in screen, so a build without it still works.
Layout
Sources/ArcTVCore: everything that isn't on screen, so it can be tested on its own.Sources/ArcTV: the SwiftUI app.Tests/ArcTVCoreTests: unit tests..github/workflows/build.yml: builds and tests every push and keeps an unsigned DMG as a build artifact..github/workflows/release.yml: on a version tag or a manual run, builds the DMG and publishes a GitHub Release with the patch notes.
Releasing
Add each user-visible change as a bullet under ## Unreleased in RELEASE_NOTES.md, then run the Build and publish release DMG workflow with
a version (for example 0.1.0). The notes under Unreleased become the release's notes and are filed under the version afterwards.
