Nightshift for iOS
A native SwiftUI client for a Nightshift
server — your self-hosted music library, from your pocket.
What it does
| Screen | What you get |
|---|
| Downloads | Paste a Spotify, SoundCloud or YouTube link, pick a Navidrome owner, mark it for nightly sync, and watch the download live |
| Search | The iTunes catalog as an artwork grid with 30-second previews — one tap pulls a track or a whole album into your library |
| Sync | Every playlist the nightly job keeps up to date, grouped by source; admins set owner and visibility |
| Nightly | The schedule in plain language, a manual run, and its own live log |
| Settings | Account and password, user management, the full server configuration, accent colour and app icon |
German and English, following the device language. The accent colour has eight
presets and a free colour picker; the app icon can be switched separately.
What you need
- An iPhone or iPad with iOS 16 or newer
- A Nightshift server you can reach from the phone — on your home network or
through a VPN such as Tailscale or WireGuard. Version 1.3 or newer is
recommended: from that release the download log is per user, so you no longer
watch someone else's run.
- An Apple ID for signing. Apple does not allow this kind of app in the App
Store (App Review guideline 5.2.3 rules out downloading media from third-party
services), so the app is signed with your own account, like any other
sideloaded app.
Installing
AltStore or SideStore (recommended)
Both keep the app up to date and can refresh the signature on their own.
-
Set up AltStore or SideStore
on your device, following their instructions.
-
In the app: Browse → Sources → +
-
Add this source:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Jannehy/nightshift-ios/main/altstore.json
-
Open Nightshift in the source and tap Install.
New versions then show up in AltStore by themselves.
Sideloadly (no AltStore needed)
- Download
Nightshift.ipa from the latest release.
- Install Sideloadly on a Mac or PC, connect the
iPhone by cable, drop the IPA in and sign in with your Apple ID.
- On the iPhone: Settings → General → VPN & Device Management and trust the
developer profile.
A word on the seven days
With a free Apple ID, a sideloaded app stops working after 7 days and has to
be re-signed — AltStore does this by itself while your device and computer are on
the same network. A paid Apple Developer account stretches this to a year.
Free accounts are also limited to three sideloaded apps at a time.
Connecting
On first launch, enter the address of your server:
| Typed | Used |
|---|
192.168.1.20 | http://192.168.1.20:8765 |
192.168.1.20:9000 | that port instead of the default |
nightshift.tail1234.ts.net | over Tailscale, with the tunnel up |
https://music.example.com | taken as typed, port 443 |
A bare host gets http:// and Nightshift's default port 8765; anything more
explicit is used as you typed it, path prefix included.
The app speaks plain HTTP, because that is how Nightshift is normally reached
over a private tunnel or the local network. Behind an HTTPS reverse proxy, enter
the full https:// URL.
Sign in with your Nightshift account. The session survives restarts, and the
password is kept in the iOS Keychain so the app can sign in again by itself when
the session expires.
Building from source
Only needed if you want to change something — for installing, use a release.
brew install xcodegen
xcodegen generate
open Nightshift.xcodeproj
Requires macOS with Xcode 15 or newer. Pick your team under Signing &
Capabilities (or put your Team ID into project.yml so it survives
regeneration), then build to your device.
Tools/build-ipa.sh archives and exports an IPA from the command line;
Tools/make-altstore-source.py writes the AltStore source. It reads version and
build number out of the IPA itself — AltStore refuses to install when those
disagree with the source — takes the IPA's exact byte size, and picks up
screenshots from docs/screenshots/. Pass --tag if the release tag differs
from the app version.
The app mark and the launcher icon come from one place: Tools/make-icon.py
rasterises the icon, --swift prints the same geometry as constants for the
version drawn inside the app, so the two cannot drift apart.
Not included
- Push notifications when a download finishes — APNs needs a paid developer
account and a sender on the server side, which Nightshift has no hook for.
- A share extension ("Share → Nightshift" from another app). The natural
next step; it would post the shared URL to
/download.
- The setup wizard, deliberately: on a fresh server the app links you to it
in Safari, and it is a one-time flow.
- Cancelling a running job — the server has no cancel endpoint. "Clear log"
only detaches the view.
Licence
MIT
