ShowShark Release Notes v2026.02.26

Last updated on 03 Mar 2026

This release was much faster in the making than I expected, given the long todo list I was left with when I finally decided to draw the line and push the first release to the App Store.

There remain a handful of "odds and ends" I could tackle. The only notable missing feature is playlists / favorites. I just haven't wrapped my head around exactly how I want that to work.

Blu-ray Disc Playback

Full BDMV Blu-ray disc support -- detect, scan, browse, and play Blu-ray disc folder structures (BDMV/index.bdmv) as first-class media items in your library. Discs are automatically classified as movies or TV seasons based on duration heuristics and registered accordingly
libbluray integration via a Swift actor wrapper around the libbluray C API, providing thread-safe access to titles, chapters, clips, video/audio/subtitle stream metadata, and disc info
Chapter navigation in the video playback view with previous/next chapter buttons, a chapter indicator, expandable chapter list, and a starting chapter picker
MPEG-2 and VC-1 codec support for both standard file playback and Blu-ray paths, with proper keyframe detection, decoder pipelines, and MPEG-TS caps filtering
Accurate Blu-ray A/V sync using GStreamer segment-direct alignment, which computes domain-independent content time for both audio and video streams. This eliminates the ~1-2 second desync caused by the previous epoch-stripping approach
Pre-IDR frame dropping via M2TS pre-scan that detects the first video IDR keyframe and audio positions before pipeline playback begins, preventing corrupt leading frames after seeks
Blu-ray thumbnail generation with chapter/clip offset mapping routed through the existing GStreamer thumbnail generator, using BDMV-specific cache keys

Photo Channels

Photo Channels -- a new channel type alongside Video and Audio Channels that displays photos from filesystem folders and/or iCloud Photo Library albums as a synchronized full-screen slideshow across all connected clients
Deterministic sync algorithm using a seeded shuffle so all clients show the same photo at the same time without storing thousands of schedule entries
Photo metadata overlay showing date taken and reverse-geocoded GPS location during both photo channel playback and full-screen photo viewing
Auto-hiding chrome -- navigation bar, close button, and status bar are hidden during slideshow by default, with tap-to-toggle visibility
Screen sleep prevention during photo channel playback on all platforms
Full-screen on tvOS with hidden navigation bar and edge-to-edge display
Channel editor with slide interval control (5-60 seconds), iCloud album search with autocomplete, and filesystem folder selection

Lyrics

On-demand synced lyrics during audio playback, powered by LRCLib. The server fetches, parses, and caches lyrics, then delivers pre-parsed timestamped lines to clients via protobuf -- clients display lyrics without knowledge of the provider or format
Synced line highlighting with auto-scroll that follows the current playback position. On tvOS, auto-scroll is always active; on iOS/macOS, manual scrolling pauses auto-scroll for 5 seconds before resuming
Lyrics provider configuration in the Providers settings view

Now Playing & Media Keys

Rich Now Playing info on the lock screen and Control Center, including track title, artist name, album title, and album artwork during music playback
Lock screen scrubber for both audio and video playback via the system's changePlaybackPositionCommand
macOS media key support -- the hardware play/pause key on Mac keyboards now controls ShowShark playback even when the app is not frontmost, with debounce logic to prevent double-fire from simultaneous pause and toggle commands
Audio-only session mode using AVAudioSession mode .default for music (better for background audio) vs .moviePlayback for video

Video Playback

Resume button -- when a saved position exists, an orange "Resume at H:MM:SS" button appears in the playback view. "Start Playback" resets to the beginning when a resume position is available
Persistent encoder settings -- codec, bitrate, output size, and quality preferences are saved to UserDefaults and restored each time the playback view appears
In-app volume slider (0-100%) that adjusts player volume without changing system volume, persisted across app restarts. Excluded on tvOS where the hardware remote controls volume

Audio

Improved clipping prevention -- replaced fixed server-side gain boost with per-buffer peak detection and transparent attenuation on the client. Buffers exceeding full-scale are uniformly attenuated to 0.98 peak, with hard clamp only as a final safety net
Stable duration across seeks -- when an audio-only session restart temporarily reports duration=0, the client preserves the previous known-good duration and the server falls back to metadata extraction, preventing scrubber collapse

Streaming

Startup keyframe gating -- video streaming now waits for the first valid keyframe before emitting frames, so clients no longer receive partial or undecodable data after seeks. Audio is also gated until video establishes a keyframe anchor, keeping both streams aligned
Adaptive startup buffer sizing -- transport buffer capacities are computed from the actual media cadence (source framerate and audio packet duration) plus safety headroom, replacing fixed buffer sizes
Startup transport boost for video sessions accelerates initial data delivery, then transitions smoothly back to real-time pacing
Mailbox-based stream ingress on the client replaces per-packet MainActor task hops with a single drain task, reducing scheduling overhead. Queued pre-seek packets are flushed immediately during seek for faster responsiveness

Server

Non-blocking thumbnail generation -- thumbnail requests no longer block the server's message receive loop. Cache misses spawn background tasks for GStreamer work, and a serializer ensures only one thumbnail pipeline runs at a time
Authentication throttling with per-IP escalating delays on failed login attempts (1s to 8s cap, 15-minute expiry) and connection limits (100 global, 5 per IP) for brute-force and DoS defense
Faster library re-scans -- image files and photo directories are skipped during scanning, known file paths are pre-loaded into a Set for O(1) duplicate checking, and cast/genre linking only runs for newly created records
Faster reconnection -- reconnection timeout reduced from 30s to 5s, and stale NWConnections are properly cancelled to prevent leaked background retries

Client

Improved server discovery -- discovered servers now show all known addresses (IPv4 and IPv6) in an address picker, with IPv4 listed first and pre-selected. Connection failures display actionable alerts instead of silently hanging
Redesigned add-provider flow with a two-step type selection screen organizing providers into "Movie & TV Show" and "Music" sections before advancing to the API key entry form
Release year in play history -- movie titles in the watch history now display their release year
Fixed channel guide alignment -- time labels in the channel guide now use exact coordinate positioning, matching the current time indicator
Fixed program detail overflow -- the ProgramDetailSheet thumbnail no longer causes layout overflow on iPhone and iPad
Fixed reconnection CPU spike -- an infinite SwiftUI invalidation loop caused by mutating @Observable properties during view body evaluation has been resolved, along with a brief media browser flash during re-authentication
Fixed stale playback state -- error messages and buffering indicators from a failed playback session no longer persist into the next video
Fixed history re-render churn -- position auto-save during playback no longer triggers unnecessary re-renders of the history section
Improved macOS audio layout -- the audio playback view on macOS now uses a clean card-based layout matching the iOS design, replacing the list-style dividers
Renamed "Albums" to "Music Albums" in library search to distinguish from Photo Albums
Added Apple Vision Pro support – as a first class target, and a legit Vision Pro app