Original playback is faster, simpler, and available in more places. One Original choice now selects the best direct or remux path automatically, with faster indexed playback for compatible Matroska and WebM files.
Original now works remotely and with AirPlay video. ShowShark can relay untouched media through remote tailnet connections and hand supported sessions to nearby AirPlay receivers from iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Original closes major feature gaps. Text subtitles, Skip Intro, more device-detected codecs, AV1 remuxing on capable hardware, preserved Dolby Digital audio, and extensive HDR and synchronization fixes make it a much more complete playback mode.
YouTube and Default playback can deliver better quality. YouTube resume and scrubbing can stay in HD, while adaptive playback raises quality more confidently when the connection and playback buffer are healthy.
Music albums now have artwork galleries. ShowShark can discover, cache, and display front and back covers, booklets, disc scans, tray art, and other images from the Cover Art Archive.
Downloads, navigation, search, profiles, and library scanning recover more gracefully. Interrupted work resumes more reliably, tabs remain stable while data loads, and several large-library and restricted-profile gaps are fixed.
Original Playback
Original is now one playback choice. ShowShark automatically prefers Direct File, then the faster indexed Remux HLS path, then the legacy continuous remux path when needed.
Compatible Matroska and WebM files use an on-demand Remux HLS path. The complete timeline is known before playback, so seeking, Skip Intro, pausing, and resuming can avoid rebuilding a growing stream.
Files without a usable cue index or compatible audio fall back automatically to the established Remux HLS path instead of failing Original playback.
Original playback can travel through remote tailnet connections, including relayed routes. Parallel media fetching improves throughput on higher-latency connections, and relayed playback can build a deeper buffer after it starts.
AirPlay video is available for Original playback on iPhone, iPad, and Mac when the receiver can reach the playback URL. ShowShark identifies the active receiver and explains when an HDR-only stream is declined by a receiver using an SDR output format.
Compatible text subtitles now work in Original playback with the same language switching, timing, appearance controls, and overlay used by Default playback. As with Default, overlay subtitles do not appear on AirPlay receivers or in Picture in Picture.
Skip Intro now works with Direct File and Remux HLS playback. Intro boundaries and controls behave consistently across Default and Original.
Device capability checks now ask the operating system what it can play. Original Direct File can use formats such as FLAC, ALAC, Opus, ProRes, MPEG-4 video, and Motion JPEG when the current device and OS report support.
AV1 video in Matroska and WebM can use Original remux playback on devices with hardware AV1 support, with Default retained as the fallback.
The indexed Remux HLS path can preserve compatible Dolby Digital (AC3) audio instead of converting it, retaining the original channel layout and quality. E-AC-3 detection and conversion are also more reliable when conversion is required.
HDR10 presentation metadata is repaired before playback when the bundled remuxer produces a corrupt mastering-display box, preventing severe flicker and incorrect HDR tone mapping.
Long indexed-remux sessions keep audio and video synchronized more accurately. Fragment timing, cue boundaries, packed AC3 timestamps, and cross-track generation were corrected to prevent accumulating drift and gaps.
Remux startup, seeking, pausing, and stall recovery are more resilient. ShowShark warms upcoming fragments, keeps live paused sessions available, avoids truncated resources, bounds recovery attempts, and preserves a manual Original choice through track changes.
Default is preselected on every connection. If an Original stream repeatedly stalls because the connection cannot sustain the source bitrate, ShowShark shows the measured shortfall and offers to switch at the current position.
Original playback URLs are more reliable on complex home networks. ShowShark avoids addresses blocked by App Transport Security and uses the control connection's proven route on multi-homed Macs and clients.
Playback, YouTube & Downloads
YouTube resume and scrubbing can retain HD adaptive video instead of dropping immediately to the progressive 360p path. ShowShark uses indexed range seeking and keeps the progressive MP4 path as a compatibility fallback.
The bundled YouTube resolver runtime was refreshed and made more reliable. ShowShark continues to use its self-contained Python, QuickJS, and yt-dlp tools without depending on software installed on the Server Mac.
Default playback raises quality more effectively on healthy connections. Adaptive bitrate decisions now follow buffer health and real congestion, ramp faster when conditions allow, and avoid exceeding the useful quality of the source.
Seeking gives immediate, predictable feedback. Playback freezes on the current frame while a seek is prepared, rapid 30-second skips combine into one seek, paused skips wait for resume, and scrub buffering remains visible until native playback is ready.
Interrupted downloads resume after authentication returns. Original-file copies keep their byte progress, offline packages continue from their saved media position, and Resume or Continue actions are available where a stopped or failed download appears.
Partial offline playback tolerates short decode and delivery stalls more gracefully and lets queued media catch up before reporting a genuine missing-video failure.
Stream failures lead to a recoverable result instead of an endless spinner. Empty or corrupt streams surface an error, transport reconnects keep their recovery state, and a stalled pipeline can restart once before offering Retry.
Starting a replacement stream no longer destroys its new media queues, improving Retry, media switching, and transitions between audio and video sessions.
Concurrent audio and video activities share the system audio session safely, so ending music, background downloads, or another player is less likely to interrupt active video or Picture in Picture.
Shared and live playback recover more reliably. HEVC channels can retry with software decoding after a hardware stall, shared viewers no longer lose a session when another viewer leaves, and abandoned or runaway playback sessions are reclaimed.
IPTV playback is safer to stop, and repeated M3U syncs no longer duplicate categories. Existing duplicate categories are consolidated while preserving their channels.
Web playback keeps the Server responsive during slow startup and cleans up abandoned HLS sessions even when the browser never sends a stop request.
Music, Browse, Search & Profiles
Albums can show complete artwork galleries from the Cover Art Archive, including covers, booklets, disc faces, tray inlays, and other scanned material on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro.
Artwork opens in a full-screen viewer with paging, adjacent-image preloading, captions, and zoom where supported. Apple TV receives clearer focus, loading, navigation, and dismissal behavior.
Artwork metadata is saved for offline browsing, and served images are cached by the Server. A first album view can request missing artwork immediately instead of waiting for nightly maintenance.
Restricted profiles can see album artwork when Music is allowed, while music-denied profiles remain blocked.
Music rescans reuse existing songs instead of creating duplicates when a file lacks dependable duration metadata. Music-channel artwork also works when an album cover comes from a web URL.
Channels, History, Search, and Playlists remain stable while their first data loads. Tabs are based on Server capabilities rather than whether an early request happened to finish, and loading, empty, failure, and retry states replace blank screens.
Profile changes refresh profile-scoped content together. Late results from the previous profile are discarded, and cancellation of one screen no longer cancels shared application loading.
Profile restrictions are enforced more consistently. YouTube subscriptions respect YouTube access, song references honor folder rules, and paging continues through large runs of hidden results until allowed content is found.
File-filter availability is much faster for restricted profiles because each file's authorization result is reused across resolution, format, and other filter choices.
Resolution filters now match the labels and counts shown in Search, including wide 1080p and 720p video and custom resolutions.
Recently Added pagination no longer drops items imported at nearly the same time, such as several episodes from one season scan.
Apple TV Settings returns focus cleanly from the profile row to the root tabs, and root navigation is steadier after connecting or changing profiles.
Server, Library, Connectivity & Security
A malformed or parser-hostile media file is less likely to crash ShowShark Server. Metadata probing runs in an isolated helper, and File Details and playback planning can fall back to indexed track metadata when a live probe fails.
Server startup no longer waits indefinitely for unavailable network volumes. Locations and exclusions load asynchronously, offline bookmarks are preserved, and the Locations tab identifies folders that could not be resolved.
Remote connections try every available tailnet address. ShowShark can prefer IPv6 on cellular or expensive paths, retain IPv4-first behavior on Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and fall through to another candidate when one route fails.
Listener startup and restart failures are detected accurately. Port conflicts trigger real retries, alternate media ports work as intended, and Retry replaces old listeners cleanly instead of leaving clients attached to a broken Server instance.
Slow media preparation and external image fetches no longer block a client's control channel. Browse, stop, status, thumbnail, YouTube subscription, web, and Original-playback requests remain responsive while longer work continues.
Media resources are bounded and reclaimed more carefully. Per-client playback caps remove orphaned transcodes, web HLS has a periodic idle reaper, remux pipelines release file descriptors, and slow or failed GStreamer sessions terminate cleanly.
LAN control connections now remember the Server certificate seen on first use and reject an unexpected certificate change on later connections. Tailnet connections continue to rely on their authenticated encrypted tunnel.
Proxied IPTV and album-art redirects are checked again before ShowShark follows them, and unusual media filenames can no longer alter a GStreamer pipeline description.
Network services better withstand fragmented requests, silent connections, and connection floods. Request headers can arrive across multiple packets, first-request and WebSocket-handshake deadlines release dead peers, and each media listener has a connection limit.
Remote devices no longer share one authentication throttle or connection allowance simply because they pass through the same loopback bridge, improving multi-device remote use without weakening per-device limits.
Database upgrades and profile merges are safer. Interrupted migrations can resume without emptying the library or blocking Server startup, and watch-party updates no longer hold unrelated library writes inside a profile-merge transaction.
Library maintenance handles edge cases more safely. Import issues resolve paths against the correct location, S3 listings cannot loop without bound on a broken endpoint, and concurrent MusicBrainz artwork requests stay within the configured rate.
The Status screen describes inbound reachability problems more accurately, and tailnet startup cleanup is bounded when a connection does not close promptly.
Accounts, Diagnostics, Updates & Website
A completed purchase now shows a Finalizing state and confirms the new entitlement automatically. ShowShark reconciles the checkout while polling, including renewals stacked onto existing coverage, before reporting success.
Watch-party invitations always use ShowShark's configured coordination service instead of accepting an arbitrary coordination address from the request.
Extended diagnostics remain enabled for seven days across restarts. Client and Server log submissions can now include up to the last 24 hours, and successful uploads can notify support with the reference ID and supplied context.
Server update checks avoid crash-prone embedded release notes and modal no-update alerts. Manual checks report checking, current, and failure states in the main window, while release packaging performs stronger Sparkle signature checks before publication.
Bundled runtimes, third-party dependencies, and release tooling were refreshed for the new release, with build artifacts standardized on the shared Xcode cache.