Crucible

A fast, native Plex client for iPhone — offline downloads, Skip Intro, Picture-in-Picture, lock-screen controls, Handoff — built entirely on Arch Linux.

No Xcode. No macOS. No storyboards. Pure programmatic UIKit, cross-compiled from Linux and deployed to iPhone over USB.

• Direct play for natively-supported codecs, automatic HLS transcoding otherwise
• Skip Intro / Skip Credits from Plex chapter markers
• Picture-in-Picture and background audio
• Lock screen & Control Center controls — play/pause, skip ±10s, scrub, next episode
• Credits-triggered Up Next autoplay between episodes
• Adjustable playback speed, subtitle and audio track selection
• Resume from where you left off, progress synced to the server via the timeline API

A proper download engine — not the afterthought the official app ships.

• Download movies, whole seasons, or single episodes for offline viewing
• Per-download quality — Original (source quality), High (1080p · 20 Mbps), Medium (720p · 8 Mbps), Low (480p · 3 Mbps), and Data Saver (360p · 0.7 Mbps), with a configurable default in Settings
• Live Activity — a Lock Screen card and Dynamic Island showing live download progress (percent, current title, "X of Y"), built with ActivityKit + a WidgetKit extension — compiled and signed on Linux by xtool
• Real offline HLS engine — downloads the transcoded stream segment-by-segment into a self-contained local playlist, re-minting the Plex session on the fly so a stalled transcode never breaks the download
• True background downloading — segments are fetched over a background URLSession, so transfers continue in the system daemon while the app is suspended or terminated (the Live Activity keeps advancing); a fresh Plex session is re-minted on failure, downloads auto-resume from the segments already on disk, and a notification fires when one finishes while you're away
• Real download queue — concurrency limit plus pause / resume / cancel / retry per item and live progress
• Wi-Fi-only by default — downloads pause when you leave Wi-Fi and resume when it returns; opt into cellular with one toggle
• Dedicated Downloads tab — in-progress items, downloaded movies, and episodes grouped by show, with storage used and free space
• First-class offline playback — Skip Intro / Skip Credits (markers saved with the download), resume, Picture-in-Picture, background audio, and lock-screen controls, all with no network
• Storage management — see space used, delete individual downloads or all at once, optional auto-delete of watched downloads; media is stored on-device and excluded from iCloud backup

• Home with Continue Watching, On Deck, and Recently Added hubs
• Library poster grids with genre filtering, sort options, and per-library Continue Watching carousels
• Folder browsing for unindexed content
• Movie/episode detail with backdrop hero, codec/HDR badges, Cast & Crew, and More Like This
• Show detail with season picker and an episode list that tracks watched and in-progress state
• Search across all libraries and a watch history timeline
• Handoff & Spotlight — hand a title between devices, find recently-viewed media in iOS search
• Surprise Me random picker

• Liquid Glass materials throughout on iOS 26
• Automatic best-connection server discovery (prefers local, non-relay, HTTPS), Tailscale-friendly
• Live watched/progress refresh across Home, Library, and detail screens — never stale on return
• On-device file logger for diagnostics without a Mac attached
• Plex OAuth sign-in, token stored in the Keychain

Requires Swift 6+ via swift-bin (AUR) and the iOS cross-compilation SDK.

swift build --swift-sdk arm64-apple-ios

Requires xtool and a USB-connected iPhone.

xtool dev run --usb

Sources/
├── CrucibleActivity/       # Shared ActivityAttributes (compiled into app + widget)
├── CrucibleWidgets/        # WidgetKit extension — download Live Activity (Lock Screen + Dynamic Island)
└── Crucible/               # The app
    ├── App/                # AppDelegate, SceneDelegate, ServerBootstrap, BGTask registration, deep links
    ├── Detail/             # Movie/episode detail, show detail, cast & episode cells
    ├── Downloads/          # HLS download engine, store, resolver, Live Activity controller, offline UI + tab
    ├── History/            # Watch activity history
    ├── Home/               # Hub-based home screen
    ├── Library/            # Movie grid, show grid, folder browser
    ├── Networking/         # APIClient (actor), endpoints, models, ImageLoader, Keychain, blurhash
    ├── Player/             # StreamResolver, PlaybackReporter, PlayerCoordinator, Now Playing, Up Next
    ├── Search/             # Search with hub-based results
    ├── Settings/           # Server setup/connection discovery, preferences, Plex OAuth
    └── Shared/             # Theme, Glass, PosterCell, Formatters, MediaActivity, AppLogger

The widget extension is built and signed entirely on Linux via xtool's extensions: mechanism — Live Activities with no Xcode.

Zero third-party dependencies. Pure Apple frameworks: Foundation, UIKit, AVKit/AVFoundation, MediaPlayer, Network, BackgroundTasks, ActivityKit, WidgetKit, UserNotifications, CoreSpotlight, WebKit, Security.