What’s New in 1.2.1

Seerr

Fixed an issue with Seerr requiring re-authentication on app restart.

Subtitles

Fixed various Subtitle related issues, including a duplication bug and subs not appearing under certain conditions.

Playback

Stability improvements to both tvOS and iOS and fixed some bugs related to transcoded playback sessions.

‘Ends At’ time now updates in real-time, both on the item detail page and during playback. There’s also an added option to display the current time during playback. Useful if you don’t have a watch or if the microwave sits too far away.

Added ‘Shuffle’ on iOS. Swipe on the Play/Resume button from the Show-level item detail view to start shuffling.

Neptune Version 1.2.1 is now available on the tvOS App Store and on iOS via TestFlight.

One MDM to Rule Them All

Neptune’s MDM suite receives a visual overhaul and grows more powerful than ever with the addition of Server Profiles. These profiles allow administrators the ability to create fully-configurable, reusable profiles and apply them to their users.

Server Profiles can also be applied automatically based on certain conditions, such as device types. This lets you create specific profiles for mobile devices and have it automatically apply for all of your users on mobile without changing their experience on other devices. Profiles are reusable, so you can add/remove profiles from users at any time - and even lock certain features so that they cannot be altered.

Every option from the MDM suite, including the ability to create, modify and assign Server Profiles is also available to Pro users across every Neptune client. This makes it easier than ever to manage your server’s user experience, while also providing support to those who need it the most.

Language Rules

Create custom rules that specify which subtitles Neptune should select based on the audio language. Rules can also be region-specific, working alongside Conductor, ensuring the correct language is selected whenever available.

For Pro users, Language Rules leverage Conductor Pro’s learning engine, allowing rules to apply mid-playback as you switch tracks. So if you have a rule specified for a certain language, that rule engages automatically whenever you switch to that language during playback.

Diagnostics

Neptune now includes a new suite of Diagnostics tools that provide useful information for when a problem needs investigating.

Network Tests

This test measures sustained download performance between your active media server and client device, using the same route Neptune uses for playback. The test can help identify whether buffering or playback issues are caused by the network connection, server route, or competing traffic. It does not decode the media, change playback history, or affect watched status.

Playback Benchmark

This benchmarks real media from your server directly on your client device. Add one or more movies or episodes to a test queue, then run the benchmark to receive a playback grade and detailed results. Neptune measures startup time, buffering events, read throughput, dropped and late frames, source retries, decoder performance, and other available device conditions.

This makes it easier to distinguish network or delivery problems from issues in the playback pipeline, device hardware, or malformed file properties. Benchmark playback is isolated from normal viewing: it does not report playback progress, change watched status, or add activity history.

Expect more diagnostic tools to get added over time, making it easier than ever to find bottlenecks and resolve client facing issues.

Playback Updates

Adaptive player sizing

In most cases, a player offers two view-modes to users: fit the content within a set region (to avoid clashing with the Camera / Dynamic Island), or fill the screen to display it as full-screen.

Neptune offers a third option: Adaptive Scaling. This option intelligently adapts the player and automatically accounts for the iPhone’s Dynamic Island when working out its available space, dynamically adjusting its size to give you the most available screen space without needing to block your content behind the Camera.

New Playback Controls

On iOS, double-tap either side of the player to skip forward or backward. The gesture keeps a common playback action close at hand without requiring you to reach for the timeline. The skip duration can be configured from Settings > Playback if you want to increase how far it jumps ahead on skips.

On tvOS, you can now pause/resume playback by clicking the center button on your Apple TV remote. In addition to that, a light touch peeks at the timeline so you can check on your progress at a glance. Requires a compatible Apple TV remote.

Impatient Mode

With Impatient Mode enabled, selecting a media item skips the menu navigation entirely and goes straight into a Play/Resume state of the selected item. If that’s too impatient for your taste, there’s an additional option to limit its behavior to Continue Watching / Next-Up items. This means selecting an in-progress item or series resumes playback immediately, while other items still fallback to their native menu selections.

Set Watch Progress

You can now Set Watch Progress by long-pressing an episode. This allows you to mark all previous episodes as watched in one go, quickly bringing your progress up to speed when resuming a series.

You can choose to only include the current season or set watch progress for an entire series.

Loading Screens

The previous generic splash-screen has now been replaced with a new, dedicated Loading Screen. Every time you startup Neptune, you’ll be greeted with a unique startup message - could be a useful hint, an interesting fact, or a fun observation. These messages can be disabled at any time from Settings > Home > Loading Screen.

The Loading Screen is more than just cosmetic. Neptune’s UI now does a better job of preparing your Home Screen on cold launches, presenting your data more accurately and optimizing the navigation to ensure everything works as smoothly as possible.

With Neptune Pro, the Loading Screen can be customized with a backdrop that draws from user specified sources, such as your ‘Continue Watching’ and Next-Up queues, ‘Favorites’, and more. It could even be a completely random item from your Library.

Keeping Your Library in Sync

Pins across platforms

Pins now sync across platforms, including timestamped Pins. A Pin attached to a specific moment in an episode can follow you between clients just like a Pin attached to a title.

Selective Downloads

Downloads are now selective. Choose individual episodes when you only need part of a series, or select an entire season when you want everything together.

Independent TMDB metadata

TMDB metadata can now be disabled independently. If you do not want Neptune to use TMDB metadata, that choice no longer needs to be tied to unrelated metadata settings.

Position “See All” your way

Home sections now include new options for positioning “See All”. You can choose where the control appears instead of treating every section as if it needs the same layout.

By the way…

Version 1.2 also includes fixes across playback progress, memory, crashes, performance, and the user interface. Some of these changes are small on their own; together, they make Neptune more stable and offers a more enjoyable user experience.

Neptune Version 1.2 is now available on the tvOS App Store and on iOS via TestFlight.

Manage Neptune Clients Directly

Neptune’s full MDM suite, which previously was only accessible through the plugin page, can now be used directly within Neptune clients to manage an individual user’s Neptune configuration or manage server defaults for all new users. Requires the latest version of Neptune’s Plugin Suite.

Managed Settings inherits the navigation and menus from Neptune’s own client. Every setting, toggle and adjustment appears right where you expect them to be, making the whole process feel familiar and right at home.

Device Specific Settings

Central management works best when it can account for the exceptions. You may want one playback configuration everywhere, without forcing your phone and television to share the same theme.

Device Overrides allow you to lock a preference on one device, leaving its local value in place while continuing to synchronize everything else. On iOS, swipe the preference from right to left to reveal the lock; on tvOS, long-press it. The complete list of all your overrides can be reviewed and updated from Backup & Sync > Device Overrides.

Preference Presets

Neptune’s MDM suite also gains device presets: named settings loadouts that can be prepared in advance and applied when needed. Administrators can make different presets the server default for different classes of device, rather than stretching one configuration across every screen in the house.

A server might assign Direct Play to every Apple TV while giving iPhones a transcoding preset. Users receive a configuration suited to the device, and administrators can replace the entire loadout without rebuilding it setting by setting.

Dashboard management and device overrides are entirely Free. Jellyfin administrators can use the full Neptune MDM suite via the Jellyfin WebUI and clients can pick what preferences they prefer to be locked to their specific device. Mobile device management directly from the client and profile presets are exclusive to Pro users.

Trident Updates

Neptune’s bespoke player gets a series of updates, making it both faster and more reliable, while also including some new and improved features.

Native Trickplay

Trident will now use your server’s Trickplay images to show a preview as you move through the timeline.

The feature has two controls under Settings > Playback. Seek Thumbnails is the master switch; disabling it removes previews altogether. Trickplay chooses whether Neptune should use server-provided Trickplay data or have Trident use its on-the-fly thumbnail extraction while you seek. When a title has no Trickplay data, Trident’s extraction takes over automatically. The seek bar therefore keeps its visual preview without requiring every item in a library to be prepared in advance.

Player Orientation

Playback settings now include player orientation controls. Auto follows the phone as it rotates, while Landscape keeps playback in landscape by default. An included rotation button inside the player can also switch orientation on demand, including when iOS rotation lock is enabled.

Picture Perfect Backdrops

Unlike posters, backdrops are wider, langscape oriented images meant to fill the background of your screen. This poses an issue on phones, which are usually held upright. With the latest version of Neptune, backdrops no longer need to be fixed in place.

Hold your finger over a backdrop to begin editing its position. From there, you can move the image around in any direction, and even pinch to zoom in or out of the image. A blur effect is automatically applied to areas outside of the image, so you can reposition the images however you like without interrupting the layout of the page.

There is also a new Smart positioning option under User Preferences > Appearance that allows Neptune to automatically adjust backdrops for optimal framing. Manual adjustments are still recommended for you perfectionists out there.

‘Continue Watching’ and ‘Next Up’, available as one

You can now combine your ‘Continue Watching’ row with ‘Next Up’, to create one unified section that houses content from both - eliminating the need to separate the two and creating one shared experience for the content you are actively watching.

By the way…

In addition to the above features, this update also includes a lot of bug fixes and stability improvements across clients, Trident, the logging system, and the plugin suite. Neptune for tvOS continues to offer the same premium experience you’ve come to expect, while Neptune for iOS begins adopting more features from its TV counterpart. The iOS TestFlight is currently public and available to everyone, for both iPhone and iPad. Please join our Discord to learn more.

Neptune 1.1 is now available on the tvOS App Store and on iOS through TestFlight.

Neptune returned this month for its second live community broadcast, covering how the project is built, what is coming to tvOS, the first extended look at Neptune for iOS, and a clearer breakdown of what will be included with Neptune Pro. What began as a tour through the systems behind Neptune ended with its biggest milestones yet: Neptune for tvOS is now available on the App Store, and Neptune for iOS is live on TestFlight.

Here are some of the topics discussed during the event.

Neptune for tvOS

Neptune is now available on the tvOS App Store

After months of TestFlight builds, refactors, feature requests, logs and bug reports, Neptune is ready to welcome a much larger audience. App Store updates will move at a different pace now that every public build requires review, while the Pilot program will continue to provide earlier builds for those who prefer to follow development more closely.

This initial release closes one chapter of Neptune’s story, but development is far from over and the best is yet to come. The App Store release establishes a stable public foundation for everything still being built around it. The live showcase covered features arriving across the App Store release and future builds. Some of these are ready now, while others remain active works in progress.

Top Shelf Cards, Banners and Cinematic Slides

Top Shelf support is finally coming to Neptune, bringing library content directly onto the tvOS Home Screen. As expected, nearly every part of it can be customized.

The standard card layout can display Continue Watching, Next Up, Favorites, Collections, or another selected source. You can control how many items appear, the order they use, and which part of the library supplies them. A second cinematic layout replaces the individual cards with a full-screen slideshow, allowing the active title to take over the background before revealing its description, cast, year, format, and playback options.

Introducing Neptune Studio

Some parts of tvOS cannot be customized from inside the app, either because they are easier to manage on the web or because the operating system does not expose enough control. Neptune Studio is a new server-side plugin designed for those parts of the interface.

Its first feature is a visual template builder for Top Shelf. Artwork can be displayed full-screen, kept at its original aspect ratio with blurred edges, or cropped to fill the available space. Logos, titles, and episode information can be placed around the image, resized, and saved as a reusable template. That template then adapts itself to every item Neptune sends to Top Shelf.

The goal is to extend Neptune’s existing customization model beyond the limits of a television interface, while still allowing the resulting design to update dynamically with the library.

A more personal library

Era Cards, which previously used a static image for each decade, are now more personalized. Neptune will select artwork from the user’s own library for each era and choose a new item when the app starts. More eras and additional customization options are also being developed, replacing a fixed set of decades with something that better reflects the content a library actually contains.

Child Accounts make their first appearance as well. Enabling one removes access to Seerr requests, limits settings and other controls, and shifts parts of the interface toward imagery rather than text. This feature is still under active development.

Neptune’s backend is also gaining support for interface localization. The demonstration showed Neptune rendering its menus in German, with the intent of translating every label and piece of interface text into the selected language. This work is not complete yet, and future TestFlight builds will help expand and validate language support.

Adaptive Glass

Neptune’s adaptive theme engine already uses artwork to change the colors surrounding your content. Adaptive Glass brings that same system into buttons, menus, and other interface elements.

Rather than placing the same static surface over every page, Adaptive Glass combines the active theme with colors pulled from the current item. A blue adaptive color sitting over the purple tones of Nebula will blend the two together, while another title and another theme produce something entirely different. The glass is not simply transparent - it reacts to the content and relights itself as you move through the app.

This allows menus to remain consistent with Neptune’s design language without looking identical everywhere they appear.

Music Videos

Music Videos now receive their own library experience. Although the files themselves are videos, a music library is not organized like a television series or movie collection. Artists and albums replace actors and seasons, with composers and other music-specific metadata requiring a different interface.

When a Jellyfin library is identified as Music Videos, Neptune now accounts for those differences and presents the content using a layout built around the way music is organized. Neptune’s Indexer plugin now also supports Music, so it can gather metadata about artists, directors, writers, choreographers and more.

Search that shows its work

Search has become better at explaining why a result belongs. When a contextual query returns something unexpected, hovering over the result can now reveal what matched - the plot, a location, a character, or another piece of metadata that connected the query to the title.

Search is only useful when its results make sense. Showing the context behind each match makes the system easier to trust, and occasionally explains why Neptune knows a little more about your library than you expected it to.

Episode Finder 2.0

The new Episode Finder builds on the same system. Instead of remembering a season and episode number, you can search for the part you remember - something like ‘Joey buys recliners’ - and Neptune can take you directly to the relevant episode of Friends. The latest changes to the Episode Finder makes it faster, more accurate, and better at understanding the incomplete descriptions people tend to remember.

Better anime detection

Anime continues to prove that metadata is never as simple as it first appears. Some libraries label it correctly, while others omit the relevant genres or use metadata that makes reliable detection difficult. That creates a problem for features like Anime Mode, which need to know when a separate set of audio and subtitle rules should apply.

A new detection system was built by processing and identifying more than 20,000 anime entries, with the index continuing to grow. Neptune can use that data alongside the metadata supplied by Jellyfin, making Anime Mode considerably more reliable when deciding whether content should follow dubbed or subtitled preferences.

This also creates a stronger foundation for additional anime-specific behavior in future versions of Conductor.

Spoiler protection with more context

The existing Hide Spoilers option applies the same rule to every unwatched episode. That works well for a serialized drama, where one description can reveal an important development, but it becomes unnecessarily aggressive for an episodic show where each story stands on its own.

The updated Auto mode understands whether a series is serialized or episodic. Upcoming descriptions remain hidden when plot points carry between episodes, while content designed to be watched in almost any order can remain visible. Manual overrides are still available at the series level for anyone who wants to decide for themselves.

E-AC-3 Passthrough

Atmos Passthrough first appeared as an experimental option in Build 150. After additional work on timing, stability, and the wider playback path, E-AC-3 Atmos Passthrough is now production ready and will be enabled as a fully supported Trident feature.

Passthrough may sound like the simple act of sending audio to a receiver, but every part of the pipeline has to preserve the correct stream, timing, and format along the way. The experimental release helped identify those edge cases; the new implementation is ready to move beyond testing.

Autoplay that waits for the right moment

Autoplay is being rebuilt around two modes. Fixed begins the next episode after a delay chosen by the user. Auto looks at the end marker, determines how much of the credits remain, and runs the countdown for that duration instead.

The prompt begins as a small bubble in the corner, then expands into the complete card as the transition approaches. Dismissing it no longer leaves Autoplay in an uncertain state, and the feature can use any existing Jellyfin media segment marker.

Downloads and Neptune Transcoder

Media Downloads bring offline playback to Neptune. Movies can be downloaded individually, while television content can be saved by episode, by season, or as an entire series. Download markers show how much of each season is stored locally, making it easy to see what will still be available after the server connection disappears.

Files can be downloaded in their original quality or transcoded into a smaller copy. Neptune Transcoder, a new server-side plugin, allows administrators to create reusable targets for that process. Each preset can define its own resolution, video bitrate, audio bitrate, and channel count.

Those targets also integrate with Neptune’s Mobile Device Management plugin. Administrators can assign specific download profiles to individual users, limit someone to a particular quality, or prevent transcoded downloads entirely. The device handles the offline library; the server decides how each copy should be prepared.

Neptune for iOS

Neptune for iOS is much further along than a first TestFlight build would usually suggest. It shares the same service architecture, Trident Player, logging system, and the same settings model used on tvOS, allowing the mobile client to inherit all the work from tvOS while keeping its interface specific to iPhone and iPad.

The visual language remains familiar, but the interaction model follows the platform. Focus navigation gives way to touch, layouts are designed around portrait browsing, and playback accounts for battery use, thermals, rotation, and the interruptions that come with a mobile device.

A few of the features demonstrated during the event include:

• Compass. Holding two fingers on the screen opens a customizable shortcut menu from anywhere in the app. A Compass action can open a page, library, collection, saved Search, movie, show, or episode - and it can be programmed to begin playback instead of only opening the item.

• Mobile Device Management. After connecting to a server, Neptune can detect an existing profile backup and restore supported settings, layouts, themes, and Conductor data. Changes can synchronize between Apple TV and iPhone in real time.

• System playback features. Background audio, Picture in Picture, Live Activities, and Dynamic Island shortcuts are all supported. Video can begin in portrait, then move into landscape when the phone is rotated.

• Widgets. Pages, individual titles, Pins, and dynamic sections can live on the Home Screen or Lock Screen. A widget can open its destination, begin playback, or resume something already in progress. Larger widgets adapt their artwork as they are resized and can contain multiple browsable sections.

Pricing

The first Neptune Live established that Neptune’s base price would be free, with a paid tier offered to Pro users to help cover features that carry recurring licensing, commercial API, or infrastructure costs. This month brought a clearer definition of what features are only available to Pro users and what features remain free.

Playback will be completely free for everyone

Playback provided by Trident will be available without Neptune Pro. That includes every supported container, codec, and format.

Making features free for users do not make them free to provide, but it keeps the most important part of a media player available to everyone. Neptune Pro will help subsidize that cost through advanced additions to existing features.

The previously announced pricing remains unchanged:

• Monthly: $1.99
• Yearly: $16.99
• Lifetime: $129.99

Prices are listed in USD. Currency conversion is handled by Apple’s backend, so your actual pricing table may look different based on your location.

Neptune Pro currently includes the following:

• Conductor Pro. Conductor is how Neptune automates track and quality decisions. The base version of Conductor applies the audio and subtitle rules you configure through its preferences. Conductor Pro enables the learning engine, allowing it to recognize the exceptions you make and adapt future playback around them simply by observing your choices, without ever having to touch the settings, and applies them across your movies and shows automagically.
• Neptune AI. You can connect Neptune to your own Ollama server or another supported provider without subscribing to Pro. Access to Neptune’s hosted, media-specific model is included with Pro because its training and infrastructure carry an ongoing cost. Neptune AI currently powers natural-language Search, Episode Finder, Title Insights, and Person Insights, with a first-party foundation that can expand into other parts of Neptune. This bespoke first-party service is trained and tuned specifically for Neptune’s media workflows and structured feature behavior.
• TMDB data. Trailers, expanded cast and crew information, upcoming episode dates, and other supplemental details fetched through TMDB use Neptune’s commercial API access and are included with Pro.
• Offline Downloads. Streaming and playback remain free. Saving media locally, including the download and transcoding workflow for offline viewing, is included with Pro.
• Top Shelf Pro. Standard Top Shelf and its content controls remain free. Custom artwork, visual templates, and the deeper personalization provided by Neptune Studio are included with Pro.

New features may join Neptune Pro as the project grows, but the goal remains the same: provide a complete base experience, then use Pro to extend it and cover the costs that allow the rest of Neptune to remain free.

A Neptune Pro purchase applies across supported platforms. Buying it on tvOS also unlocks it on iOS and future Neptune clients, with Family Sharing extending access to members of the same iCloud family. Lifetime purchasers will also be promoted to the Pilot program, receiving access to private nightly builds once the infrastructure for that program is ready.

One More Thing

Immediately following the App Store announcement, Neptune for iOS and iPadOS began their first TestFlight. Existing eligible testers should see the iOS version through the same TestFlight access already associated with their account, without needing to repeat the invitation process.

Some iPad layouts are still being refined, and this is only the first public version of the mobile interface - which also means it is the least polished Neptune for iOS will ever be.

TestFlight purchases use Apple’s sandbox environment and do not charge testers, allowing the complete Pro experience to be tested while the app remains in beta.

Neptune Documentation

Neptune’s official documentation is now live at docs.neptuneplayer.com.

The documentation currently spans more than a hundred pages, covering Neptune’s features, interface, playback, controls, plugins, troubleshooting, and the logic behind Neptune’s many systems. It also includes a built-in Search, making it easier to find one setting without reading all pages - unless that is how you prefer to spend your evening.

This is a living document and will continue to change alongside Neptune. If something appears outdated or incomplete, please let us know.

On the Horizon

Work is already underway on more granular settings synchronization, additional Home Screen customization, and more. Additional backends remain in development, with both Emby and Plex support, along with bugfixes and optimizations for existing platforms.

Watch Party features are also being developed, including local playback synchronization between Neptune devices on the same network, even when no internet connection is available. Live TV remains an area of interest, although there is nothing ready to announce yet.

Bug fixes and App Store updates will continue as per usual, while Neptune for iOS begins the same public testing process that shaped tvOS over the last six months. Thank you to everyone who joined the event, everyone who helped keep the community running, and everyone whose testing brought Neptune to release.

If you download Neptune from the App Store, please consider leaving a review. It helps more people discover the project and supports everything still to come.

The next Neptune Live will be announced through our community channels.

Introducing Conductor - playback that learns as you play

Neptune already gives you extensive control over playback. You can set how subtitles behave, which audio track is chosen, your preferred quality profile, and more. But these options all share one limitation - they’re static values, set once and buried in nested Settings menus. This is where Conductor comes in.

Conductor observes your choices over time and builds a playback profile tailored to you. Setup begins by establishing three ground truths - your primary language, when subtitles should appear, and how you like to watch foreign content (subbed or dubbed). Once that baseline is configured, Conductor learns from every playback decision you make and automatically applies what it learns across all of your media - even content you’ve never watched before.

Say you usually watch content in its original language with subtitles in your native tongue, but for one particular series you prefer a dub. The moment you switch, Conductor notes the decision and creates a series-specific exception - just for that show. The next episode automatically plays the dubbed track in your preferred language, without disturbing how you watch everything else.

Conductor doesn’t just track choices - it understands their context. It knows the difference between a one-time exception and a genuine pattern, and it can learn nuanced rules, like preferring a dub when the original audio is German but the original audio when it’s in Japanese. It also weighs every decision against what was actually available. If you mostly watch in 5.1, that alone doesn’t make 5.1 your preference. But if you repeatedly choose 5.1 when 7.1 and other options are available, Conductor recognizes that as a deliberate choice and lets it guide what it learns.

That same intelligence extends to how your media is delivered. Quality preferences are now handled by Conductor, so your preferred quality choices, such as resolution, dynamic range and even transcoding preferences, are learned and dynamically adapted to match your preferred configuration. No more reaching for the same setting every time.

You can see everything Conductor has learned about you from the User Preferences menu. Learning Accuracy reflects how often its choices were corrected by the user. The lower the value, the less manual intervention was required.

All playback preferences are set to ‘auto’ by default with the adoption of Conductor. If you prefer to set things up manually, you can always turn the feature off by using pre-set values for each category. Keep in mind that a manual override pauses learning for that preference in favor of your explicit choice.

Conductor runs entirely on device, and it can be turned off anytime you’d rather do things the old-fashioned way.

Control the playback experience without leaving the scene

Neptune’s in-player controls have been rebuilt into a single, unified menu. Audio, Subtitles, Video, Chapters, and Info now live together behind a row of floating glass tabs that rise over your video - everything you might reach for mid-playback gathered in one place. Arrange the tabs however you like in Settings, and the panel reshapes itself to whatever you open, expanding for a list of tracks or widening into a full technical readout of the stream.

Many of the preferences that previously only lived in Settings can now be accessed directly during playback. Adjustments to audio and subtitle offsets can now be experienced in real time, along with subtitle styling customization and various video options, including transcoding targets.

Joining the new controls are some brand new playback features. These can be accessed at any time and they all work in real time, so your session is never interrupted.

Audio Presets

Think of these as preset EQ options, each designed to deliver a different experience. Maybe you want a little bit more bass for a particular movie, or perhaps you want to amplify dialogue using the ‘Voice’ preset. Choose the one that best fits your needs and the audio adapts in real time, without interrupting playback.

De-Interlacing

This option defaults to Auto, but does allow manual overrides. Useful when playing older footage (like DVDs).

Audio and Subtitle Offsets

You can now offset audio and subtitle timing to align tracks. Very useful not only for tracks that have off timing, but also if you prefer subtitles to appear a tad bit before lines are spoken. Audio and Subtitle offsets can be controlled independently.

Night Mode

Reduces loud noises and music while amplifying spoken audio. This is very useful when watching content without wanting to disturb those around you. You can even program a set schedule for Night Mode, and it will automatically kick in during its active hours and turn off when it’s no longer needed.

The layout of the new playback controls can also be customized, alongside the Action Buttons that sit right above the player controls. So if you prefer the Info tab to be the primary panel displayed when you open up the controls, you can set it to be your primary.

Search smarter, not harder

Neptune already offers easy ways to find your content - whether you prefer to browse your library using filters, discover more about your collection through its in-depth tagging system, or simply search for your favorite movie or show directly. Now, with improvements made to Search and Neptune AI, all of these features work together, offering the most intuitive way to locate media - all from one unified Search.

Search is now faster and sharper than ever. By leveraging Neptune’s own indexers, it draws from tens of thousands of data points to deliver results in real-time. This transcends the ‘search for item by title’ limitations of most other clients and instead delivers a ‘search for item by context’ approach. Find media using keywords, prominent locations, characters, themes, cast and crew, and so much more. When a search engine is contextually aware of your library, it starts to behave less like a title lookup and more like a seasoned librarian. All of this happens locally on your device - and works even when you’re offline.

Improved Shuffle experience

A popular Neptune feature is its dedicated Shuffle Mode. This allows you to toggle on shuffle for a specific series, randomizing which episodes play every time you start a play session. In addition to the Shuffle Mode target, series now have a dedicated Shuffle button that kicks off a shuffled session, without keeping the feature enabled indefinitely.

As Shuffle engages, it loads a random episode from the series catalog. When playback starts, a glass overlay appears at the top to give you some insights about the current episode - including its season, episode number, and the episode’s description. If the episode doesn’t interest you, there’s a Skip button readily available to re-shuffle the deck and deal you a fresh episode.

Once your session is over, you return to the item’s detail page, with your original episode’s resume position fully intact and ready to pickup where you left off. This feature is great for those who just want to sit back and put on a random episode of their favorite show without having to worry about digging through seasons to find an episode they want to watch.

We have Pins at Home

Pins, which previously were only available through the Library, are now available on Home, Movies and Shows pages, respectively. Pinned items appear where you expect them to, with Movies / Shows tabs filtering content between pages and Home containing all possible Pin types.

People, genres, tags and more can be Pinned directly to Home, following the order set through the Library. You can Pin an item from anywhere - including from other Pinned items - making the process as easy and straight forward as possible.

E-AC-3 Passthrough Support

Trident now supports E-AC-3 Passthrough when available. This option is not without flaws and is actively being developed. It is not recommended for daily use, but is being made available to everyone in the interest of reporting. Please follow this format when making an E-AC-3 Passthrough report:

A/V OUT OF SYNC: TRUE/FALSE
A/V OUT OF SYNC AFTER: <time> seconds/minutes
A/V SYNC OFFSET APPLIED: <time> ms
A/V STAYED IN SYNC: TRUE/FALSE

This will track if the audio went out of sync, when it occurred, what the manual sync offset applied was, and if that manual offset kept the audio in sync for the remainder of the playthrough. If it went out of sync again, please repeat the last three entries in the same report.

E-AC-3 Passthrough is not recommended for daily use and is intended as an experimental beta feature at this time.

You can enable E-AC-3 Passthrough via ‘Settings -> Playback -> Audio’. If you’re not interested in testing this feature or want to watch your content uninterrupted, please keep this setting disabled.

Various bugfixes and improvements

Neptune now officially supports Jellyfin version 10.11.11, with partial support for RC1/2 of version 12.0. While initial testing proved that it works, it’s too early to tell if changes in the near future will clash.

Onboarding now allows you to send logs by pressing the Play/Pause button on your remote. This will help troubleshoot auth issues and other quirks that occur during onboarding. In addition to that, the onboarding process has been compressed to more closely resemble the Release model. Server admins are still able to tailor the out-of-box experience using the MDM plugin.

Trident gets its own batch of updates, including improvements to AV1 playback, seeking and playback performance. These changes should help those who have been experiencing issues playing certain media.

There are a lot more fixes and improvements - too many to go through. If you experience any issues, please keep reporting!

Neptune Plugin Suite

The plugin suite receives its own series of updates, including a fix to a bug that wouldn’t let users install the suite on certain 10.11 versions of Jellyfin. Indexer syncing is now faster and more reliable between clients, and the Mobile Device Management plugin receives more features.

MDM - Announcements

Server admins can now push announcements to their Neptune users using the Mobile Device Management plugin. From the MDM plugin dashboard, select Add Announcement and draft a new message. You can scope the announcement by user or client - even going as far as to target specific builds or versions. Announcements can be pushed immediately, or scheduled to appear the next time the client starts. This grants server administrators an easy to use tool to communicate with their users using Neptune’s native UI.

State of Neptune for iOS

You might be wondering what’s taking so long. Turns out the demo server Neptune uses to validate its functionality during the App Review became unusable - seemingly right before the reviewer got around to it. The bad news is that the review failed, but the good news is that we’re back in the queue and additional measures have been taken to [hopefully] prevent this sort of thing from happening again. An announcement will be made when Neptune for iOS is ready.

Build 150 is available right now on tvOS via TestFlight.

Neptune Update

v0.1.6 - Build 135

This update focuses mostly on UI performance fixes, making Neptune’s interface more pleasant to navigate. The Immersive layout design has been updated to include additional media metadata, and local trailers make their debut - featuring both single trailer options and a multi-trailer selector for those who enjoy variety in their lives.

Fluid navigation, seamless transitions, and every frame arriving right on queue

Every part of Neptune’s frontend has been optimized to deliver a smoother user experience when navigating menus. The Home Screen’s focus transitions have been re-calibrated to make navigation more responsive and animations now do a better job of working with each other to make each transition as seamless as possible.

Focus now moves crisply between items, artwork arrives fully rendered the moment it loads, and the backdrops behind your library resolve in harmony with other transitions. The Adaptive Theme that tints your colors to match your content now lands in the quiet beat after you settle, so it reads as part of the transition rather than something happening over it, perfectly balancing between aesthetics and performance.

Codec, resolution, and HDR format now surface everywhere your content lives

The immersive detail layout now carries the same video and audio Metadata Tags the standard layout has always shown - codec, resolution, HDR format, audio format, etc. - sitting right alongside the runtime and rating. Until now those tags only appeared on the standard layout; now the immersive hero display these as well.

Each tag is tinted by what it represents - resolution, codec, HDR format, and audio profile each carry their own color - so a single glance separates one quality profile from another. Video and audio properties live in their own parts of the spectrum, making the specifications of the media immediately obvious at a glance. When a file carries multiple properties at once, the colors blend to reflect the combination - the badge becomes a visual mix of everything it encodes. The palette isn’t decorative; it’s the legend.

Metadata Tags have also make their into the Episode Gallery, and work great with both Regular and Big Picture Mode. Now it’s easier than ever to distinguish media type between movies and across episodes.

Local trailers playing right alongside the content they belong to

Trailers that live in your own library now play directly through Neptune. If you keep them alongside your media the way Jellyfin expects [in a trailers/ subfolder, or named with a -trailer suffix] they show up and play in-app, with the option of playing a off of YouTube.

Build 135 is available right now on tvOS via TestFlight.

Neptune marked a first this month: a live, community-wide broadcast covering the state of the project and what comes next. It was a fantastic gathering of both new and familiar names, with an open-floor discussion that allowed for more direct communication regarding Neptune’s development. Here are some of the topics discussed during the event.

Neptune Live

The broadcast was hosted on Neptune Live, a brand new streaming platform built specifically for the Neptune community. Its goal is to provide a space where we can openly exchange ideas, share Neptune updates, and host future live presentations about the latest features. Sign-in happens via Discord, with additional authentication back-ends being developed for future sessions. The Discord login provides a quick and easy way for existing members to join sessions, retaining their existing server roles while also extending branding elements - like our beloved server emojis. The platform features both text and voice chatting, with an ‘Ask to Speak’ feature that grants hosts and moderators the ability to pass the microphone to individual speakers during discussions and Q/A sessions.

Neptune Live will continue to grow with new features already planned for the next event.

Hope to see you there!

Neptune for tvOS

Neptune first landed on tvOS via TestFlight back in January of 2026. Since its initial release, Neptune has gone from a rough public beta to something approaching a finished product - and it has done so largely in the open, with a community of almost 3,000 members watching, testing, and arguing over every build along the way.

The First Six Months

The most consequential work happened underneath the surface. A set of sweeping refactors, nicknamed the Blur Witch Project (a reference to one of our community members), tore apart and rebuilt Neptune’s networking, rendering, and caching layers. The heart of Neptune, Trident - its bespoke video engine - matured from an experiment into the app’s centerpiece, gaining direct play capabilities for nearly all audio and video formats, with the stability to be trusted for daily viewing.

On top of that foundation came a steady stream of features aimed at how people actually browse and watch their content. Personalization options allow users to modify nearly every facet of Neptune’s UI and user experience. Shortcuts allow users to pin almost anything - a show, a genre, even a specific timestamp in an episode - to their library. Person pages let viewers explore an individual’s full filmography. A rich tagging system surfaced tens of thousands of semantic tags, with an intelligent search engine and a slot machine for the indecisive.

Improvements weren’t just limited to the client. Neptune now ships with its own server-side Plugin Suite, with two plugins currently available: Indexers and Mobile Device Management. Indexers offload library and search indexing to the Jellyfin server, allowing every Neptune client to instantly update its local data with new content. The MDM features allow user settings to sync across every client in real time, grants server-side backups, and remote configuration tools that allow administrators the ability to remotely manage Neptune clients for all of their users and to override Neptune’s own default settings to design your very own out-of-box app experience.

These features, and so much more, have solidified Neptune’s place among media clients on tvOS - with the best yet to come.

App Store Release

From the beginning, the project set out four goals, and all four shaped what the app is today:

• A design language. A consistent visual identity across the entire app
• Trident. A custom video engine that can Direct Play anything you throw at it
• Seerr integration. Discovery and requests built natively into Neptune’s user experience
• Server Plugins. Migrating long-running work onto the server, keeping data consistent between clients, and provide remote management tools for administrators

With those four complete, Neptune for tvOS is now ready to release on the App Store. Expect more information about this to release in the coming weeks.

“Ready for the App Store doesn’t mean Neptune [tvOS] is finished. It means the app is mature enough to welcome a much larger audience. Things will only get more challenging from here, and I am ready to accept those challenges with open-arms.” — need4swede, Neptune Founder

Neptune for iOS

Neptune for iOS was submitted to TestFlight shortly before the Neptune Live broadcast began and is expected to be available within the week.

Neptune for iOS is the same client you’re used to: the same features, the same interface language, and the same settings where they apply, including Trident for Direct Playback and the same debugging workflow underneath for troubleshooting. The differences are deliberate, and they follow the platform:

• A portrait-first layout. Rebuilt for vertical browsing rather than adapted from the living-room layout.
• Touch controls. Focus navigation gives way to direct manipulation, which opens room for new ideas, such as episode browsing using an iPod-style scroll wheel.
• Battery and thermals. On a mobile device, power draw and heat are real constraints. Both Neptune and Trident have been adapted to make the most out of your mobile device without draining your battery or causing it to overheat.

Once Neptune for iOS is live on TestFlight, an announcement will be made to notify all existing Neptune users. In the meantime, you can explore previews of Neptune for iOS in the community’s Showcase channel.

Pricing

Pricing has been a long-running discussion among Neptune users. In the interest of transparency, a dedicated Pricing channel was opened to hash out the topic with the broader community. As unconventional as it may be to invite everyone to pitch a pricing model, it stays on-brand with Neptune’s goal of keeping users part of the decision making process. Ideas were exchanged and polls were run to settle on the right target for release.

After much deliberation, Neptune’s base price will be free.

That covers the majority of its core features, with a freemium model layered around specific features, such as those that carry real, recurring costs, like licensing and API services. Neptune will offer the following pricing options for the premium features:

• Monthly: $1.99
• Yearly: $16.99
• Lifetime: $129.99

If the features that require licensing don’t apply to you, or if you’re not interested in the extra bells and whistles, then you can continue to enjoy Neptune’s base features at no cost - no ads, no data collection and no interruptions.

What’s Ahead

Bug fixes will continue to roll out as per usual. Additional backends are being explored, including Plex and Emby, expanding Neptune’s existing capabilities as a media client and cross-platform development will have more of a footprint within community discussions, as Neptune for iOS [with iPadOS landing shortly after] makes its way into user’s hands.

The next Neptune Live will be announced through our community channels, covering additional topics and features.