eXViewer

A desktop app for watching F1 TV, built with Electron and React. It plays live sessions and replays with Widevine through castlabs Electron for Content Security, and shows up to four feeds side by side in a synced multiview.

This app is unofficial and is not associated in any way with the Formula 1 companies. F1, FORMULA ONE, FORMULA 1, FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, GRAND PRIX and related marks are trade marks of Formula One Licensing BV.

Features

• F1 account login through the official F1 login page. Tokens stay in the main process and are never handed to the page.
• Home page for the current season: the live or next meeting with a countdown, continue watching, and the season calendar.
• Every round by series: Formula 1, Formula 2, Formula 3, F1 Academy and Porsche Supercup, with the sessions kept apart from highlights and shows.
• Settings to hide the series you don't follow.
• Watch page that offers to resume where you left off, or to watch live or from the start.
• Multiview in the style of the F1 TV web player: up to four synced feeds in several layouts, a channel panel with live previews, drag and drop, quality and audio choices per feed, and pop-out windows.
• Your playback position is reported back to F1 TV.

Requirements

• Node.js (current LTS)
• npm 12. The castlabs Electron dependency is installed from git, which .npmrc allows with allow-git=root.
• Python 3, for VMP signing with castlabs EVS (see below)

Getting started

npm install
npm start

The first start downloads the castlabs Electron binary and the Widevine CDM.

Scripts

Script	What it does
npm start	Runs the app in development
npm run package	Packages the app into out/
npm run make	Packages and makes zip, deb and rpm files
npm run lint	Lints with oxlint and checks oxfmt format
npm run lint:fix	Fixes lint issues and formats the code
npm run typecheck	Type-checks with tsc

Configuration

eXViewer reads an optional config.json from its app data folder at startup:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/eXViewer/config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\eXViewer\config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/eXViewer/config.json

VMP signing

Widevine only plays protected streams in apps that carry a VMP signature, so eXViewer is signed with castlabs EVS. EVS needs a free castlabs account:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade castlabs-evs
python3 -m castlabs_evs.account signup

To play protected content while developing, sign the Electron used by npm start:

python3 -m castlabs_evs.vmp sign-pkg node_modules/electron/dist

To sign a build, package first, sign the package, then make the installers from it:

npx electron-forge package
python3 -m castlabs_evs.vmp sign-pkg out/eXViewer-darwin-arm64
npx electron-forge make --skip-package

On macOS, VMP signing has to happen before any Apple code signing. castlabs has no VMP for Linux, so Linux builds are not signed.

Builds on GitHub

.github/workflows/build.yml builds and VMP-signs eXViewer for macOS (Apple silicon and Intel) and Windows, builds it unsigned for Linux, and uploads the packages as workflow artifacts. It runs when a v* tag is pushed, or by hand from the Actions tab.

Add your EVS account as repository secrets under Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions:

Secret	Value
EVS_ACCOUNT_NAME	Your EVS account name
EVS_PASSWD	Your EVS password

Project layout

src/
  main.ts            app startup and the main window
  auth.ts            F1 login and session cookies
  f1tv.ts            F1 TV client, streams, licences and playhead reports
  catalog.ts         calendar and round content for the browse pages
  history.ts         local watch history for continue watching
  popout.ts          pop-out player windows
  widevine.ts        waits for the Widevine CDM
  config.ts          reads config.json
  preload.ts         window.auth, window.player and window.catalog
  shared/            types shared by main and the renderer
  main_window/       the React app
    home/            home page, calendar and content rows
    multiview/       multiview player, channel panel and controls

License

MIT