Your media servers, one HDR-first desktop client.
Plex · Jellyfin · experimental Emby — Linux · macOS · Windows
Vela gathers your Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby servers into one polished desktop app, and hands video playback to mpv — the player enthusiasts trust for color-accurate, HDR-first output. Browse everything in a beautiful native interface, then watch in a real video player instead of a webview.
Download the latest release for macOS, Windows, Linux, or Arch.
- HDR done right. Vela launches the system mpv with
gpu-nextand platform-aware defaults for HDR passthrough on Linux, macOS, and Windows — your TV or monitor gets the signal it was meant to see. - Everything in one place. Search or browse each server on its own, or use the deduplicated All view to see your whole collection at once. When the same title lives on more than one server, Vela picks the best copy for your screen — or asks, if you prefer.
- Pick up where you left off. A media-first Continue Watching cover-flow combines server resume data with Vela's own recent plays. Resume, restart, remove, or mark watched from the item menu.
- Marathon-friendly. Build your own playlists across servers, browse server playlists without touching them, and let Vela roll into the next episode after a clean finish.
- A real library interface. Infinite scrolling, persistent per-library sorting, search, show/season/episode navigation, rich details, clickable people, library scans, and manual refresh are built in.
- Made for the couch. Eleven palettes include a literal-black OLED theme; subtle motion, art reveal, and optional black-bar cropping keep the interface out of the video's way.
- Install mpv 0.38 or newer if you don't have it. mpv is deliberately not bundled, so it stays independently updateable. Vela detects common install locations, can offer a package-manager install on first run, and accepts a custom executable under Settings → Player.
- Download Vela from
GitHub Releases and
install it. macOS and Windows releases are signed — Developer ID signed and
notarized on macOS, Authenticode signed on Windows — so Gatekeeper and
SmartScreen accept them without an approval prompt. Linux and Arch packages
are unsigned.
SHA256SUMSis attached to every release. - Connect a server. Open Settings → Servers. Link Plex with its device code, or add Jellyfin/Emby with a username and password or an API key.
- Pick a library and play. Movies play from their detail view; shows drill through seasons and episodes; Continue Watching cards play directly.
For HDR playback you need an HDR-capable display, OS session, and GPU path: on Linux a Wayland compositor with HDR/color-management support such as KDE Plasma 6 or a current Hyprland (X11 is not an HDR path); on macOS an EDR-capable display; on Windows 10/11, HDR enabled in system settings.
| Server | Status | Current scope |
|---|---|---|
| Plex | Primary | Multiple accounts/servers (one linked source per machine), Device-PIN sign-in, libraries, search, rich details, watch state, Continue Watching, scans, and server playlists. |
| Jellyfin | Supported | Multiple connections, libraries, search, playback/check-ins, watch state, and server playlists. Real-server smoke tested; some detail views are sparser than Plex. |
| Emby | Experimental | Uses the shared Jellyfin-family client and is covered where the APIs overlap, but has not yet been exercised against a real Emby server. |
Plex playback requires a reachable direct HTTPS server connection. Plex Relay is deliberately not used by default for HDR playback, so remote playback may require Plex Remote Access or joining the server's network.
Vela defaults to streaming files untouched ("Original" quality) because it is the only setting that keeps HDR — server-side conversion is available per setting or per play when you need it. Multi-server source policies, playback quality tiers, intro/credits skipping, black-bar cropping, and custom mpv options are covered in docs/usage.md.
Vela stores its settings, connections, and playlists as plain local files in the platform configuration directory, with owner-only permissions on Unix and automatic rollback copies if a file is ever damaged. It sends no analytics and never proxies your credentials through a third party. Details, including exactly where credentials can appear locally, are in docs/usage.md.
- Each Plex link selects one server machine. Additional Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby connections can be added as separate sources.
- Emby remains experimental until it receives live-server integration testing.
- HDR fidelity ultimately depends on mpv, its GPU backend, the display, and the operating system's color-management path.
Known issues and follow-up work are tracked in ISSUES.md.
Vela is free and open source. If it earns a spot on your desktop, you can support development on Ko-fi or GitHub Sponsors.
Build instructions, the verification set, end-to-end tests, and architecture notes live in docs/development.md.
Vela is licensed under the MIT License. The bundled upstream
autocrop.lua mpv script is GPL-2.0-or-later; its license and provenance are
included under
src-tauri/resources/mpv-scripts/.