Follow-up: ShowShark, my native Mac media server, is now universal, simpler, and much better for big libraries
Disclosure: I’m the developer of ShowShark. I posted here a few months ago when it was basically my “Air Video is dying, so I guess I’m building my own thing” project. A few people had good questions last time: how it compares to Plex, whether the Mac-only server was too narrow, whether it would work on older Macs, and whether it could stay simple instead of becoming another media-server spaceship. So, a follow-up. Problem I wanted a media server that feels like a Mac app. Not a Docker container. Not a web admin panel. Not a pile of plugins. Just a double-clickable Mac app that can point at local drives or a NAS, do the heavy lifting on the server, and stream to native Apple clients. ShowShark Server runs on macOS. The clients run on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro. The Mac does the transcoding, metadata, search, remote access, and library work. The clients stay fairly light. What changed since the first post ShowShark Server is now a universal Mac app for Intel and Apple Silicon, with macOS 14+ support (walking support backwards is an amazing feeling). There is now a simpler Browse mode for people who mostly want the Air Video experience: open a folder, pick a file, press play. Profiles are no longer tied to devices. History, favorites, playlists, and resume state follow the person (profile) instead of the device (iPad or Apple TV). My kids’ cartoons no longer contaminate my watch history. The Server can live more naturally as a Mac app (thanks to a suggestion comment on my first post here). Offline downloads got much better. Partial downloads can stay playable, stopped downloads can resume, and the server can transcode for download faster than realtime. On Mac, you can also copy the original source file when you want the untouched media instead of a transcoded offline package. Pro video support improved a lot: ProRes, DNxHD/VC-3, MXF, DV, CineForm, JPEG 2000, FFV1, HuffYUV, and other weird archive/intermediate formats are handled more intentionally now. File search now works for raw/providerless media. That turned out to matter for people with terabytes of footage across drives and NASes, where “find the file with this codec/location/duration/name” is more useful than “find the movie poster.” YouTube archives and subscriptions are more integrated. If you use yt-dlp-style libraries, ShowShark can treat those files more like shows/episodes instead of anonymous videos. Remote streaming is more reliable on high latency networks, including relayed paths where latency and bandwidth are less predictable. Also, Apple finally granted me the device name entitlement, so that'll be out soon. That only took like three months? Four months? So many emails. Comparison Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby are broader products. If you want Linux, Docker, Roku, Android, plugins, or a giant ecosystem, ShowShark is probably not the right tool. Infuse is also excellent if you want the client app to index and play from shares directly. ShowShark is for a narrower Apple-heavy setup: Mac mini / Mac Studio / spare Mac as the server Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, or Mac as clients Local drives, SMB/NAS, or big personal media folders No subscription No cloud media library No port-forwarding requirement for remote access It is very much “I want my Mac to serve my stuff to my Apple devices.” Pricing Clients are free on the App Store. The Server has a free demo mode with a 15-minute stream limit, so you can test playback, transcoding, remote access, and library scanning. The Server unlock is a one-time purchase. No subscription. $99. Links Website: https://showshark.app/ Previous r/MacApps post: https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1rmk0fk/ Release notes: https://acgao.com/showshark-release-notes/ Client: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/showshark/id6757886737?mt=12 Server: https://acgao.com/content/files/showshark/downloads/ShowShark-Server-latest.zip GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/acgao-tech/ShowShark/issues Feedback I’d especially like feedback from old Air Video users, people running Mac minis as little home servers, Apple TV-heavy households, and anyone with ugly pro-video/archive files that normal media apps choke on. There is always at least one more Apple TV user interface issue. I've got a love-hate relationship with that platform.
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Good timing, what with Plex jacking their prices up into the stratosphere.
That was like a "Christmas came early!" moment for me a few weeks ago. $750, right? I guess it's Plex's way of being able to say, "yeah, we offer a one-time-purchase" without anyone actually buying it.
I've been using Plex forever, on Roku before taking the tv plunge, and was lucky enough to take advantage of their initial lifetime subscription offer of $75. (Yes, American dollars.) Since I'm now all-Apple-all-the-time, I'd be looking hard at ShowShark if I hadn't!
idk why but i find the shark graphic rlly funny LOL great product btw!
It looks AI generated. 💀
Of course it does. It is, fortunately, exactly what I had pictured in my head. The biggest benefit of AI for me was opening up custom artwork, which is something I completely suck at.
Guessing the answer’s no, but would server support for macOS 12 be possible? (I know that might be a big ask)
Getting from macOS 14 down to macOS 13 is the real challenge. I'm guessing that walking it back one more step to v12 would be relatively easy. There were significant changes in macOS 14 that impact how I developed the server. Changing all of that to the pre-macOS 14 ways would be ... unpleasant.
Totally understood. Purchased a license using a VM - incredibly-excited about a proper Air Video HD replacement! Guessing I’ll have questions eventually, but for now - sincerely - thank you for making this!
So this is not completely replace my plex server which I stream on NVIDIA Shield, since it is not supported for android. Am I right or missing something..?
The ShowShark Client app runs on basically all of the Apple platforms except CarPlay. If there's reasonable demand for Android, I'd definitely pursue it. There's a very early / not-quite-good web interface as well that should work (or not work) on every platform. I'm still working on that. I don't love web development.
What's up with the "Sign in with Apple to view your account-specific license price and manage purchases on the web."
There's no account-specific pricing any longer. I need to update that wording. That was the A/B testing mechanism that I used early on. Pricing is set.
Fixed!
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I've had some broad feature suggestions that don't fit well with the focus I want for ShowShark. If I ever pursue any of this feedback, it'll happen by creating spin-off products. I think that should prevent any motivation down the road to jack up the price.
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Great question, and correct me if you're aware that I'm wrong on any point here. Infuse is sort of in a category by itself (relative to the Plex / Jellyfin / ShowShark crowd); it's not a client / server model at all. Every video that it plays, the client app has to be able to (1) stream from the storage device, (2) decode and play. With ShowShark I wanted all of the "heavy lifting" to be done on the server, and to have light weight client apps. This is important for situations where you want to remotely access your media, or even just across local networks where streaming some uncompressed bluray isn't ideal. Similarly, you can play those huge videos on devices that don't have the computational power to decode and play. I have a "trusty" old 1080p Apple TV. It can't decode and play my 4k videos. But my Mac server can, and the Apple TV gets that same video in a format that's ideal for that old Apple TV to play. When we're out of town, I pick back up where I left off on whatever show or movie I'm watching, as though I was at home. The broad benefits include things like watching movies on your Apple Watch (silly, I know), using a web-based client (it's still a work-in-progress), and rapid improvements that don't involve being hamstrung by app store slowness. Offline support was a huge motivation for me. The server app caches all of the metadata, poster images, thumbnails (for scrubbing through a video) and everything else. Once you're set up, everything just works. Duplicating all of that caching across every player device would be...not ideal. The "channels" feature was one of the Day 1 features I wanted. On the server, I configured a channel that includes just the content (cartoons) my kids are allowed to watch. They don't have to pick a cartoon (or fight about it) because they just play this channel, and they watch whatever is being played. Anyway, I could go on....