Platforms
What Airwave runs on — the client platform matrix (native apps vs. the browser player), the playback engine each uses, and current status.
Airwave's viewer app is a full 10-foot TV experience — an Aurora channel-guide grid, a native-first
player with a DVR scrubber, channel up/down, and the "Up Next" bumper card. It's the same app across
platforms, delivered two ways: as a native binary (tv-native) for the living-room streaming boxes,
and as a web player (tv-web) for browsers and packaged webOS. Features land in one codebase and
show up everywhere.
The 10-foot / large-tablet stance
Airwave is built for a couch, a remote, and a big screen — TVs, streaming boxes, and large tablets. The iPad build is deliberately iPad-only (a large-tablet layout, not a phone UI). There is no phone app, by design: the guide grid and glass player are laid out for a 10-foot viewing distance, not a 6-inch screen.
Availability matrix
| Platform | App type | Playback engine | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| LG webOS | Web app (tv-web, packaged) | Native <video> + hls.js fallback | Runs today (proven daily on a real LG C2); store publishing planned |
| Apple TV (tvOS) | Native (tv-native) | mpv (wide-codec direct play) | Runs today on device; App Store submission in progress |
| iPad (iPadOS) | Native (tv-native) | mpv | Runs today on device; App Store submission in progress |
| Android TV | Native (tv-native) | mpv | Runs today on device; store publishing planned |
| Fire TV | Native (tv-native) | mpv | Runs today on device; store publishing planned |
| Any browser | Web player (tv-web) | Native <video> + hls.js fallback | Live now, self-hosted, free |
| Samsung (Tizen) | Web app (tv-web) | Native <video> + hls.js fallback | Roadmap |
| Roku | Native | — | Roadmap |
Store status vs. what runs today. The native apps are built and running on real hardware now (iPad, Apple TV 4K, Android TV, Fire TV) and webOS runs daily on a real LG C2. Publishing them to the App Store / Google Play / Amazon Appstore / LG Content Store is a prerequisite still being completed — iPad and Apple TV first, then the rest. The intended store-by-store distribution is listed in the project README's availability table. Because Airwave is source-available, you can also build and sideload any native app yourself.
Native apps (tv-native)
The native app is Expo / React Native (react-native-tvos) with an mpv playback engine
(@airwave/mpv-player). mpv is what lets it direct-play wide codecs natively — 4K HDR HEVC,
TrueHD/DTS, and more — instead of forcing a server transcode. On first launch each device runs a short
capability diagnostic that measures exactly what it can decode, so Airwave direct-plays where
possible and only transcodes when it must.
Distributed through each platform's store (a small paid download), or built and sideloaded from source.
The web player (tv-web)
tv-web is the same 10-foot app built with Vite + React + TanStack Router, using the browser's
native <video> element with an hls.js fallback for MSE playback. It powers two things:
- Any browser — via the optional
tvwebDocker role, an auth-gated web player you serve from the same compose stack. This works today, for free, on any modern browser. - LG webOS — the same web app packaged as a webOS TV app (with Roku and Samsung Tizen builds on the roadmap).
TV clients sign in with a device-code flow — scan a QR or enter a short code — using either "Sign in with Plex" or any Airwave account.
Also: the admin panel
Separately from the viewer apps, the admin web app runs in any browser — it's where you create channels and packages, manage users and bumpers, run jobs, and preview lineups. It's admin-only; viewers only ever use the TV apps. See Architecture for how the admin and the players relate.
See also: Architecture · Getting started · Capability diagnostic · Sessions