FolderVideoPlayer
Now on the Apple TV App Store

Your video library, on the big screen.

FolderVideoPlayer is for the library that got too big to manage — home movies, camera footage and downloads you've kept, scattered through folders on your own network. Point it at your NAS or your Mac and the whole collection opens on your TV, with thumbnails that never slow down and tags that find anything.

View on the App Store See it on screen
For Apple TV No account needed No subscription No cloud, ever
Launch offer Free on the App Store — from now until 7 Oct 2026. After that: $1.99 once. No subscription, ever.
FolderVideoPlayer library on an Apple TV — the full screen
Media Share · playing over SMB Apple TV 4K · tvOS · local network only
5,000+ filesthumbnails stay instant
Resumes where you stoppedeven after restart
5,000+
videos in a library — browsing never slows, because every thumbnail is made once and kept
100%
local network. Your videos never leave your home to reach your TV
0
accounts, analytics, ads or cloud servers — nothing to sign up for
1×
payment, once, ever. No subscriptions, no recurring fees
Made for big libraries

Your own videos, finally findable

No transcoding server, no photo-library tax, no “supported cloud only” — your files, presented properly no matter how deep the folders got.

Browse any SMB share

Works with Synology, QNAP, Windows, macOS, Linux — anything that speaks SMB. Find your share by name over Bonjour or type its address. The folders you sorted years ago, and the ones you never got round to, both open as they are.

Thumbnails that never slow down

Every thumbnail is generated once and never again — even at 5,000+ videos, browsing stays instant. Frames are kept on the TV and beside your files on the share, so a second device never rebuilds them.

Find it by what you remember

Tag a video from the TV or the Mac — no save step — and find it again by the tag, not the file name you forgot. Tags live in a small folder on your own share, so the Mac, the TV and every device pointed at it see the same ones.

Picks up where you stopped

Quit mid-video, come back days later — it offers to carry on from the exact spot. A 40-hour archive is watchable again when the TV remembers where you are in it.

Free · the management half

Where a big library gets managed

FolderVideoPlayer for macOS is free, and it reads the same shares your Apple TV does. Tag in bulk from a keyboard, clear out the duplicates eating your disk, and let it pre-build the thumbnails the TV shows — everything lands on the share, so both screens agree.

Plays a whole folder — QuickTime won't even play two

Open New… → pick a folder → it starts playing — every video in it, in order, subfolders included, looping until you stop it. Apple's built-in player can't even queue two files in a row; here the folder is the queue — no playlist to build, nothing to drag.

Tag from the Mac, see it on the TV

Type a tag and it is applied — no save step. Tags publish into the .FolderVideoPlayer folder on your share, so the Apple TV, a second Mac or an iPhone pointed at the same share sees them too.

Thumbnails made once, for every screen

The Mac writes the poster frames a library needs onto the share — and the Apple TV reads those same pictures instead of generating them over Wi-Fi. One library scanned on the Mac, instant browsing on the TV.

Plays what most players won't

Favourites and a filterable playlist on top — and playback through VLCKit, so .mkv, .avi, .flv, .webm and the rest of the downloads AVFoundation refuses all play.

Finds duplicates in a huge library

Every video you play is fingerprinted as you watch — copies are then grouped with the keeper already chosen and the reason shown. Preview before you decide, tags from a discarded copy move to the one you keep, and nothing is ever deleted: duplicates go to the Trash, or to a folder you name on a share that has none.

Free · macOS 10.15+

FolderVideoPlayer for Mac

The management half of FolderVideoPlayer. Same shares, same tags, same thumbnails as the TV — download the .dmg and drag it to Applications.

Download for Mac

Free on GitHub — signed and notarized by Apple, with updates built in.

One connection only

Your TV meets your files. Nothing else.

1

Open the app on Apple TV

No login, no sign-up, no account to create. Open it and the app looks for shares on your network.

0 accounts
2

Pick your SMB share

Choose it from the list Bonjour discovers, or type the address. Credentials live only in the tvOS Keychain — and they need read & write rights on the share for tags and thumbnails to be saved.

SMB + Keychain
3

Browse. Play. Enjoy.

The whole library — folders, tags, thumbnails — streams straight from your share over your local network.

nothing leaves home

Privacy by construction

FolderVideoPlayer collects nothing — no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising SDKs, no cloud of any kind. The only thing it talks to is the file share you point it at, on your own network.

Read the privacy policy →
Get help

Something not right? Tell us.

We reply by email, usually within a day or two. The more you tell us, the faster we can help.

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Or email us directly at richardtang@me.com
Support

Questions, answered

What can FolderVideoPlayer play?
Anything your Apple TV can decode — MP4, MOV, MKV and more — from any SMB file share on your network. If the file plays in tvOS, it plays here.
Do I need an account, an internet connection or a NAS?
None of the three. There are no accounts and the app works fully offline on your local network. A NAS is the most common setup, but the share can live on a Mac, a Windows PC, a router with a USB drive — anything that serves SMB.
Will it slow down with a very large library?
No. Thumbnails are generated once and cached — on the TV and next to your files on the share — so browsing stays fast even in libraries of 5,000+ videos. A thumbnail that has been made is never made again.
Is this for my home videos and downloads — or for streaming?
Your own files: home movies, camera footage, family archives and the downloads you've kept — the personal library that outgrew folders. FolderVideoPlayer is not a streaming app and has nothing to do with any service; it only reads what you point it at on your own network, and nothing leaves home. If the library is big enough that finding, sorting and duplicate copies are the problem, that is exactly what the TV app and the free Mac companion are built to fix.
Can I use the same tags on my Mac and my Apple TV?
Yes. Tags and poster frames are stored in a .FolderVideoPlayer folder on your own share, so every device pointed at the same share sees the same tags — and the free Mac companion app can read and write them too.
Does my SMB account need read and write access?
Browsing and playback work with a read-only account. But to save tags and to share thumbnails between your devices, the app writes to a .FolderVideoPlayer folder on your share — so connect with an account that has read & write rights on the share.
How much does it cost?
It's free right now — a launch offer that runs until 7 Oct 2026. After that it's a one-time $1.99, no subscription, no ads, no in-app purchases. Buy it once — it's yours.
Is there a subscription?
No. No subscription, no ads, no in-app purchases. Buy it once — it's yours.
Something isn't working. How do I reach you?
Use the help form below, or email richardtang@me.com — please include the app version and what your share server is, and I'll get back to you.