Original Summary

Hi all, solo dev here. I just shipped ZapStream, a player for your own M3U / Xtream Codes playlists, and I wanted to share how it came together. Why I built it: I have a Chromecast with Google TV, an Android phone and an iPhone. Every player I tried was either bloated, stuttered on the TV hardware, or didn't exist on all three. I wanted one app that behaves the same everywhere and stays fast on modest devices. The main design rule was to leave things out. I didn't want to compete on number of features: - No animated carousels, blur or flashy transitions. Short fades only, because budget TV boxes drop frames on anything heavier. - A few curated menus instead of a busy home screen. - Only the core features, done well: Live TV + EPG, Movies, Series, favourites, continue watching, and free sync across devices. Stack: - Android TV + phone/tablet: Kotlin, Jetpack Compose (TV and mobile), ExoPlayer/Media3 - iOS (iPhone + iPad): Swift, SwiftUI, AVPlayer + VLCKit for formats AVPlayer can't handle - Everything runs on-device, with no backend. A small Cloudflare Worker handles encrypted cross-device sync, and the website is on Cloudflare Pages. Things I learned the hard way: - A Chromecast has a 256MB app heap. Holding a 125k-movie catalogue in memory without spiking memory and freezing the UI took several rewrites of the caching and parsing code. - One requirements doc shared by both platforms was what kept Android and iOS in sync. Version numbers turned out to be useless for tracking parity. - App store review is its own project. Google and Apple approved it eventually. Amazon has rejected it three times just for being in the grey tv streamer category, even though the app ships with no content. Business model: free with ads on phone/tablet (none on Android TV). A one-time Pro purchase removes the ads and unlocks a few extras. No subscription, because I dislike them as a user. It includes no content; you bring your own playlist. https://zapstream.app Happy to answer anything about the build, the store reviews or the business side. Feedback on the product or the website is very welcome too.   submitted by   /u/esloje [link]   [comments]

  • 情报分类：硬件与数码
  • 分类依据：内容涉及硬件、数码产品或通信卡
  • 信息来源：Reddit · SideProject
  • 发布时间：2026/9/19 23:56:35