AquaPlex - A modern Plex client + YouTube player for legacy Mac OS X

[srp]

AquaPlex is a lightweight native Plex client built with PowerPC support in mind. It supports OS X 10.5 Leopard, and likely works on Snow Leopard. It is a standalone application that should work on all G4s and G5s.

AquaPlex lets you connect to your Plex server via access token, browse TV and movie libraries (with search/paging), pick shows/episodes, and play streams with rich features like intro/end credit skipping, subtitle support (experimental), and a highly optimized rendering backend.

Playback supports both external `ffplay` and the default embedded FFmpeg player window. Hardware and software rendering paths are available. I would heavily recommend transcoding anything above 360p on G4 devices - G5s can handle much higher resolutions and direct play usually works without issue (depending on codec - see below). Transcoding is done on your Plex server - make sure you have the resources to do this. With transcoding to 360p, anything from my library is playable on a G4.

AV1, H265 and HEVC codecs are poorly supported - transcoding this media is ideal because the output stream is H264.

Features include:
- Server-side transcoding and direct play support
- Highly optimized hardware and software rendering paths for PPC hardware
- Support for audio language/subtitle track selection
- Rich (work-in-progress!) unified library interface with search, controls, and separate browsing for TV and movies
- Poster-grid browsing with quick actions to open details or play
- Detailed info view showing show metadata and image based season listings
- Detailed season views with episode thumbnails and tracking of playback progress - resume episodes from where you left off, track episode progress
- Embedded player overlay with playback controls. Mini-player support for browsing additional episodes while watching the current one.
- Customizable subtitles (experimental)
- Specially tuned builds for G4 and G5 PowerPC devices
- Basic YouTube streaming support (yt-dlp must be installed via PPCPorts)
- Universal binary: works on Intel.. probably! Someone please test this for me!

AquaPlex works best on a G5. Most G5s are still quite usable for 720/1080p video! While it obviously works best for Plex server owners, I am working on a general media player featureset, including a better YouTube streaming experience, support for Twitch streams, and opening most types of media files directly.

As a Plex server owner hosting over 15TB (!!!) of TV shows and movies, this app has been hugely helpful in allowing my PMG5 (and even my 17" PBG4) to work as a real media center. I designed it based off of the Plex desktop client UI. Hopefully someone else will also find it useful or cool.

Get Started:
Retrieve your Plex token

Download AquaPlex 0.1.0 via GitHub

Once you open the app, go to the settings page, enter the token you retrieved earlier, save, and then you can access all of your shows and movies.

If you have any issues or questions please let me know and I'll do my best to assist! I have tested AquaPlex on my G5 Quad, my PowerBook G4, and my iBook G4.

 

[Appleuser201]

Another application I think we can consider a "PPC gamechanger". Really cool, and as a fan of CRT displays, I'm excited to try this on an eMac (when I can get my hands on a more powerful model, other than the 700mhz one I currently have) as even lower resolution video looks damn good on it's CRT.

As for Powermac G5 users, a great reason to keep one in the living room or wherever you view content. Doubles as a heater in the winter when playing 1080p files too.

Also I might be alone in this, but I've always liked the look of the old school Netflix UI. It would be cool to have the possibility to change the background color to red, and get that old Netflix feel while browsing our *freely acquired* library of movies and TV shows. And Netflix originals.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Huh, I pulled my token from dev web tools>network tab and put it into aquaplex & saved but Im not getting anything. Any tips on what I might be doing wrong? I also noticed that my token is not saved in the app.

Running this on a PMG5 running Sorbet Leopard.

Thanks 🙂

 

[srp]

Huh, I pulled my token from dev web tools>network tab and put it into aquaplex but Im not getting anything. Any tips on what I might be doing wrong? I also noticed that my token is not saved in the app.

Running this on a PMG5 running Sorbet Leopard.

Thanks 🙂

The token saving is a known issue and will be resolved in the next release - sorry about that.

As far as the token issue goes, I'm not sure - my Plex token is a 20 character token with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters and exactly 1 number. I pulled my token by hitting "Get Info" on a show and "View XML" and then copying the value for `X-Plex-Token` out of the URL. I haven't tried your method but there's no reason that shouldn't work if it is the correct `X-Plex-Token`. Double check to make sure you didn't include a space at the beginning or end when including the token, and if you're typing it manually it's case sensitive.

SSL should be supported, but in all fairness I haven't tested it because my Plex server is unsigned - all of my requests are just http. Not sure if anyone else here can comment on whether their signed Plex server worked or not.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Yanno, Ive never been able to find the "three dots" to get to "get Info". That's why Ive always used dev tools. It's just easier for me I guess. I know that sounds really dumb and I certainly felt that way when I initially was trying that method but yeah, I dont get any dots in Plex lol. Anyways, I believe the token is correct as it successfully updates Aquaplex and pulls my plex server name in the Aquaplex general tab which it would not do if the token was wrong. I just dont get any of my saved shows that I watch like walking dead for example - everything is blank. I sure would love to watch Walking Dead on my PMG5!

Still a very cool app with a lot of potential 🙂

 

[srp]

I think the token is correct as it successfully updates and pulls my plex server name in the Aquaplex general tab. I just dont get any of my saved shows that I watch like walking dead for example.

Still cool 🙂

Interesting! If you're interested in troubleshooting, try (temporarily) changing one of your library names to "Movies" and/or "TV Shows" and then restarting AquaPlex + adding your token and hitting "Save".

My server just uses the default names for libraries but if you renamed your TV Shows and Movies folders to something different (e.g. "4K Movies" and "4K TV Shows") then they might not be picked up automatically. I didn't think about that I guess LOL. Hopefully that helps until I can get a new update pushed out 🙂

edit: I think you can do this quickly by going into server settings -> Libraries -> hovering over desired library and "Edit Library"

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Interesting! If you're interested in troubleshooting, try (temporarily) changing one of your library names to "Movies" and/or "TV Shows" and then restarting AquaPlex + adding your token and hitting "Save".

My server just uses the default names for libraries but if you renamed your TV Shows and Movies folders to something different (e.g. "4K Movies" and "4K TV Shows") then they might not be picked up automatically. I didn't think about that I guess LOL. Hopefully that helps until I can get a new update pushed out 🙂

edit: I think you can do this quickly by going into server settings -> Libraries -> hovering over desired library and "Edit Library"

I’ll try to get to this this evening. Thanks for helping me with this.