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Free-to-air TV playermacOS, iOS, iPadOS & Android

Prism

Every signal, refined.

Public IPTV is thousands of links, and a lot of them are dead. Prism refracts trusted English-first catalogs into a watchable lineup — quality-ranked channels, validated discovery, dead-stream filtering, a real programme guide, and native playback on Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

See what it does Download Prism Apple Beta TestingAndroid Beta Testing

Prism on macOS with an English channel library and six guide feeds loaded — Inside PrismPrism on macOS — a 3,129-channel English list with six programme-guide feeds loaded.

Original photography · Steven Smith

4,000Channels per curated list

0Accounts, ads, or trackers

XMLTVMulti-feed programme guide

Built for the free side of television

Thousands of public streams in. One clean lineup out.

Free-to-air and FAST television is genuinely good — it is just published as raw M3U files with no curation, no guide, and no quality signal. Prism does that work: it starts from trusted catalogs, scans GitHub and approved Reddit sources for maintained playlists, proves each candidate by parsing it and sampling its streams, then ranks what survives by picture quality, source reliability, and your language. What you get is a list you can actually sit down in front of.

Start lean

First launch installs four trusted lists — English master, quality-focused Free-TV, US, and UK — instead of dropping tens of thousands of unsorted links on you.

Describe the lineup you want

Smart Curate takes plain language plus language, country, genre, HD, and guide-coverage preferences, then builds the list and shows where every channel came from.

Watch it properly

Native playback with full screen, Picture in Picture, favorites, recents, and a programme guide that says what is on now and next.

Real product. Current interface.

See Prism at work.

Prism Smart Curate on macOS with language, country, and genre controls and playlist discovery — Smart Curate on macOS

Prism library on iPhone showing 6,942 channels across four lists — Library on iPhone

Prism Smart Curate on iPhone with GitHub and Reddit discovery toggles — Curate on iPhone

Prism search on iPhone returning channels and programme-guide shows for BBC — Search on iPhone

Built around the real workflow

Tools that earn their place.

Smart Curate

Describe what you want to watch in plain language, or set language, country, region, genre, HD, and guide coverage directly. Prism merges the matching catalogs, removes duplicates, and keeps the strongest version of each channel — up to 4,000 in one list.

Quality first, then reliability, then language

Ranking is deliberate and in that order: picture quality and reputable FAST brands, then how responsive the source catalog is, then your preferred language. English is the default and you can change it in Smart Curate or Settings.

Discovery that has to prove itself

Prism scans public GitHub repositories for maintained M3U files and, if you configure it, approved Reddit OAuth search for direct links and inline playlists. Nothing is accepted on reputation alone — every candidate must parse as strict M3U and pass sampled live-stream checks.

Untrusted URLs never touch your machine

Playlist downloads and stream probes from discovery are routed through a bounded gateway that caps redirects and bytes, refuses local and private-network targets, blocks HTTPS downgrades, and forwards no credentials — so an attacker-chosen address is never resolved by the app itself.

Dead channels, filtered

Validation runs bounded concurrent probes that look for real media markers rather than a hopeful HTTP 200. Results apply to every copy of that stream across your playlists and persist, so a dead link stays dead.

A real programme guide

Multiple XMLTV feeds, including gzipped ones, load and merge locally with indexed now-and-next lookup, matched on tvg-id, tvg-name, or channel name. You can also point an individual playlist at its own guide URL.

Search everything at once

One query spans channel names, groups, tvg data, countries, languages, categories, movies, and programme-guide shows across every installed list. It runs off the main thread, cancels cleanly as you type, and caps at 200 ranked results.

Native on each platform

AVKit playback everywhere, with Picture in Picture and full screen on both platforms, menus and keyboard shortcuts on Mac, and AirPlay, Lock Screen controls, and background audio on iPhone and iPad. The Mac keeps the display awake only while something is actually playing.

Your library, your rules

Import an M3U file or URL, export any list back out, refresh from source, keep favorites and your last 20 channels, and use Clear All to delete every list — including the starter set — without it quietly reappearing.

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Local-first, with optional local intelligence

No account, no ads, no analytics, no tracking. On Mac, Prism can use Apple Intelligence, either of its downloadable Qwen models, or your own Ollama server, with an offline heuristic fallback always available.

Direct downloads

Download Prism for Mac and Android

Prism 2.4.0 build 23 is available as a notarized universal Mac download plus signed Android phone, tablet, and TV betas. The direct builds are unlocked: no subscription, no in-app purchase, no ads, and no account. iPhone and iPad remain available through Apple distribution.

Open the download page Apple Beta TestingAndroid Beta Testing

Direct downloadMac

Direct downloadAndroid

Direct downloadAndroid TV

A player you can trust with an untrusted internet

Where the streams come from, and what Prism does with them.

01PrivacyHow Prism handles your work and data 02SupportHelp with curating, watching, and importing 03TermsClear terms for a player that hosts nothing

Privacy PolicyEffective July 30, 2026

Overview

Prism has no accounts, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking. It contains no analytics, attribution, crash-reporting, or advertising SDK of any kind, and it does not ask for tracking permission because it does not track.

We operate no user accounts and no user database. There is nothing on our side that could identify you.

What stays on your device

Your playlists, curated lists, favorites, recently played channels, validation results, guide URLs, preferred language, and settings are stored locally — in the app’s Application Support folder and in your device’s own preferences.

None of it is uploaded to us. We never see your library, what you watch, or when you watch it.

Connections Prism makes

Playlist catalogs: public M3U files from sources such as iptv-org and Free-TV are downloaded so their channels can be listed. Those hosts see an ordinary file request.
Streams: when you play a channel, your device connects directly to that channel’s own media host. We do not proxy, mirror, log, or record playback. That host can see the request in its own logs.
Programme guides: XMLTV files are downloaded from the guide feeds you or Prism have configured, then parsed on your device.
Channel artwork: logos are loaded from the URLs published in the playlist, through a bounded image loader that refuses private-network and credential-bearing addresses.
The Prism scanner gateway: playlist downloads and stream probes performed during discovery go through our bounded gateway (prism-scanner-gateway.12thmanfishing.workers.dev). It fetches the target and returns the result. It does not receive your library, your identity, or any credentials.
GitHub: the public GitHub search and repository APIs are queried during discovery, unauthenticated.
Reddit: queried only if you supply your own approved installed-app client ID. Prism embeds no Reddit secret and has no anonymous-scraping fallback. Leave it unset and Reddit is never contacted.
Ollama: contacted only if you turn it on and give it an address, which is normally localhost on your own machine.

Unencrypted media

A large share of free-to-air streams are still published over plain HTTP, so Prism allows HTTP media. Traffic to those channels is not encrypted in transit, and anyone on the network path — including your network operator — can see which stream you requested. That is a property of the public IPTV ecosystem, not something Prism adds, but you should know it before you watch on a network you do not trust.

Permissions

Prism requests no location, contacts, photos, microphone, camera, or notification access. On iPhone and iPad, iOS may ask for local network permission only if you point Smart Curate at an Ollama server on your own network; decline it and everything else keeps working.

Content Prism does not control

Prism hosts no video. Its bundled discovery is limited to public, free-to-air, and FAST catalogs, but those catalogs are maintained by third parties and can change without notice, and any playlist you import yourself is entirely your own. Rights and availability vary by region. Prism does not filter, moderate, rate, or verify what a third-party stream contains.

Changes

If this policy changes, the effective date above changes with it, and a material change will be surfaced in the app.

Contact

Questions about privacy: support@shutterscoutapp.com.

SupportHelp with curating, watching, and importing

Overview

Help with curating, watching, searching, and importing in Prism. If something here does not answer your question, email us — a real person reads it.

A channel will not play

Public streams go down constantly. That is the ecosystem, not your install — try another channel first.
Run Validate from the toolbar to probe your list and mark dead streams, then turn on Hide dead.
Some channels are geo-blocked at the source and are labelled that way in the catalog. Prism cannot unblock them, and will not try.
If an entire playlist fails, its source file may have moved. Use Refresh from source, or re-curate.

Getting a better lineup

Open Smart Curate (⌘⇧K on Mac, the Curate tab on iPhone and iPad).
Describe what you want in the natural-language box, or pick language, countries, and genres directly.
Leave quality-first ranking on unless you specifically want breadth over picture quality.
Raise Max channels for a bigger list; the ceiling is 4,000.
Turn on Attach EPG when available if you want a programme guide with the result.

The programme guide

Prism loads several XMLTV feeds in parallel, including gzipped ones, and merges them on your device.
Guide rows are matched on tvg-id, tvg-name, or channel name — a channel with no tvg data may show no guide even when the feed loaded.
You can set a guide URL on an individual playlist and press Load.
Use Reload EPG after changing feeds.

Importing your own playlist

Import M3U (⌘O) opens a local .m3u or .m3u8 file; Import URL (⌘⇧O) takes a remote one.
Import URL also offers quick-add for the trusted lists — English, Free-TV country feeds, regions, and genres.
Export M3U writes any list back out as a standard playlist.
What you import is your responsibility; Prism validates the format and the streams, not the rights.

Search

Search (⌘F on Mac, the Search tab on iPhone and iPad) covers every installed list plus the programme guide.
Scopes are All, Channels, Shows, and Movies; results cap at 200, ranked.
Selecting a programme-guide result jumps to the channel carrying it.

Turning on Reddit discovery

Reddit discovery stays switched off until you supply your own approved Reddit installed-app client ID and a descriptive User-Agent in Settings. Prism ships no Reddit credentials and never scrapes anonymously. GitHub discovery and the trusted catalogs work without any of this.

Starting over

Clear All beside Playlists deletes every imported, starter, and curated list, stops playback, and will not silently restore the starter set afterwards. It is the clean slate before a fresh curation, and it cannot be undone.

Contact

Email support@shutterscoutapp.com with your platform, OS version, and what happened.

Email Prism support

End User License AgreementClear terms for a player that hosts nothing

Prism is offered under its own End User License Agreement, reproduced in full below. Where Prism is obtained from the App Store, Apple’s Licensed Application End User License Agreement also applies as the minimum terms.

Read Apple’s Standard EULA