Desktop app for browsing, organizing, and watching movies and TV shows from your personal catalog.
- Windows (Mac support planned)
- WebView2 Runtime — required for the built-in player
- TMDB API key — required for trailers, metadata, and recommendations. Create a free TMDB account, then copy your API key from API Settings and paste it into TinyCinema Settings.
- FFmpeg — required for downloads
- Optional external players: VLC, FFPLAY (FFmpeg), or TinyPlayer
Download — Get the latest Windows build from the project Releases page (when available).
Build from source — Clone the repo, install the Requirements, then use one of the options below.
dotnet rundotnet publish -c ReleaseWhen you first open TinyCinema, movies and TV shows are loaded from Movies.json and tv_show_links.txt. The included files should give you a solid catalog to start with. You can change the paths for both files in Settings.
The left sidebar is how you move around the app. Each tab focuses on a different view of your catalog:
| Tab | What it does |
|---|---|
| Movies | Browse your movie catalog as a poster grid. Use search, genre, and country filters to narrow results. |
| TV Shows | Same browsing experience, filtered to TV series only. Pick a show to view seasons and episodes in the player. |
| Explore | Personalized home screen with recommendation rows based on what you’ve watched and favorited. |
| IPTV | Live TV channels organized by category. Browse channels and open a stream in the player. |
| Favorites | Titles you’ve hearted, in one place for quick access. |
| Watched | Your watch history — titles marked with the eye icon. Filter by movies, TV shows, or both. |
Select a title in any tab to see details in the hero panel, then play it from there.
The built-in player opens when you hit Play on a title. It uses WebView2 to load streaming sites and can capture HLS (.m3u8) stream URLs for external playback or download.
- In-app browser — Loads the watch page inside the player window.
- URLs panel — Side tab that lists captured network URLs. Search, filter to HLS only, pause capture, copy links, open streams in your default external player, download with FFmpeg, or send to Roku.
- Status bar — Shows what the player is doing (loading, resolving embed, capturing streams).
- Refresh — Reloads the current page.
- Ad/popup blocking — When enabled in Settings, blocks popups and known ad/tracker requests.
External players (VLC, FFPLAY, TinyPlayer) launch from the URLs panel when you click play on a captured HLS stream. Your default player is set in Settings → Default Player.
- Source: TinyZone or MovieLair — Footer dropdown to switch where the movie loads from.
- Cinema mode — Hides page clutter and focuses on the video player (TinyZone only). Auto-selects Server 1 and tries to start playback.
- Stream capture — Listens for HLS URLs while the page loads so you can open them externally or download.
TV playback uses MovieLair only.
- Episode list — Side panel with season filter, episode thumbnails, and a NOW badge on the current episode.
- Resume — If you open a show from Watched, it picks up at your last season/episode.
- Server selector — Footer dropdown (Server 1–5) for MovieLair’s embed servers. Changing server reloads the current episode.
- Embed resolution — Loads the episode page, picks the selected server, then finds and navigates to the embed player. Falls back to playing on the MovieLair page if needed.
- Episode cache — Season/episode lists are cached (when enabled in Settings) so repeat visits load faster.
Open Settings from the sidebar to configure the app. Changes save automatically.
- Theme — Switches the app color scheme (e.g. Black, Dark Blue).
- Window size — Preset window dimensions (Standard, Compact, etc.).
- Start centered on screen — Opens TinyCinema in the middle of your display when enabled.
- Enable Image Caching — Saves poster and artwork locally so grids load faster on repeat visits.
- Change Location — Folder where cached images are stored.
- Enable TV Show Episode Caching — Stores scraped season/episode lists so TV show pages load faster next time.
- Change Location — Path to your
Movies.jsoncatalog file. - Fetch Movies from TinyZone — Scrape and add movies from a TinyZone category into your catalog.
- Add Movie by URL — Add a single movie link to the catalog.
- Build Smart Search Index — Builds a local AI search index for plot, cast, and director search.
- Change Location — Path to your
tv_show_links.txtfile. - Fetch TV Shows from MovieLair — Scrape TV shows from a MovieLair category into your links file.
- Add TV Show by URL — Add a single TV show link to the catalog.
- Default Player — In-app browser, TinyPlayer, FFPLAY, or VLC (if installed). External players launch when an m3u8 stream is captured.
- Block Popups and Ads — Blocks popups/new tabs and cancels known ad/tracker requests in the built-in player.
- Blocked Ad / Tracker Hosts — Extra domains to block (one per line). Used when popup/ad blocking is on. Reopen the player after editing.
- Clear Player Browser Data on Close — Wipes in-app browser cache when you close the player. Saves disk space; sites may load slower next time.
- MovieLair Probe Logging — Debug logging for TV playback (iframe, storage, video state) to
%TEMP%\TinyCinema\ProbeLogs. - Embed Player Hosts — Extra embed domains for TV playback (one per line). Built-in hosts are always included.
- API Key — Your TMDB key for trailers, metadata, and recommendations.
- IP Address / Username / Password — Credentials for sideloading the TinyCinema channel to a Roku in Developer Mode (defaults:
rokudev/rokudev). - From the player, click the TV icon on an HLS stream to build, upload, install, and launch the channel automatically. If automatic upload fails, TinyCinema falls back to opening the zip and Roku installer page for manual upload.