Aether now carries a date as its version, 2026.9.1 is the release that follows 1.2.5. Under the hood it is the biggest speed release so far. FASTER EVERYWHERE • Play starts noticeably sooner. PrismCore hands the player its first picture after about two seconds of the file instead of six, direct-play files and downloads show a frame as soon as bytes arrive, and the work that used to queue up behind Play — the probe, the server, the screen’s HDR switch — now runs at the same time. • Smoother playback. Seeking no longer rebuilds the audio path, the stall guard acts on evidence instead of a timer, and the seek bar’s buffered band is back. • A title’s page loads in one round: Aether asks your server and TMDb for everything at once, never twice. • A big library scrolls the same at the bottom as at the top, and its sorted views read straight off an index. Filters, Spotlight, genre and year lists no longer read your whole catalogue. • Library scans skip titles that have not changed. Pull to refresh asks what is new instead of re-reading everything. • Live TV opens right away on huge playlists: the guide only builds the rows you can see, refreshes only when the provider’s guide changed, and reads its timestamps twenty times cheaper. NEW • A new optical-glass icon on every screen — with real depth on Apple TV and Vision Pro. • A title’s page plays its theme music after the preview, the way the Apple TV shelf does. Turn it off in Settings ▸ Playback ▸ Previews. • The page names the copy that will play — server, resolution, codec, bitrate — and Choose Version lists every file on every server with its size and audio. Audio and Subtitles are round buttons under Play. • Watchlist gets the Library’s header and its Filter & Sort: Movies / TV Shows, genres from what you saved, Unwatched, and sort by Added or Title. See All filters and sorts too — now on the Mac as well. • Every streaming rail — “New on Netflix”, “Top on Disney+” — is its own row in Settings ▸ Home Rails, movable and hideable on its own. • A 3D copy says so on the title’s page, not only inside the version picker. • Title logos follow the app’s language. Servers show a grey dot when they cannot be reached right now, and Services & Sync says plainly when your devices last synced. • Settings is a real system list on iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro. What’s New is a list, grouped by month, with dates. • Films whose server never names the container now play — Aether asks the server what to send instead of guessing. FIXED • Posters no longer vanish while you scroll; the Quality filter — 4K, Dolby Vision, Atmos — filters again on large libraries. • Apple TV: Library controls change the grid again, and Discover keeps up with the remote. • iPhone: the player keeps its size through a rotation, Live TV rotates to landscape with Allow Portrait Playback, and closing the player no longer crashes on iOS 27. • Your whole Plex watchlist arrives, not just the first page. A watched episode stays out of Continue Watching across servers. Reopening a show refreshes its seasons. Titles TMDb cannot place keep their trailers and previews. • Live TV: channel column back to a column, guide rows land without stutter, channels pair with their programmes regardless of id case, no empty rows after a refresh. Music libraries have their own switch. Thanks to everyone on the Aether Discord who sent logs and files — most of this list started as your reports.

This update covers everything since 1.2.3. NEW • Continue Watching follows a whole show: finish an episode and the next takes its place, and removing a show keeps it away until you watch another part. • A streaming service has its own page — tap its plate on Home for what's trending, what's new, top rated, its films and its series, instead of a single chart. • The hero at the top of Home plays, the way a title's own page does — with Mute beside your profile picture while it does. • Chapters live beside Audio and Subtitles in one panel — with the time, the name and a tick on the one you're in — instead of behind their own button. • Subtitles on Rewind — skip back and the subtitles come up for a moment, for the line you didn't catch, then go away again. Fifteen seconds by default; Settings ▸ Playback has the other lengths and the off switch. • Playback choices are one glass bar under Play — audio, subtitles and the server. Quality now lives in the player's own settings, where a change takes effect on what you are watching. • The player opens the moment you press Play, captioned Preparing, instead of leaving you on the list while the stream is found. • Pinch the picture to fill the screen, and double tap to jump ten seconds — left half back, right half forward. Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Player Gestures. • Hold Play to pick the copy that plays: each of your servers with the individual files it holds for this title indented underneath. • Play on Apple TV — the tv button beside Play can start a title over there, not only open its page. • A profile you remove waits 30 days under Recently Deleted, and Restore brings it back with its Continue Watching, watchlist, ratings and Home layout — not just its name. • AMC+ can be followed alongside the other streaming services — Settings ▸ Streaming Services. FIXED • Opening a title stops waiting for the rest of your library — noticeable on big catalogues, where a page could sit for half a minute with its poster already up. • Starting playback no longer spends ten seconds deciding how to play a title when the server is slow to answer. • Plex: your libraries are no longer re-read from scratch every time Aether syncs. Aether now asks the server what actually changed — a question it had been phrasing in a way Plex quietly ignored — so a big catalogue stops holding up the pages and the player that are waiting on it. • Plex: a library the server is busy scanning is left alone until the scan finishes, instead of being read on the machine already busy reading it. • Looking for a person is a question put to your server rather than a download of every actor and director it holds. • Search stops offering a title you already own, and a poster reached from Search or a recommendation opens your own copy. An apostrophe no longer hides a title. • A remake is no longer mistaken for the film you own, and the copy you pick no longer reverts to the server's first one. • Resume says how much is left rather than how far in you are, agreeing with the Continue Watching cards. • A preview that runs out hands the artwork back instead of stopping on its last frame, and the play button starts it again. • Continue Watching shows the show's poster again instead of a stretched episode still. • Continue Watching stopped listing the same episode twice. • A diagnostics report no longer names the files you played.

This update covers everything since 1.1.1. PROFILES Up to five people share one install without sharing a watch history. Continue Watching, the watchlist, ratings, your Trakt and Simkl accounts, your language and your Home rails belong to whoever is watching; servers, playlists and downloads stay shared. A profile can ask for a PIN, a child's profile can be held to an age rating and shown only the libraries you pick, and profiles follow you across your devices over iCloud. Pair one to a Plex Home profile, or give it its own Jellyfin or Emby user so watched state stays separate on the server too. Two profiles are free; the full five come with Supporter. A SERIES IS ONE PAGE A Season picker with that season's episodes inline — tap one and it plays. Audio, Subtitles and Quality on the page apply to the whole show, a season has its own actions, and the round buttons a film has are here too. On iPad, seasons are posters with their episodes underneath. DOWNLOADS • Episodes gather under their show, and a downloaded show plays with no server at all. • Choose which server to fetch from, with each copy's size, container and codecs. • Select Episodes, whole seasons, a progress ring on the artwork, and a queue that starts itself when the connection returns. LIVE TV Live TV has its own tab on iPhone and opens as a window with the guide beneath it. Add an Xtream Codes account, an HDHomeRun tuner, or a playlist; catch up on what you missed; make your own channel categories; and put your starred channels on Home. PLAYBACK • Chapter marks on the timeline, with a list to jump from. • A Version picker for a film kept in two copies, and Hold Play to choose the server. • Subtitle Sync and Subtitle Size in the player; embedded subtitles on a direct play keep their own timing and your styling. • A Dolby Vision switch for displays that make DV look worse than HDR10. • Ask If Still Watching stops an unattended binge at an episode boundary. • Scrub previews on SMB, WebDAV and your downloads, decoded on the device. • Video plays in landscape on iPhone; free rotation is a switch away. LIBRARY AND HOME • Filter by what a copy actually is — 4K, Dolby Vision, Atmos, 5.1 — and by country of origin. • Only Show My Library keeps Home's discovery rails to titles you actually have. • A Major Studios shelf, Trending split into three, and a Top 250 of All Time. • Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+ join the streaming services. • Pick which of a server's libraries you want; the rest stop appearing anywhere. • The Library leads with your titles, and poster choices live together in Settings. • Search the settings, in your own language. MUSIC The catalogue is kept on disk, so Music opens instantly and works offline. Playlists and the queue follow your profile, and your servers hear what you played. BUILT FOR BIG LIBRARIES The catalog is indexed on the device: six-figure libraries open instantly, search is full-text and immediate, and pull to refresh truly re-checks your servers — new titles and whole new libraries just appear. COLLECTIONS Your servers' box sets and film franchises as a rail on Home — each card says how much of the set you own, and a franchise page lists every part in release order, the missing ones a request away. WATCHLIST The watchlist now syncs with your Plex account, both ways — alongside Trakt and iCloud. STREAMING The service rails pair with your library: what you own opens as your playable copy. Episode lists lead with their number and each episode's own still. ASK AETHER Return shows matches immediately; the AI's pick arrives below, understands "a thriller from the 80s", and leans toward your taste. And Erase All Content & Settings in Settings, for a fresh start. ALSO Silo servers, Seerr with a username, Export Tracking Data, Technical Details as a grid of tiles, colour-coded format badges, and Aether Lifetime — support once, keep the perks. Dark mode is charcoal, icy blue and one thread of gold, with real glass throughout.

REQUESTS • Connect your own Seerr — a title on none of your servers gains a Request button, and Search surfaces what you don't have yet. • A show you hold only part of offers Request Missing Seasons on its own page. • A request can be taken back — Cancel Request withdraws every live request for the title. SUBTITLES • Search OpenSubtitles from a title's own page, in thirty-one languages, ranked against the exact file you're playing — with your own account and your own allowance. • Aether reads subtitle files itself and times them, so they sit in the black bars in your chosen style. A subtitle file next to a video on a share or on this device is found and offered. • Subtitle Style gains Placement — In Black Bars, or Over Video. DOWNLOADS • Settings ▸ Downloads is a real screen — episodes grouped by show, movies in their own list, queued jobs with their position. • Download a whole season or a whole show in one go, or pick several movies with Select. • Smart Downloads keep the next unwatched episodes of your Watchlist shows on the device, Wi-Fi only, and clear them a day after you watch. A supporter perk. PLAYBACK • Lumen is the default player — Aether's own controls with Picture in Picture, AirPlay and Dolby Atmos, switching engines only for formats Apple cannot decode. • Parental Controls hide titles above an age rating everywhere, locked behind Face ID. • Stay Tuned says when a film has a scene during or after the credits, and the intro and closing credits shade into the seek bar. • Drag over the picture for brightness, sideways for volume. Zoom to Fill works in every player now. • Live TV finds the native player on its own — verified channels play with Picture in Picture and AirPlay — and the timeline shows the programme with time remaining. • iPhone: full-screen playback overrides the rotation lock. iPad: the live player's Guide button keeps the picture playing beside the schedule. LIBRARY • Continue Watching opens a full page of its own. • The Library leads with your servers, and narrows to any library you curated on them. • The Server picker says what each copy actually carries — codec, audio and subtitle languages, file size — and marks Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos as chips, on the title's hero too. • A title's page grows out of the poster you tapped, and a series page now carries the same sections a film's does, Cast & Crew included. • Home leads its streaming block with the services themselves, and two new shelves put the actors and directors from your own library on the page. • Music: download any track or a whole album, and the player has artwork that breathes with playback over a blurred backdrop. METADATA • With a TheTVDB key, an imported S01E02 file stops being "Episode 2" — it gets the episode's own title, overview and still frame. • Detail prefers a synopsis and genres in the language the app runs in, wherever TMDb has a translation. SOURCES • WebDAV joins the sources — a Nextcloud, a Synology's WebDAV service, or any WebDAV server over HTTPS. • SMB grew up: nearby servers appear over Bonjour, several NAS boxes connect at once, guests get a switch, and a connection can be edited and tested in place. • Emby matches Jellyfin — Live TV with the server's own guide, negotiated playback with HEVC stream-copy, and its music library. • Sign in to Emby with Emby Connect, not just a server address. ACCOUNTS • Aether keeps your ratings itself, on the device and in your iCloud account, whether or not Plex or Trakt is connected. • Your watchlist follows you between devices, removals included. • Sign in to Simkl as a second watch tracker beside Trakt — both can stay connected at once. • Leaving Trakt counts what's actually at risk first, and offers to download your ratings and watchlist into Aether before the token is revoked. LANGUAGES • Slovak, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese join in — eleven languages besides English.