# Coax - Surf your Plex Server — Relax with Coax > Channel-surf your personal Plex media library with automated content discovery. (iPhone/iPad app by Out to Lunch Productions, LLC.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/coax-surf-your-plex-server/id6752622762 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Out to Lunch Productions, LLC](https://appshunter.io/developer/367527515) - Category: Entertainment - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Rating: 4.20/5 from 38 App Store ratings · 21 written reviews indexed - Age rating: 17+ - Requires: iOS 18.6 · 48 MB - Languages: American English, Canadian French, German (Germany), Hungarian, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified, China), Slovak, European Spanish - Released: 2026-02-11 - Data updated: 2026-08-30 - Monetization: free - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/coax-surf-your-plex-server/id6752622762/reviews.md ## What is Coax? Demolish the tyranny of too much choice, say "NO" to BigAlgo, and just Relax with Coax. Within seconds, you'll be flipping through a schedule made entirely of your own home media server content. Jump right in with the on-screen cable guide and watch whatever's on, just like the old days. You can't pause, you can't skip forward, you can't rewind - all you can do is change the channel. Experience the joy of randomly happening upon a great scene in a movie you forgot you had, or a TV show marathon for an old favorite. Coax requires no setup at all - it uses the metadata your media library already has. If you want, you can create your own custom Lineups, with all sorts of simple yet powerful scheduling rules - create a Saturday Morning Cartoons Lineup for your inner (or actual) child, or a Late Night Thrillers Lineup for date night. Important: This app requires a Plex account and access to a Plex Media Server (or Jellyfin, or Emby). Coax does not provide or distribute any media; it only connects to content you already own. How to configure your Lineups: • Coax scans your home media libraries and generates a channel guide based on your content’s metadata. • Select which channel categories you want: Genre, Decade, Recent Additions, Actor, Studio, Director, and Collections. • Create 100% custom channels using Collections. • Unify your libraries to mix TV and movie channels. • Adjust the number of channels you want to generate. •  Customize the time between your programs with Gap Content - play Trailers, or content from another Library if you want! Coax is your personal “cable box” for your own content — no extra accounts, no third-party streaming, just your Plex library organized in a fun, nostalgic way. https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ ## Key features - On-device Plex library channel surfing - Zero-setup integration - Automatic channel guide generation - Customizable channel categories (genre, decade, actor, etc.) - Create channels from Plex Collections - Unify TV and movie libraries - Adjustable number of channels ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **Subscriptions** | Subscription | Price | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Monthly - 1st Week Free | $2.99 | per month | | Annual - 1st Week Free | $29.99 | per year | **One-time purchases** | Purchase | Price | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | Lifetime | $74.99 | one-time | ## Recent user reviews (10 of 21) All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/coax-surf-your-plex-server/id6752622762/reviews.md ### 5/5 — Love this app *2026-08-04* Our family had stopped streaming because we couldn’t decide what to watch. Coax solved this for us! ### 1/5 — Complete ripoff *2026-07-09* I was a beta tester for this app and the developer hid pricing from everyone who asked until launch, then locked the conversation on Reddit when pricing was announced so no one could discuss it. There are other developers making similar apps that have good pricing. Don’t support this greedy and dishonest developer! **Developer response:** Thank you for beta testing Coax! Can you help me understand how you feel I am dishonest? Not stating the price before launch is not lying or misleading, and you were free to not use the beta until a price was announced. I never said or even implied it would be inexpensive - I took pains to communicate that it would be priced higher than some folks were thinking. ### 5/5 — Worth the money *2026-07-04* After many updates, lots of new features, and the addition of Jellyfin support, it’s worth the money. ### 5/5 — Amazing app *2026-07-02* Using Coax has made watching my own media on my home server fun again. It makes it a joy to flip through channels, like we used to in the 90s, to stumble onto a funny or interesting scene and end up watching a whole episode or film of something you hadn’t thought of in a long while. It’s too easy to have decision paralysis with a large media library and Coax takes that away. The creator has also been very active with constant updated and even replies to any troubleshooting messages on Reddit right away. I recommend this for anyone who has Plex and wants another way to watch their content. ### 3/5 — Novel idea but pricing is nuts *2026-07-02* Cute idea. Reasonably well implemented. But that lifetime price is absurd. Truly absurd. Removing from my devices. ### 5/5 — How to deal with a big server *2026-07-01* Don’t get me wrong. Some stuff I want to watch on demand. But most of my stuff? I forgot I even downloaded it. I’ve had this app since the start and it’s really been improving every day and the developer is hyper responsive to feedback. It’s so much faster with 1.4 at generating channels, and keeping my schedule fresh. Great for kids and for just flipping through channels. Highly recommended! ### 5/5 — You get what you pay for *2026-05-05* Well worth the price of admission. We use it everyday. It’s a great app with consistent updates. The latest update (complete rebuild of the video engine) has completely exceeded my expectations. I can’t recommend this app enough. It’s not cheap. But I believe it’s worth the asking price. ### 5/5 — Love this App *2026-05-04* This app helps take the guess work out of what to watch or what to play when we have guess over now. It just runs and with channel select i can chose kids shows and not have to fiddle with plex shuffle. Just choose the channel and go. ### 5/5 — My Plex server is an ocean of content. Now, I can surf on it. *2026-04-24* The price may be high, but for $3/mo you can give it a shot and see if it scratches your itch to view your Plex content in cable tv format on the apple ecosystem. The developer is incredibly responsive and is always looking for feedback etc. Theres nothing like it yet for iOS/MacOS/tvOS. Setting up and maintaining something like ErstatzTV on my plex server is too much work. This app does all the work for me. Now, if youll excuse me I have to go fill up the next 5tb on my server while I watch an endless stream of my own content complete with bumpers and commercials. ### 5/5 — “C-c-catch the wave!” *2026-04-24* I love this nostalgic nod to tv days gone by. Excellent implementation and you can feel the care put into recreating the experience. I’m interested to see where this goes! ## Frequently asked questions about Coax ### How does Coax organize my Plex library into channels? Coax scans your Plex libraries and uses the content's metadata to generate a channel guide. You can then select categories like Genre, Decade, Recent Additions, Actor, Studio, Director, and Collections to define your channels. ### Can I create custom channels in Coax? Yes, you can create 100% custom channels by utilizing Plex Collections. This allows you to curate specific themes or content groupings for your viewing experience. ### Does Coax allow pausing or rewinding content? No, Coax is designed to mimic the experience of traditional cable TV. You cannot pause, go forward, or backward; the focus is on random discovery and serendipitous viewing. ### What are the requirements to use Coax? To use Coax, you need a Plex account and access to a Plex Media Server. The app does not provide or distribute media itself, only connects to content you already own. ### What devices does Coax support? Coax is available on Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Reality Device, offering a wide range of platform compatibility for your Plex media. ### How often is Coax updated? The latest version of Coax is 1.1.81, and it was last updated on March 30, 2026. This indicates a relatively active development cycle. ### What is the age rating for Coax? Coax has an age rating of 17+, which is important to consider for younger users or family sharing. ### What do users like about Coax? Users appreciate the nostalgic "cable box" feel for their own content, the freedom from decision-making, and the joy of discovering forgotten media within their Plex library. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.4.8 — 2026-08-25 EVERYWHERE ENHANCEMENTS • The Lineup Configurator is now much more intuitive ◦ Description text for options now tells you explicitly what the option does, and what outcome to expect • Estimate how long your schedule will take to generate based on your channels and server response time ◦ Helps you decide if those 200 extra channels are worth the wait • Dedicated editor view instead of overlays with low information density ◦ I know this is a bit boring but I had to strip it down a bit - things were way too cumbersome Overall, I'm hoping that this will make the Lineup creation much less intimidating, and will help folks feel more comfortable making changes because they're confident they understand what each change will do to their schedule. Also, I lied when I said I only focused on macOS enhancements for this cycle. I have some very exciting news which is that Schedules are now reliably stable across all your devices! CROSS-DEVICE SCHEDULE SYNC (INCLUDING MARATHONS) • Make a Lineup on your mac, schedule it, watch for a bit, notice that The Blues Brothers is coming on in 3 hours while you're gonna be out • No problem! Your phone will have the same Lineup and the same schedule, no matter where you go • If someone is watching the same Lineup you are, you can watch the same stuff on the same channels And a few bits and bobs BUG FIXES • Actor, Director, and Studio channels could quietly start playing somebody else's movies after a background schedule refresh — the channel kept its name while the content wandered off (one memorable evening, everything became Danny Boyle films) ◦ Fixed: these channels now remember exactly who they belong to, and a refresh can only fetch that person's stuff • Rescheduling TV Marathon Mode-impacted channels (NOT the orange Marathon channels, which is my fault for naming them so confusingly) should be working again • Login issues related to when a token is expired on the media server side • Jellyfin would sometimes force transcoding for image-based subtitles, resulting in a double-subtitle. A double subble, if you will. ### 1.4.7 — 2026-08-05 * Took another run at the Poltergeist bug - I think this house is (finally) clean * I'll stop being cute for a second and just say that your AppleTV should now stop turning on and playing audio when you open Coax on another device * Jellyfin and Emby users can attempt to authenticate without passwords * People do this! * DCA and Opus audio bugs should be resolved and play properly now (no more garbled/sped-up sound) * MP3 playback should also be good now * "Force transcode" is now universal instead of per-item (which would have been helpful to mitigate the two previous bugs but hey it's still a good idea) ### 1.4.6 — 2026-08-01 New look! New logo! New icon! A few audio bug fixes too. ### 1.4.5 — 2026-07-24 Another small update - just some streaming fixes to prevent unnecessary transcoding events, prevent volume differences in gap content from causing problems, and try to match commercial gap content to the year of the next item to play. ### 1.4.4 — 2026-07-21 Tiny update to fix some scheduling issues and a Jellyfin authentication problem. ## Related topics [Coax](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/coax) · [plezy for plex](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/plezy-for-plex) --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-30.*