# Photon Player

> Photon Player (iPhone/iPad app by Oliver Walton.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/photon-player/id6804291311 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Oliver Walton](https://appshunter.io/developer/6797878404)
- Category: Entertainment, Photo & Video
- Price: Free with in-app purchases
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 26.0 · 34 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-08-31
- Data updated: 2026-09-28
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/photon-player/id6804291311/reviews.md

## What is Photon Player?

Photon is a native player for the library you already own. Connect your media servers, your cloud and network storage, and your Live TV subscription, and everything you can watch appears in one place — on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac, from a single purchase.

YOUR OWN LIBRARY, TOGETHER
• Works with Jellyfin, Emby, Plex and Silo
• Connect as many servers as you like. Home and Search bring them all together; the Library tab keeps each source's own shelves separate, so you can still ask what is on one server.
• Play straight from an SMB, NFS, FTP or WebDAV share, a UPnP server on your network, or Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive, with no media server at all
• Live TV from an Xtream Codes subscription: a full program guide, favorites, and a channel list built for thousands of channels
• Open a video from Files or the Finder and it becomes a title like any other — with a resume point, artwork and a name you can match against your servers

AS IT WAS MADE
• Dolby Vision and HDR, with AVPlayer driving the display for real HDR output
• MKV and 4K play as they are. Nothing is quietly downscaled or re-encoded behind your back.
• Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos passed through untouched; TrueHD and DTS-HD decoded losslessly rather than folded to stereo
• Subtitles drawn as overlays, never burned into the picture
• Standing choices for audio language, subtitle language, and when subtitles should come on at all
• Skip intros and credits, and go straight into the next episode

EVERYWHERE YOU WATCH
• Download for offline. Transfers carry on while you are elsewhere, with a Live Activity on the Lock Screen and a notice when a title lands.
• Handoff picks a film up on the next device at the frame you left it
• Spotlight opens a title directly
• Top Shelf on Apple TV, a real menu bar on the Mac, and one design across all four platforms

BUILT FOR THE PLATFORM
Written in SwiftUI for iOS, tvOS and macOS, with full Dynamic Type, VoiceOver labels on every control, and Reduce Motion respected throughout. There is no account to create and no service of ours in the path: Photon talks to your servers and to your own iCloud, and to nothing else.

PHOTON PRO
The free app is a complete client for your media servers — as many as you like, the whole player, browsing, search, downloads, offline playback and Handoff, with no advertising and nothing to sign up for.

Pro adds:
• Drives: SMB, NFS, FTP and WebDAV shares, UPnP servers, Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive
• Live TV subscriptions and the guide
• 4K and MKV playback
• Your servers, settings and the way you have arranged Home, on every device you sign in on

Available monthly, yearly, or as a one-off Lifetime purchase, with a free week on either subscription. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac.

Photon plays the media you already have on servers and storage you control. It is an independent client and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Jellyfin, Emby or Plex.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://photon.oliverwalton.uk/terms/
Privacy Policy: https://photon.oliverwalton.uk/privacy/

## Pricing and in-app purchases

Base price: Free.

**Subscriptions**

| Subscription | Price | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Photon Pro Monthly | $1.99 | per month |
| Photon Pro Yearly | $14.99 | per year |

**One-time purchases**

| Purchase | Price | Type |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Photon Pro Lifetime | $49.99 | one-time |



## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 1.2.8 — 2026-09-25

FIXES
• Tidy up of code
• Video player performance improvements
• Stop episodes rail clipping end of screen

### 1.2.7 — 2026-09-24

FEATURES
• Adding a server or drive now goes step by step, with Back, as a native form
• Title logos from Emby now appear on Home and on every title page
• Photon Pro opens as a sheet with a standard Close button
• Finished downloads are marked with the filled download arrow

FIXES
• Search on iPad has its search field again
• Opening search on iPhone no longer shifts the page
• Search on the Mac no longer leaves an empty bar above the results
• Signing in no longer crashes when Sign In is pressed twice
• A title whose logo cannot be drawn shows its name instead of a gap
• The selected Play button on Apple TV is readable again

### 1.2.6 — 2026-09-23

FEATURES
• Download a whole season, or just its unwatched episodes, and pause or stop it in one go
• Mark a whole season watched or unwatched by holding the watched button
• Downloaded titles keep cast biographies, and cast pages open offline
• Episodes still downloading show on This Device with their progress
• Ambient Mode fills the black bars with the picture's own colours (Settings ▸ Playback)
• Older interlaced video (DVDs, MPEG-2, VC-1) is now deinterlaced

FIXES
• Episodes show the whole cast, not just that episode's guests (Jellyfin)
• No dark band where a picture fades into the page
• Title on Home no longer sits under the toolbar

### 1.2.5 — 2026-09-22

Small visual improvements

### 1.0 — 2026-09-21

No release notes.

## Apps similar to Photon Player

| App | Rating | Price | Category |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Visorium](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/visorium/id6763748963) | — | Free | Entertainment |
| [Riveo: Media Player](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/riveo-media-player/id6782365180) | — | Free | Entertainment |
| [Beebox - Smart player](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/beebox-smart-player/id6747574244) | 5.0 (1) | Free | Entertainment |
| [Crivid IPTV Player](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/crivid-iptv-player/id6783083716) | 5.0 (1) | Free | Entertainment |
| [Sakura!](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sakura/id6764421795) | 4.5 (10) | $0.99 | Entertainment |
| [JellyKids](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/jellykids/id6756038036) | 4.3 (11) | Free | Entertainment |

---

*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 2026-09-28.*