Orbrisa

The web on the big screen. A full web browser for Apple TV – with tabs, a real cursor,
and videos that play in the native Apple TV player.

Features · Screenshots · Concept · Roadmap · Install · Remote · Build · Deutsch

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Tip

🧪 Beta 2 is out – new start page, web apps and an ad blocker! Download Orbrisa-1.1.0-Beta-2-unsigned.ipa from the pre-release and tell me what you think. See the changelog for everything that's new.

Important

Orbrisa uses private Apple APIs (tvOS has no public WebKit). It can never be on the App Store and is meant for sideloading onto your own Apple TV. Use at your own risk.

Features

🌐 Real browser	WebKit (WKWebView) with tabs, session restore, favorites, history and a home page
🏠 Start page 🧪	Favorites as large tiles and recently visited sites with real page pictures
📱 Web apps 🧪	Open a favorite like an app: full screen, no bar, simple remote controls and a dock for your other web apps
🛡️ Ad blocker 🧪	Blocks ad and tracking servers and hides ad boxes – one switch in the quick menu
📖 Reader & RSS 🧪	Only the article in calm, large text – and feeds of your favourite sites that open right in the Reader
🗂️ Tab strip	Tabs with site logos right under the address bar, a large preview of the focused tab – optionally in each site's colour
🖱️ Cursor & scroll mode	Move a cursor with the clickpad, or scroll the page – double-press to switch
🔗 Link navigation	Jump from link to link with the ring, like a native tvOS app
⌨️ Direct keyboard	Clicking the address bar or any text field opens the keyboard right away
🫥 Auto-hiding bar	The top bar slides away while you scroll down and comes back when you scroll up
🎬 Video popup	When a video starts: Fullscreen, Choose video… or Stay on page
📺 Native Apple TV player	Fullscreen plays the page's real stream (HLS / MP4) in AVPlayer – with Siri Remote scrubbing
⏭️ Pre-roll skipping	Adverts in front of a video are detected, fast-forwarded and skipped
🧩 VLC fallback	Formats AVPlayer can't play (DASH, WebM, MKV …) open in a built-in VLC player
🍪 Cookie banners	"Accept all" is clicked automatically (can be turned off)
🌙 Dark mode for websites	Forces a dark look on pages without one – Automatic follows the Apple TV, or always light / dark
💧 Liquid Glass	Glass look across the whole app, intensity adjustable with a slider or switched off
🔠 Font size slider	Make page text smaller or larger from 50 % to 200 %
⚙️ Settings like tvOS	Settings styled like the Apple TV Settings app, with real on/off switches
✨ What's New	Shown once after each update, and any time under Settings → Help
🧭 Top Shelf (in development)	Open tabs and favorites on the Apple TV home screen
🌍 English & German	Follows the Apple TV language: German when it is set to German, English for every other language
📖 Usage guide	Built-in guide with Siri Remote illustrations – six pages, including web apps, Reader and feeds

Screenshots

_{Tab strip – logos, site colours and a preview of the selected tab}

📸 Show more screenshots (5)

Browsing – glass top bar	Settings – styled like tvOS
What's New after every update	Usage guide for the Siri Remote
Home screen with Top Shelf

🧪 New in Beta 2 – start page, web apps & ad blocker

• Start page – favorites as tiles, Recently Visited with page pictures. Hold a favorite for Open as Web App, Open When Orbrisa Starts, Rename and Remove. Hold a recent site to open it, make it a favorite or remove it.
• Web apps – a favorite opens full screen without the bar. Swipe to scroll, hold the clickpad for the selection box, hold the bottom of the clickpad for your other web apps.
• Ad blocker – ad and tracking servers are blocked, ad boxes hidden. On by default, switch it off in the quick menu or in Settings.
• New quick menu – Play/Pause opens a glass panel with font size, page appearance, actions and the ad blocker switch.
• Feeds in the Reader – articles from your feeds open in the Reader, and the Reader can switch back to the web page. The feeds themselves open in an orange glass window.
• Wallpaper – pick a photo from Unsplash for the start page, shown softly blurred behind it.
• Demo mode – Settings → Help: a see-through Siri Remote on the screen shows every press, great for recordings.

🧪 New in Beta 1 – Reader & RSS

_{Reader & RSS buttons – right in the top bar as soon as a page has an article or a feed}

Reader – size, background, font and "Always Open in Reader"	Feeds – all new articles below the top bar

From concept to app

Orbrisa started as a set of design concepts – drawn first, then built. Here is how the ideas turned into the real app.

🎨 Show concept vs. app (5)

Concept	App
Top bar – navigation, address and actions as glass capsules
Tab strip – tabs with logos and a large preview
Settings – styled like the tvOS Settings app
What's New – shown after every update
Video popup – Full Screen, Choose Video or Stay on Page

Roadmap – coming next

These features are designed and planned for the next versions. The pictures are concepts – the final app may look a little different.

	Feature
📖	Reader mode 🧪 in the beta	Only the article – no ads, no menus. Large, calm text with your choice of size, background (light, sepia, grey, dark) and font.
📰	RSS feeds 🧪 in the beta	Subscribe to your favourite sites. Orbrisa spots a feed on a page and shows new articles in one overview.
🖼️	Picture in picture	Keep the video playing in a small window while you go on browsing.
🔒	Private mode	Tabs without history or cookies, locked with a 4-digit code.

🔭 Show the concepts (6)

Reader mode	Reader – size, background and font
RSS – all new articles at a glance	RSS – feed found on a page
Picture in picture – watch and browse	Private mode with code lock

Got an idea for the roadmap? Suggest it here.

Install

Option A – unsigned IPA (sideload)

1. Download Orbrisa-<version>-unsigned.ipa from the latest release – or the newest beta from all releases.
2. Sign and install it on your Apple TV with a sideloading tool that supports tvOS (for example Sideloadly) and your Apple ID.
3. With a free Apple ID the app has to be re-installed every 7 days.

Note

🚧 The Top Shelf is still in development and may not show up yet. It needs an App Group. Some sideloading tools drop App Groups when re-signing – the browser still works, only the home-screen row stays empty.

Option B – build with Xcode

See Build from source. A free Apple ID is enough.

Requirements

• Apple TV HD or Apple TV 4K with tvOS 17 or newer
• For building: a Mac with Xcode 26 or newer

Using the Siri Remote

Button	Action
Swipe on the clickpad	Move the cursor – in scroll mode: scroll the page
Press the center	Click at the cursor (text fields open the keyboard)
Press the center twice	Switch between cursor mode and scroll mode
Hold the bottom of the ring	Link navigation on/off
Ring up / down / left / right	Next link (in link navigation)
Top of the ring	Into the toolbar: back, forward, reload, address, home, tabs, fullscreen, menu
Back	Previous page · closes menus and keyboard
Play/Pause	Quick menu: font size, page appearance, search, Reader, reload, ad blocker
Play/Pause twice	Settings: favorites, history, appearance, font size and more

In the Apple TV player the remote works exactly like in the TV app.

In a web app 🧪

Button	Action
Swipe on the clickpad	Scroll the page
Hold the center	Selection box on/off – the ring moves it, the center clicks
Ring left / right	Previous / next page (on sites with pages)
Hold the bottom of the clickpad	Your other web apps and the start page
Back	Back inside the app – on its first page: to the start page
Play/Pause	Quick menu with Leave Web App

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/fdm96/Orbrisa.git
cd Orbrisa
cp Configs/Local.xcconfig.example Configs/Local.xcconfig

Open Configs/Local.xcconfig and enter your team ID and a bundle ID of your own:

DEVELOPMENT_TEAM = ABCDE12345
ORBRISA_BUNDLE_ID = com.yourname.orbrisa

Then open Orbrisa.xcodeproj, pick your Apple TV as the run destination and press ⌘R. Xcode downloads VLCKit (Swift Package) on the first build. How to pair an Apple TV with Xcode.

Unsigned IPA from the command line

./scripts/make-ipa.sh            # → Orbrisa-<version>-unsigned.ipa in the project folder
./scripts/make-ipa.sh ~/Desktop  # → or into another folder

The script builds a Release version without signing and packs it as an IPA – sign and install it with a sideloading tool.

Pushing a tag like v1.0.0 runs the same build on GitHub Actions and attaches the IPA to a release.

How it works

Orbrisa/            the app (Objective-C, UIKit)
  BrowserWebView        WKWebView loaded at runtime + page scripts (stream capture, ad skipping)
  BrowserTabCoordinator tabs, snapshots, session, Top Shelf data
  BrowserVideoPlayback… / BrowserNativeVideoPlayer…  AVPlayer + VLC player
  BrowserPageActionCoordinator  clicks, video popup, fullscreen
OrbrisaTopShelf/    Top Shelf extension (open tabs + favorites)
Configs/            shared build settings, your Local.xcconfig

WebKit is not public on tvOS, so the app loads it at runtime and talks to it through the Objective-C runtime. Page scripts report every video stream a page loads; the video player picks the real one and plays it natively.

Credits

Orbrisa builds on tvOSBrowser by Jip van Akker, which is itself a fork of the original tvOSBrowser by Steven Troughton-Smith. Developed with the help of Claude (Anthropic). Video playback fallback by VLCKit (LGPL-2.1) – see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Feedback, bugs & ideas

Found a bug or have an idea? Please open an issue – it only takes a minute:

• 🐞 Report a bug – what happened, on which website, your Apple TV model and tvOS version.
• 💡 Suggest an idea – what you would like and why.

A photo or log helps the most: a quick photo of the TV with your phone is perfect – just drag it into the issue. If you build Orbrisa with Xcode, copy the console lines starting with [MediaCapture], [VideoChoice] or [AdDbg] as well.

Support Orbrisa

Orbrisa is free and made in my spare time. If you enjoy it, you can support its further development with a coffee on Ko-fi – thank you! ☕

Disclaimer

This project is not affiliated with Apple. It is provided as is, without warranty or liability. Do not submit builds of this project to the App Store. Websites, their content and their videos belong to their owners – Orbrisa only displays what the site delivers.

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Deutsch

Orbrisa ist ein Webbrowser für das Apple TV: Tabs, Cursor, Favoriten – und Videos laufen im echten Apple-TV-Player.

Installieren

• Ohne Mac: Orbrisa-…-unsigned.ipa aus den Releases laden und mit einem Sideloading-Tool (z. B. Sideloadly) und deiner Apple-ID aufs Apple TV bringen. Mit kostenloser Apple-ID alle 7 Tage neu installieren.
• IPA selbst bauen: im Terminal im Orbrisa-Ordner ./scripts/make-ipa.sh ausführen.
• Mit Mac: Projekt klonen, Configs/Local.xcconfig.example nach Configs/Local.xcconfig kopieren, Team-ID und eigene Bundle-ID eintragen, Orbrisa.xcodeproj öffnen, Apple TV wählen, ⌘R.

Bedienung – Mitte zweimal drücken wechselt zwischen Cursor und Scrollen, Play/Pause öffnet das Schnellmenü (Schriftgrösse, Darstellung, Aktionen, Werbeblocker), zweimal Play/Pause die Einstellungen. Die ganze Anleitung mit Bildern der Fernbedienung – sechs Seiten, auch für Web-Apps, Reader und Feeds – ist in der App unter Einstellungen → Hilfe → Bedienungsanleitung.

Videos – Startet ein Video, fragt Orbrisa: Vollbild (echter Stream im Apple-TV-Player, Werbung wird übersprungen), Video auswählen … oder Auf der Seite bleiben.

Beta 2 🧪 – Neu: eine Startseite mit deinen Favoriten als Kacheln und den zuletzt besuchten Seiten mit Bild · Web-Apps (einen Favoriten wie eine App öffnen: Vollbild ohne Leiste, einfache Steuerung, unten auf dem Clickpad halten zeigt deine anderen Web-Apps) · ein Werbeblocker · ein neues Schnellmenü im Glas-Design · Artikel aus den Feeds öffnen im Reader · Hintergrundbild von Unsplash für die Startseite · Demo-Modus, der jeden Tastendruck der Fernbedienung zeigt. Die IPA Orbrisa-1.1.0-Beta-2-unsigned.ipa gibt es unter Releases.

Beta 1 🧪 – Reader-Modus (nur der Artikel, mit Schriftgrösse, Hintergrund Hell/Sepia/Grau/Dunkel, Schriftart und „Immer im Reader öffnen“) und RSS-Feeds (RSS-Knopf neben der Adressleiste, Feed-Übersicht mit ungelesenen Artikeln).

Geplant – Bild-in-Bild (Video läuft weiter, während du surfst) und ein privater Modus mit Code-Sperre. Die Entwürfe findest du oben unter Roadmap.

Fehler oder Ideen? – Bitte ein Issue erstellen. Ein Foto vom Fernseher (einfach mit dem Handy) oder ein Log aus Xcode hilft am meisten.

Unterstützen – Orbrisa ist kostenlos. Wenn dir die App gefällt, kannst du die Weiterentwicklung mit einem Kaffee auf Ko-fi unterstützen – danke! ☕

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_{Made with care in Switzerland}