A Netflix-style front end for your own Plex library — on your TV, your phone, your Xbox, and your browser.
Prism is a media browsing app that sits on top of a Plex server you already own. It doesn't host, stream, or provide any content of its own — it just gives your existing library the kind of front end you'd expect from a paid streaming service:
- a big cinematic hero banner that cycles through your titles, with trailers
- rows of artwork you scroll sideways — Continue Watching, Recently Added, My List, genre rows
- a details page with cast, ratings, and recommendations
- a full-featured player with chapters, subtitles, and picture-quality controls
If you have a Plex server full of movies and shows and you want browsing it to feel like Netflix instead of feeling like a file manager, that's what this is for.
Plex's own apps are fine, but they're built to sell you Plex's catalog as much as show you yours. Prism is deliberately narrow: your library, nothing else. No storefront, no ads for things you don't own, no channels you didn't ask for.
It's also built for the living room first. Everything is reachable with a controller or a remote's arrow keys — not just a mouse — and the player is tuned for actually watching things: quality that adapts to your connection, chapter skipping, subtitle search, and picture enhancement for older or lower-resolution files.
Your libraries become rows. Genre rows are generated from your library's own tags, and if you plug in an (optional) AI key, Prism will also invent themed rows like "Sci-Fi Comedies" and fill them from titles you actually own.
Each Plex library gets its own tab in the top nav, named however you named it in Plex.
One search box across movies, shows, individual episodes, and collections.
Picking a poster opens an overlay — synopsis, cast, ratings, similar titles, and a play button. No page loads, no losing your place.
One play button, and then everything you'd want mid-film — controls fade away while you watch and come back when you move.
Everything else lives behind one menu, so nothing clutters the picture.
Jump by chapter, with real thumbnails pulled from the file itself.
Pick the next episode without leaving playback — and if you'd rather not, Prism plays it automatically when the credits roll.
Switch audio tracks, or search for and load subtitles mid-film without hunting for files.
- Quality — Prism watches your actual connection speed and picks a stream that won't stall. You can also pin it manually, or force the original file.
- AI upscaling — for older or low-resolution files, Prism can rebuild detail on the fly using real upscaling shaders (Anime4K for animation, AMD FSR for live action). It switches itself off when the file already matches your screen, so it never runs for nothing.
- Sharpening and color boost — subtle, optional, adjustable.
- Ambient lighting — spills the colors at the edge of the picture out into the black bars around it, so a widescreen film doesn't sit in a hard black box.
- HDR — HDR files play as HDR on hardware that supports it.
The only thing Prism needs to know is which Plex server is yours. You sign in with your Plex account the same way you would in any Plex app — a short code, no passwords typed on a TV remote — and Prism finds your server and libraries for you.
Trailers for titles where Plex doesn't have one are looked up automatically via TMDB — no API key or account of yours required. Everything else is optional:
| Optional | What it adds |
|---|---|
| OpenRouter API key | AI-generated themed rows, refreshed weekly |
| Subtitle provider | Where subtitle searches come from |
If you share a Plex server with family, Prism also picks up your Plex Home profiles — switch between them from the account menu, with a PIN prompt for the profiles that have one.
| Status | |
|---|---|
| Web browser (desktop or phone) | Works today |
| Android (phone and tablet) | Works today, with a native player for smooth full-quality playback |
| Xbox | Works today via developer sideloading, with a native player for HDR and high-bitrate files |
| Android TV / Fire TV | Not yet — the Android app runs, but it isn't set up as a TV app |
Input-wise: mouse and touch, keyboard, and Xbox controllers all navigate the whole app. TV remotes send the same arrow/select/back keys, so they should work too — that just hasn't been tested on real remote hardware yet.
⏳ Not yet. There are no downloads or releases published yet — no APK, no Xbox package, no hosted web build. This section will be filled in once the first builds are out.
If you're a developer and want to build it yourself in the meantime, the short version is
npm installthennpm run devfor the browser,npm run androidfor Android, andnpm run xbox:buildfor Xbox. Copy.env.exampleto.envand fill in a free TMDB API key (from https://www.themoviedb.org/settings/api) if you want the TMDB trailer fallback working in your own build — everything else works without it. Everything else lives inCLAUDE.md.
- Prism does not give you anything to watch. It's a viewer for a Plex server that you run, containing media that you supply. No server, no Prism.
- It talks straight to your Plex server. There's no Prism cloud, no extra account to make, and nothing about your library leaves your network except what you explicitly enable (trailer lookups, AI rows, subtitle searches).
- It is not affiliated with Plex Inc. It's an independent app that uses Plex's public API.
- This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
- It's a personal project, built and tested against one real library on real hardware. It works well there; expect rough edges elsewhere.
Screenshots show a personal Plex library. Artwork, posters, and video frames belong to their respective rights holders and are shown here only to illustrate the interface.