Your library, wherever you are.
One app for the podcasts, audiobooks, ebooks, music, films and television you already own — playing from the servers you already run.
Requires your own Audiobookshelf or Plex server. Beta — expect bugs.
The short version
What this is
Castaway Media is one iOS app for the media you already own, playing from the servers you already run. Eight libraries, each with a player built for what it holds, one place to search all of it — and nothing that talks to anyone but your own hardware.
One app, eight libraries
Podcasts, audiobooks, ebooks, music, movies, TV shows, radio and live TV — each with its own tab bar, settings and player, because a forty-hour audiobook and a three-minute single don't want the same controls.
Your servers, your files
It connects to Audiobookshelf and Plex running on your own hardware. There's no Castaway account and no catalogue to browse — it plays what you already have.
Nothing sent anywhere
No analytics, no tracking, no ads, no subscription. Your servers' addresses and credentials stay in the iOS Keychain on your device, and everything works offline once downloaded — films and episodes included.
What it needs
Castaway plays from your own hardware. Without at least one of these, there's nothing for it to show you.
- 📚An Audiobookshelf server — powers podcasts, audiobooks and ebooks
- 🎵A Plex Media Server — powers music, movies, TV shows, radio and live TV
- 📱iOS 18 or later
- 🔑Optional: a free Last.fm key — artist bios and similar artists
- 🎞️Optional: a free TMDb key — actor biographies and filmographies
- 📥Optional: Lidarr — request music not yet in your library
- 🎬Optional: Seerr — request films and TV not yet in your library
- 📡Optional: a tuner on your Plex server — the only part of Castaway that needs hardware, and the only one that isn't finished
You don't need both servers. Connect one and that half of the app works.
Eight libraries
One app, eight ways to listen, read and watch
Each library has its own tab bar, its own settings and its own player — because a podcast, a forty-hour audiobook, an EPUB, an album and a film are not the same thing, and pretending otherwise compromises all of them. Reorder them in the drawer, or hide the ones you don't use.
Every library below opens its own screenshots — nine sets, in light and dark.
Podcasts
Your Audiobookshelf podcast library, with subscriptions, auto-download, an Up Next queue and per-show overrides for speed, skips and silence.
Audiobooks
The same server, heard. Whole-book downloads across many files, chapter navigation, bookmarks, and a position that survives a force-quit.
Ebooks
The same library, read rather than heard — a built-in EPUB reader with fonts and themes, plus PDF for everything else.
Music
Plex, browsed by artist, album or the folder tree as it sits on disk. Real playlists, favourites, synced lyrics and volume normalisation.
Movies
Your Plex film libraries, with cast and crew, actor filmographies, similar titles, and downloads for watching without a connection — including the smaller copy your server can build for a film too large to carry.
TV Shows
Shows, seasons and episodes from Plex, with what you’ve watched tracked per episode, where you stopped remembered, the same cast pages the films use, and episodes downloadable one at a time.
Live TV In development
If your Plex server has a tuner, Castaway shows the lineup and the guide — what’s on now, across every channel, searchable alongside the rest. Playing a channel isn’t working yet; that part is still being built.
Radio
Endless stations built from your own music — by genre, mood, format, artist, song, or a mix drawn from what you actually play.
And eight that aren't libraries
Downloads
Everything offline, every library on one screen — podcasts, books, albums, films and episodes — with per-podcast limits, and the option to delete an episode the moment you’ve finished it.
History
What you played, read and watched, in order, across every library — with a filter for when you only want one of them.
Favorites
Everything you’ve hearted, from every library that has hearts. Music favourites are a real Plex playlist, so they’re there on the web too.
Bookmarks
A moment in an episode, a place in a book, a page in an EPUB — all kept together instead of one list per library.
Requests
Albums you’ve asked Lidarr for and films and shows you’ve asked Seerr for, in one list — including the ones that quietly got stuck.
Stats
Listening and reading time across every library in one place, so the hours spent reading count alongside the hours spent listening.
Help
Thirty-odd topics bundled into the app itself. No connection needed, which matters when the thing you’re trying to fix is the connection.
Settings
Themes and accent colour, playback defaults, server connections, notifications, and which libraries and tools appear in the drawer at all.
Everything else
The parts you only notice when they're missing
Pick a library to see what it does.
Podcasts 12›
- 🗂️ Grid, list or compact layouts; sort by name, date added or activity
- 🔴 Live unplayed counts on the drawer and the app icon badge
- 🔤 Alphabet index rail, and 👆 swipe actions you configure yourself
- ✅ Long-press multi-select to mark several played at once
- 🔍 Discover — iTunes search, Top charts by category, preview before subscribing, add straight to your server
- 📋 Up Next queue with auto-advance and drag reordering
- 🎯 Playlists, including smart ones that fill themselves
- 🎛️ Per-podcast overrides for speed, skips, silence, boost, downloads and notifications
- 🔔 New-episode notifications with background refresh
- 📑 Chapters — scrubber ticks, tap to jump, chapter-aware skips
- 🔖 Bookmarks with notes
- 🔇 Trim silence and volume boost — real audio processing
Audiobooks & Ebooks 9›
- ⬇️ Whole-book downloads across many files, in one action
- 📑 Chapter navigation and 🔖 bookmarks, with a position that survives everything
- 📚 Browse by series and by author
- 📖 Built-in EPUB reader — fonts, themes, contents, bookmarks
- 📄 PDF reader for anything that isn't an EPUB
- 📍 Reading position tracked separately from listening position
- 📈 Apple Books charts, cross-referenced against what you own
- 🗣️ Read aloud — any EPUB spoken by the phone, with the current word highlighted as it goes, and the page turning itself
- ⏱️ Reading time counted into Stats alongside everything else, listening to a book read aloud included
Music 10›
- 🗂️ Browse by artist, album or folder — folders matter when your filing carries meaning tags don't
- 💿 Releases grouped the way Plex groups them: Albums, Singles & EPs, Appears On
- 🔤 Alphabet rail and sorting, with a Date Added that notices a new record by an old artist
- 🎯 Real Plex playlists — create, reorder, delete
- ❤️ Favourites stored as a genuine Plex playlist, not a local list
- 🎤 Synced lyrics that scroll with the track
- 🔊 Volume normalisation and crossfade
- 🎸 Artist bios, popular tracks and similar artists via Last.fm
- 📥 Request what's not yet in your library via Lidarr, with a step-by-step view of search and download
- 🕳️ Collection gaps — which albums by an artist you're missing
Radio 10›
- 🎛️ Six ways to start a station — a genre, a mood, a format (live, remix, soundtrack, DJ mix), an artist, a single song, or For You built from what you actually play
- ▶️ Artist and song stations open with what you picked, then widen out — a station named after something plays it first
- ♾️ Stations don't end. The queue refills itself in the background long before you reach the bottom of it
- 🔀 Artist spacing, so a station never plays the same artist twice in a row just because they have the most tracks
- 🎭 Moods narrowed to the twenty-one worth having, rather than every tag your server happens to carry
- 🔍 Every kind starts from the Radio screen itself — including a searchable picker for any artist or song in the library, not just the ones you've played lately
- 🎵 Or start one from anywhere in Music — an artist's page, or a track you're already playing
- 🗂️ Its own drawer entry, and switchable off in Settings if you'd rather not see it
- 📱 Full player, mini player and queue all show which station is running and what it picked next
- 🏠 Built entirely from your own library — no streaming service, no catalogue, nothing you don't already own
Movies 11›
- 🖼️ Poster grid, small grid or detailed list
- 🔎 Sort, filter and browse by genre, with an index rail on every sort
- ▶️ Continue Watching, synced both ways with Plex
- 🎭 Cast and crew, with a screen per person
- 👤 Tap an actor for their filmography — films you own are marked and openable
- 📝 Actor biographies via TMDb
- 🔗 Similar films from your own library
- 🔄 Plays whether or not the file suits your device — Matroska and HEVC included, decoded on the phone rather than converted by your server
- ⬇️ Downloads for offline viewing, with the size shown before you commit to it
- 🗜️ Ask your server for a smaller copy of a film too large to carry, and get told when it's ready
- 📺 AirPlay keeps working — an external display gets a stream your TV can take
TV Shows 8›
- 🖼️ Poster grid, small grid or list, with unwatched counts on the covers
- ▶️ Continue Watching across shows, synced both ways with Plex
- ✅ Watched state and where you stopped, kept per episode
- 🎭 The same cast pages and similar titles the films use
- ⬇️ Download an episode at a time, with progress and a way to cancel
- 🗜️ Ask for a smaller copy of an episode, per episode — never a whole season at once
- 🏷️ Covers show what's on the device and what's converted and waiting
- 📂 A Downloads-only filter, for when you're about to lose signal
Live TV In development 4›
- 📡 Needs a tuner attached to your Plex server — this is the one part of Castaway with a hardware requirement
- 🗓️ The guide: what's on now across every channel, in shelves
- 🔍 Search the lineup and the guide together
- 🚧 Playing a channel isn't working yet. The app can ask your server for a channel and your server agrees, then declines to hand over the stream. Until that's solved, watch live in Plex — the app says so on the screen rather than letting you find out by tapping
Across the whole app 12›
- 🚗 CarPlay — podcasts and audiobooks on the dashboard, with your covers and your queue
- 📲 Widgets in three sizes, plus Lock Screen Live Activities
- 🗣️ Siri Shortcuts — resume, skip, mark played
- 🤝 Handoff — carry on where you left off, and the first device pauses
- 🔍 Unified search across every library at once
- ⬇️ Offline downloads across every library — podcasts, books, albums, films and episodes — Wi-Fi-only if you like, and tidying themselves once finished
- 📊 Stats — listening and reading time across everything
- ⏲️ Sleep timer — minutes, or to the end of the chapter
- 🌗 Light and dark themes
- ❓ Bundled Help — 30+ topics that work with no connection
- 🎬 Plays what your device can't natively open, decoding on the phone rather than making your server do the work
- ☁️ iCloud sync for settings and queues
How it works
Your servers. Your library. No account here.
Castaway Media is a client, not a service. It connects to an Audiobookshelf server for podcasts, audiobooks and ebooks, and to Plex for music — both of which you run yourself.
Nothing is collected
No analytics, no tracking, no advertising identifiers. There is no Castaway Media account, because there is no Castaway Media server.
Credentials stay on device
Server addresses and tokens live in the iOS Keychain. They are sent to your servers and nowhere else.
You bring the content
The app ships with nothing. Everything you see in it is what's already on hardware you control.