Update — September 1: ViewPane 1.0 was submitted to Apple’s App Review on August 31 and is awaiting approval. Full release is still aiming for today; the News page will have the download link the moment it’s live.
Mark the date: September 1. ViewPane — the phone-first companion app for Frigate NVR — launches on iOS in its initial testing phase. It’s a free download: install it, point it at your Frigate server (or just open Demo mode), and see for yourself before spending a cent. Android is close behind.
If you run Frigate and you’ve ever squinted at a stuttering mobile browser tab, wondering why a phone with hardware HEVC decode built into its silicon is showing you a slideshow, this launch is for you.
What lands on September 1
The first public wave of ViewPane on iOS. We’re calling it a testing phase because that’s what it is — the first release outside our own hardware, with early users whose feedback will shape the 1.x line. But don’t read “testing” as “half-built.” The app is feature-complete: every feature listed on this site is in the build, exercised on real hardware, and mapped to a device-test checklist. Every claim on this site has a receipt, and that discipline is exactly why we’re comfortable putting a date on this.
Here’s what you get on day one.
Native H.265 live viewing. Your cameras probably record 4K HEVC. Mobile browsers choke on it; ViewPane hands the stream straight to your phone’s hardware decoder. Full resolution, full frame rate, no server-side re-encode for live viewing. This is the single biggest reason ViewPane exists.
Your whole camera wall, in your pocket. A multi-camera grid with your choice of 2- or 3-column layout, fullscreen live view with pinch-to-zoom, landscape support, and — with Pro — Live Wall, a continuously refreshing all-cameras view built for glancing at everything at once.
Push notifications that stay on your hardware. Alerts flow through a relay container you host, not a vendor cloud. And the relay is smart about it: it can hold a person alert for a beat and cancel it entirely when Frigate’s face recognition says it’s someone from your own household. Fewer alerts, and the ones that arrive mean something.
Events, clips, and recordings. Browse detection events, filter by camera, label, and date (Pro), play back clips, and save or share them (Pro) straight from the app. Clips arrive as 1080p H.264 — the relay transcodes them so playback is smooth on every device, not just the lucky ones.
Zero cloud, zero telemetry, zero accounts. There is nothing to sign up for. Your server URL and credentials live in your phone’s Keychain, and the app talks to your Frigate server and the relay you host — the only thing that ever leaves that loop is a push notification’s alert text on its way through Apple’s and Google’s delivery services, and only if you turn notifications on. No analytics SDK, no vendor backend, no camera URLs sitting in someone else’s database. Remote access rides on Tailscale — encrypted end to end, nothing port-forwarded, nothing exposed to the public internet.
Demo mode. Not sure yet? The app ships with a full tour on sample data — no server, no config, no commitment. Kick the tires before you point it at your own hardware.
Free to download, free to use — Pro if you want it
Let’s be clear about the price tag, because it’s the part camera apps usually get wrong: ViewPane costs nothing to download and nothing to use. No trial clock, no card at the door, no account wall. Install it on September 1, connect your server, and you have a real app: one server, the multi-camera grid, native H.265 fullscreen live viewing with pinch-zoom, your 20 most recent events, and full LAN + Tailscale connectivity. If that covers your setup, use it forever and never pay us anything.
If you want the power features, ViewPane Pro is $9.99 a year — push notifications, full event history with filters, clip playback with save and share, unlimited servers, and Live Wall. That’s the entire business model. Buy me two coffees a year and we keep ViewPane in its best shape — bug fixes shipping, the app keeping up with Frigate releases, the privacy promise staying kept.
Compare that to the going rate for camera apps that do less than the free web UI while routing your notifications through their cloud. We think the math speaks for itself.
What about Android?
Coming — and not far behind. We build and test on Android every day (the development phone is a Pixel), so this isn’t a lesser port trailing the “real” version. The Android release simply follows its own store timeline, and rather than hold iOS hostage to it, we’re launching where we’re ready first. Android users: get on the launch list and you’ll get one email the day your build is live.
Why launch into a testing phase at all?
Because self-hosted setups are gloriously diverse, and we respect that. Ten people running Frigate have ten different camera brands, network layouts, reverse proxies, and Tailscale configurations. We’ve verified ViewPane end-to-end on real hardware — ten PoE cameras, a Coral TPU, a mini PC that sips 6 watts — but the honest way to ship a self-hosted product is to put it in the hands of people whose setups don’t look like ours and listen hard to what comes back.
Early users get the app at its freshest, a direct line to the people building it, and a real say in what 1.x becomes. We get the only thing money can’t buy: your weird network topology finding the bug our happy path never would.
Get in on day one
One step: join the launch list. You’ll get a single email on September 1 with the iOS link — download it free, try it against your own server or in Demo mode, and decide about Pro whenever you feel like it. Android users get their email the day that build goes live. No drip campaign, no newsletter you didn’t ask for. One email, then silence.
September 1. Your cameras, your server, your phone — and nobody else in the loop.