About Palais

Made for people who still care how a film looks.

Why I made Palais

For years my film library lived in Plex. Then Plex changed course: in 2025 it started charging for something it used to give away, watching your own films away from home, and it raised its prices on top. Paying a subscription every month to watch discs I had already bought, from a server in my own house, felt wrong.

So I moved my library to Jellyfin, the free, open-source media server, and found what many people find: the server is excellent, but on the television it looks like a list of files. Palais is the app I wanted to watch my films in: a quiet, gilded front room for my own collection, drawn in the spirit of the old picture palaces, with nothing held back behind an extra pass.

What I promise

• Your requests shape the app. Every feature request is read, and the good ones get built. Write to me at support@palais.tv.
• It keeps getting better. New features and improvements every month, for as long as people use it.
• It stays affordable. One price for every screen, paid once. It covers only the time, effort and running costs that go into building and looking after Palais: no investors to please, no upselling, no extra passes.
• Nothing held back. Watching away from home, downloads and HDR are part of Palais, not add-ons.
• Your library stays yours. No accounts, no ads, no tracking.

What Palais is

It doesn't sell or stream films from anywhere else. It plays what you already have, from the Jellyfin media server you run at home, and it plays it as faithfully as your Apple TV allows: the original resolution, HDR and Dolby Vision where the file carries them, without re-encoding unless a format truly needs it.

How it works

• Your server. Install Jellyfin (free and open source) on a computer or NAS at home and add your films and shows to it.
• Palais finds it. Open Palais on the Apple TV; it looks for servers on your network and shows them. You can also type the address.
• Sign in with a code. The TV shows six gold characters. Enter them on your iPhone or iPad under Settings (the gear on Home) → Link a TV, or in Jellyfin's own web page under Quick Connect.
• Watch. Your progress is saved on your server, so every device knows where you stopped.

Help

Palais can't find my server.

Check that the device is on the same network as the server, and on iPhone or iPad that Palais may use the local network (Settings → Apps → Palais → Local Network). You can always type the address, for example http://192.168.1.20:8096. If Jellyfin runs in Docker, publish its discovery port 7359/udp and set JELLYFIN_PublishedServerUrl to the address your devices use.

The code doesn't work.

Quick Connect has to be switched on in your server's settings (Dashboard → General → Quick Connect). Codes expire after a few minutes; Palais shows a new one if you go back and forth.

A film stutters or won't start.

Most files play directly. Unusual formats are converted by your server while you watch, which needs a capable machine. Make sure the server is running and not busy with other work.

Does Palais work away from home?

Yes, with no extra pass, once your server can be reached from outside your home. Palais connects straight to your server, so that takes a one-time setup on your side: Watch away from home shows the easy way (Tailscale) and the advanced one (your own web address). In Settings you can choose a lower quality for slow connections and, separately, for mobile data.

How do downloads work?

On a film or episode page on iPhone or iPad, tap the download mark and choose the original file or a smaller copy. Downloads continue in the background and play without a connection. Your server decides who may download (Dashboard → Users → Allow media downloading).

Skip intro doesn't appear.

Palais shows Skip intro and Skip credits when your server knows where they are. Install a segment-detection plugin such as Intro Skipper in Jellyfin; until then, Up next appears in the last 30 seconds of an episode.

Is it a subscription?

No. You pay once and Palais is yours to keep, with a year of new features included. After that it keeps working as it is, fixes stay free, and you can add another year of new features for €12.99 whenever you like.

Privacy, in one paragraph

Palais collects nothing on its own. There is no Palais account, no analytics and no advertising. The app stores your server's address and a sign-in token on the device and talks only to your own server — unless you choose to send us a problem report. The full policy is on the legal page.

Contact

Questions, feature requests and problems are all welcome; I read every one. If something isn't working, open Settings → Send a problem report in the app first: it gives you a short code (like PAL-7KQ3MD) that lets us see what went wrong. Put the code in your message.