Questions about Harbor?

Harbor is for people who want Harbor. It's that simple. We don't purport to be better than anything else. We also have zero reasons as for anyone to make a "switch".. It's a passion project made out of love, and there is no expectation that you should use it. If you like Harbor, then it is for you :)! Otherwise there are a plethora of amazing apps for Movies, Manga, Ebooks we highly suggest you consider.

Different people want different things from their apps. Harbor doesn't need to replace the things you already like. It was built for our private use originally and has a long way to go to mature so we get it if it's not for you!

No. Harbor is just code on a public repository and a player you can build or download. There is no company or CEO behind it. It is literally just a passion project and nobody is paid to work on it. People give it their time because they want to. The lives and families of Harbor's contributors are more important to us than this project, please respect that we do this out of love and may delay on official/canonical app updates. The project may be slow, we don't mind. If you mind we again highly encourage you to look at the actively developed alternatives with dedicated teams.

Like Harbor but wish things moved faster? Feel free to at any time fork Harbor and take it in your own direction! Or Make a PR! You don't need to agree with a product roadmap to use it. Harbor's Contributors reserve the right to chose when to put content out.

His name is Jett, short for Jetty. He is an homage to Stremio's Stremur. We thought it would be fitting as a Stremio client to have our own :D

He was created by Abiyyu the same talented illustrator that made our new Harbor Icons set for the Ui and the images you have seen on this site!

No. Harbor is built on the open Stremio addon ecosystem, and it wouldn't exist without Stremio. DISCLAIMER: Harbor is a independent project, not made or endorsed by Stremio or any of its contributors.

Harbor has its own direction entirely separate from the confines of "Stremio Player or Video Player". Harbor was built to be modular and easy to build on, we built everything from the ground up to enable you to do the same. Want to add a Music Player? go for it want to add a whole new look for the UI? Be our guest! It isn't intended as a replacement for Stremio, Nuvio or anyone else's app. We used Stremio for many years and would never tell you otherwise. Nuvio is also amazing, and has great support on mobile and TV. Use whichever works for you; but supporting Stremio helps the ecosystem Harbor depends on and helps keep Cinemeta running which is the same resource Nuvio uses for it's keyless metadata. Both apps are also amazing in general if you haven't we suggest you try them.

There are many choices for apps to use for replacements of harbor's individual features. These projects make their own choices about features and supported devices and you should read their terms before making an account with them (if applicable); These are all great solutions

Stremio and other addon clients

Stremio's apps, Nuvio, Vidi and Omni. Each has its own approach to the addon ecosystem. Omni is another option for Apple devices.

There are also Stremio-specific clients like Stremio Enhanced with its plugins and themes, and Community v5. You can look at Stremio Native for another desktop project, or Cremio if you'd rather browse in a terminal and play through mpv.

Manga and anime

Mihon is a manga reader for Android that is popular. Suwayomi is a good one for desktop. Mangayomi has both manga reading and anime playback. We also love Comimi by Yui540

Live TV and IPTV playlists

TiviMate and IPTVnator are dedicated players for your own playlists

Ebooks

calibre for managing and reading your ebooks, or KOReader 

Your own movies and media

VLC if you just want to play media (or just use straight mpv), or Jellyfin for organizing a personal media server and watching through its clients. Or Plex, Emby etc.

Harbor has no official Reddit presence. The Harbor Discord is community run by its members. It isn't a company support desk, and the people in there are giving their own time to help others. We have no intentions to market harbor, or push it anywhere. Harbor's goal is to exist and meet the needs of those that want it. We know it is unorthodox, but we truly appreciate your understanding.

For bugs or contributions, use the GitHub repository, all opinions and feedback are welcomed including criticism it helps us improve the app for other users!

Harbor is a separate desktop application built with Rust and Tauri, with its own interface and native player when we built it we did not use stremio as a fork or any other existing app we built it from the ground up yes this is the hardest way to go but it buys the freedom of not bolting things onto a pre-existing shell. We love stremio so much, and we built Harbor as a personal way of interacting with the platform we love. Harbor uses Stremio for Watch Progression, Addons and more.

We again heavily encourage you to support stremio by Donating to them!

No. Harbor is meant for personal, private use: offline with your own media, or with sources you have the legal right to use.

Harbor hosts no media, operates no public index of media sources, and ships no content addons. It is a client for existing services you choose to connect. Use only services and sources that permit your access, and follow their terms and the laws where you live.

Metadata and catalog listings are information about a title, not a copy of the work or permission to access it. Optional connected services need internet access; offline playback uses media already available on your device. Harbor does not provide sources or help find unauthorized copies.

Harbor is free forever, the code is already all there; all our work and time is at your disposal no strings attached. Fork it, run with it slap a new logo on it and make it yours its all fair game. There is no paid tier or Harbor subscription, and we don't take donations. There is no pay-to-vote system or donation related perks all feedbacks and suggestions will be serviced with time and all users have equal say in the direction of the project. Services you choose to connect to can have their own charges though.

If you want to support something, consider supporting Stremio or Elfhosted, the open source projects you use or an artist whose work you enjoy. Or any of the charities in Charity Navigator. We believe putting your money to work helping others would be better then paying another subscription. Life is expensive and we know that very well. We are incredibly grateful to have Elfhosted host Harbor free of charge, but ultimately the majority of the use is going to go to Stremio (Cinemeta, Logins, CW), TMDB and other services that you should highly consider supporting so they can continue to stay up for not just Harbor, but every other app and service that uses it. You could also buy a loved one a gift, get a good meal, go to the movies or a concert.. do something that gives you gratitude. Repurpose your money into something that inspires you!

Yes. Harbor's code uses the MIT license. You can change it, distribute your version, or sell it for profit. Keep the MIT copyright and permission notices with copies of the code. A public shout-out is optional. We are happy you tried harbor and found something you liked or inspired you to fix for your own use! 

Check the licenses of dependencies and any artwork or code you reuse. Being open source doesn't erase other people's attribution requirements!! 

Because we want YOU to decide what happens to your work. If you put your time and money into a harbor fork you can profit from it and keep your work private. It's not our say on what you should do with your time. We don't think using Harbor should mean having to publish everything you build on top of it or out of it. Get paid for your work!

Sharing your changes back is welcome. Keeping your fork proprietary is also a choice you can make under MIT. We are not saying either license is "better" or "superior" or more freeing or whatever but we generally lean towards MIT so that you are free to build.

GPL is also open source and allows commercial use. It is a fantastic choice for Open Sourced projects, like Stremio. And generally is the right way to go if you care about keeping credit and attribution and things within the project. The real difference is in copyleft which means distributing/selling/publishing a GPL modified version generally requires making its source available to everyone under the GPL.
We chose MIT because we wanted to leave that choice with you. 

No. A Harbor profile and the features attached to it are optional. You can use the player without one you can install addons do everything else without a harbor account. 

Some services you connect may need their own account or API key. Those are separate from a Harbor profile. The privacy page explains what stays on your computer and what happens if you enable optional profile or sync features in settings

No. You don't need to setup any integration. Harbor works with Cinemeta for metadata out of the box you can add a TMDB key which adds more information like cast, related etc (just richer information on the title you are looking at). You don't need every tracker or metadata service to use the player or in general. We suggest you search up each integration to figure out what is useful to you as the list has grown.

Keys you enter for integrations stay on your device and are used with the service they belong to. Verify this information at any time by building from source or using your preferred network analysis tool.

Start with selecting one of our themes, or going on the community theme market or the theme studio if you want to just adjust the appearance without writing code. For those that want to go further, Harbor gives you full access to the entire app. Repaint the UI with the code editor, integrate your own features, do whatever you want. Don't like the sidebar? change it to a top bar or a bottom bar or make something completely new. 

If the built in tools in harbor don't cover your desired changes feel free to fork harbor and make a PR! Harbor is very open to changes that don't match someone else's idea of the perfect app. We want to find a way to make it all work. Why must something be the same for all? We welcome all changes big or small regardless of your level of experience. Personalization is a huge part of who you are as a person and we value that!

The desktop app is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. Check the release page for the current downloads and platform notes. Update to the Beta Version in Settings to be on the latest features as the main "Stable" branches may take time to roll out.

Other device work is in progress.  We have no set timeline this section will be updated upon release of further platforms.

No. Harbor is meant for personal, private offline use. We have no intention of paying for store publication, certifications, or licenses, and no intention of acquiring a mass user base.

Check the GitHub issues first. If it hasn't been reported describe what you expected and what happened, please include steps so someone else can follow along and replicate your issue. Include your Harbor version and operating system please.

The app also has a Report a Bug option in Settings. Remove private information from screenshots or logs (If Applicable), and NEVER post your API keys.

Absolutely!! A bug report, documentation, a theme, or thoughtful design feedback can and do all help. Trying fixes or new content and providing feedback is also incredibly helpful :)

All backgrounds walks of life and experience levels are welcome. The contributors page has a place to start.

Yes. we know some people gasp at that thought. But, you still need to read and understand the changes, test them yourself, and be honest about the assistance you used. Fully autonomous, unreviewed contributions aren't accepted. Claiming you did something yourself with no help when you had a LLM do it is also not okay and we will not merge your work. We know people are busy, and that LLMs are a force multiplier if used correctly. We have no problem with it (when done correctly) and are used to reviewing their code, we use them ourselves in work and in Harbor.. but they can also easily be misused which causes other contributors to have to clean up your work. LLMs can also plagiarize others, please take the due diligence before diving into building something that may affect the day to day use of other Harbor users. We are open to you using AI to accomplish your goals just as long as you put in time and effort into it. If you need help working on harbor feel free to ask!

If you want an LLM free project, this is not it.

Please read the LLM contribution expectations before submitting.

If it's license permits it then yes. Name the source give credit and meet the license's conditions. Note: An LLM rewriting copied code doesn't make it original or remove those obligations.

Confirmed plagiarism or uncredited copied/stolen work will be removed or reverted, and the contributor may be blocked from contributing again. Read the expectations for original work and reuse.

Hire, pay and support real artists whenever you can. Credit their work and respect the terms they agreed to. We know not everyone can afford to hire someone for art but we strongly encourage you do for the important pieces not only does it look better to have a person do it, but you also support real artists who made the work :)! You are free to use AI for mockups or inconsequential images that wouldn't otherwise be attributable to any specific persons art style or craft.

We hired people for our illustrations, and you should too. Learn more at artist credits.

You're welcome to suggest it. Explain the problem you're trying to solve and check whether an existing issue covers it. People work on Harbor in their own time, so a suggestion isn't a promise or a deadline we may delay in getting back to you. It may be the lowest priority item we have. Not that your opinion/idea/or feature request is low priority to us, it's that we tend to service things on our time.

You can also build a change, contribute a PR, or make changes and keep it in your own version. That is all up to you. For bigger contributions, talk through the idea with other contributors before committing a lot of time to it!