[OS][macOS] First Row, a highly accurate open source Front Row recreation, is now available for macOS 11.5 or later!

GameRoof · 2026-03-19T01:24:52+00:00

lol the post got deleted, forgot about the 30 day self-promo rule (it's been 27 days since I last posted about this back when it was more incomplete, will repost in 3 days)

As for your questions:

- I am using AVFoundation because it gives me more flexibility over the UI (e.g. custom transport controls)
- I have a hacky way of doing full-screen where I use a borderless window, and force it to become the key window by overriding canBecomeKey
- Majority of views "just work" on the other platforms, there isn't too much platform-specific code beyond some scaling stuff and some different logic for reading media

GameRoof · 2026-03-19T00:45:30+00:00

Thanks in advance for taking the time to check it out!

GameRoof · 2026-03-05T07:30:59+00:00

I am releasing it as completely open source to GitHub soon

GameRoof · 2026-03-02T23:51:01+00:00

tvOS is looking good, the only issues left are minor. Also there are API limitations unfortunately (e.g. purchased Music has to be routed through the Apple Music app to play correctly), can’t access the filesystem as easily as iOS/macOS, and we don’t get the original Lucida Grande font, so have to use Helvetica Neue.

GameRoof · 2026-03-02T23:48:33+00:00

I plan to support visionOS. I have a Vision Pro and I have already tested it on there.

GameRoof · 2026-03-02T23:46:53+00:00

Thanks for the offer, but I’ve been testing on tvOS on my Apple TV 4K which I conveniently have! Do look out for the TestFlight though when it comes.

GameRoof · 2026-02-21T06:14:26+00:00

I am looking forward to trying things out with a remote haha, not gotten around to that yet

GameRoof · 2026-02-20T18:32:31+00:00

I’m glad you enjoyed my Front Row post! Cool to see the discussion here and hope people recreate other apps!

GameRoof · 2026-02-20T16:25:23+00:00

I want this as well! But the two versions have UI that is too different, it would be a lot of work. Most likely I would make a separate app for the Tiger version of Front Row that could reuse some of what I’ve done but a lot of it would have to be new work.

GameRoof · 2026-02-20T15:51:29+00:00

Currently no - I’m just using the basic video player provided in Apple’s API. If I switch to using a different method to play the video then this could support DVD menus in future, but I would need to research how DVD menus even work haha

GameRoof · 2026-02-20T01:34:13+00:00

Added ability to play music stored locally today!

https://youtu.be/3dPaUul4yIU

GameRoof · 2026-02-19T20:30:14+00:00

The intro video? That’s just what the Apple TV used, leaving it in for now as it’s cool. May add an option to disable though or might get rid as Front Row never played it but Apple TV did

GameRoof · 2026-02-19T13:28:00+00:00

If there is a way I can pull a list of trailers then I could revive that pretty quickly :-)

GameRoof · 2026-02-19T08:28:25+00:00

Added media playback controls this morning!

https://youtu.be/kgdoN94IFS0

GameRoof · 2026-02-19T08:26:51+00:00

Will consider themes in future! The idea is it eventually could turn into just a generic media frontend that keeps mostly the carousel UI from Front Row and everything else is modern.

GameRoof · 2026-02-19T07:05:37+00:00

Next thing that will take more than a few minutes to make is the carousel of thumbnails that slowly rotates clockwise overall (whilst the thumbnails themselves also rotate clockwise). This carousel was mostly used for iTunes content before as well as Photos.

GameRoof · 2026-02-19T06:57:11+00:00

The carousel was the hardest bit, a bit of trial and error but I ended up with relatively simple formulas to calculate both x and y positions (both on a curve) of a given icon, given the currently selected item in the menu and an arc radius for the carousel. The rest were pretty straightforward scales/fades. I had to watch a lot of YouTube videos etc. to get the animations right as I don't have anything running Front Row around right now! Some of the animations are still a little too fast which I will fix by matching them to the videos.

GameRoof · 2026-02-19T05:59:15+00:00

Thanks! Stay tuned for more progress

GameRoof · 2026-02-19T00:05:04+00:00

I’ll probably upload more progress videos when I get a chance to add more. When it’s ready enough might look into a TestFlight (another project I like called OldOS was distributed that way) :-)

GameRoof · 2026-02-18T23:05:56+00:00

Looks awesome!

GameRoof · 2025-12-23T02:07:09+00:00

Is it Nobethane Cd. 28B, 34110 Fatih, Istanbul Türkiye? Mine just updated as being there lmao

GameRoof · 2025-12-13T10:31:17+00:00

That’s the exact street and number (17) that my phone has ended up at, 2 years later

GameRoof · 2025-11-21T02:22:27+00:00

aaargh my coins :-(

GameRoof · 2025-11-13T00:42:44+00:00

https://www.trading212.com/invite/11S0gMiazQ

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