# Infuse video player

78 Hacker News commenters recommended Infuse video player and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Plays nearly any video format on Apple TV and works well with Jellyfin libraries. Remote streaming can be weak since it skips server transcoding.

## Why people recommend it

- Plays almost any codec, direct play (8 comments): "I have no trouble playing any of my alternatively sourced media, 4K Dolby Vision included, using an app called Infuse" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46839839)) "for my library, I had frequent issues with codec support on native client vs 0 times on Infuse" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528823)) "It supports direct play of pretty much every possible video thx to its built-in codecs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49622511))
- Works well with Jellyfin and Plex (7 comments): "the best way (arguably) to experience Jellyfin, Emby or possibly even Plex on any Apple product is the Infuse app" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544910)) "I also find Infuse to work better on AppleTV devices than the plex app itself for accessing plex libraries." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48209406)) "Infuse is a better Plex app than Plex is; and it supports Jellyfin and a bunch of other data sources." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544887))
- Strong on Apple TV (6 comments): "Definitely worth it if you have a large variety of media and frequently watch on the Apple TV specifically." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48988278)) "you can use apps like Infuse on the Apple TV for playing your own media files over the network" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46269632)) "Apple TV + Infuse + SMB share made something pretty bulletproof and kid friendly even before." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987404))
- Smooth playback, little buffering (4 comments): "Highly recommend Infuse on Apple TV. Since I was running Plex on my NAS it would often be very buggy and slow with buffering." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764673)) "streaming video to Infuse on three Apple TV boxes and music to a Kodi installation on a Raspberry Pi with no issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48992963)) "it plays everything I throw at it without any buffering or transcoding issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49610841))

## What people warn about

- Clunky interface and browsing (3 comments): "the Infuse UI was unusably show for me, likely due to the library size" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46847444)) "In terms of the UX, Infuse isn't very good, but it does the job okay." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49607460)) "the browsing UI is terrible and offline downloads are really buggy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48989283))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [VLC media player](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vlc-media-player.md): 172 recommend
- [mpv media player](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mpv.md): 82 recommend
- [Kodi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kodi.md): 64 recommend
- [TV Explorer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tv-explorer.md): 37 recommend
- [Stremio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stremio.md): 23 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://firecore.com/infuse)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Infuse video player", https://hackerapproved.com/p/infuse/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).