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Getting started

What Strand needs from you, and what the first few minutes of setup ask.

Strand is a player. It doesn't come with films, shows or channels; it plays the ones you already have. Before it can play anything, it needs at least one of these:

• A media server: Plex, Emby or Jellyfin, at home or somewhere else. See Media servers.
• A WebDAV share: a folder of video files on a NAS or online storage. See WebDAV shares.
• A TV provider: an M3U playlist or Xtream Codes login. See Adding a TV provider.

Without any of them, Strand still works for browsing, keeping a watchlist and tracking what you watch elsewhere.

Setup, step by step

The first time you open Strand, setup walks you through the same five steps on every device. Every step has Back and Skip Setup, and on Apple TV the remote's Back button skips it too.

1. Welcome to Strand. Tap Get Started. If you've used Strand before with iCloud, there's also Restore from iCloud, which brings back your whole setup at once.
2. Where should we get content? Choose Connect a Media Server, Add a Live TV Provider or Connect a WebDAV Share. Setting Strand up on a second device? Restore from Another Device copies everything over with a short code.
3. Fill out your home screen. Tick the kinds of rows you'd like. Trending & Popular is ticked already; packs of rows for streaming services, genres, decades, directors and awards are one tap each. You can change all of this later.
4. Keep track of what you watch. Choose On This Device (the default, no account needed), Trakt, Simkl or PublicMetaDB. More in Tracking your history.
5. You're all set. Tap Start Watching.

You can run setup again whenever you like from Settings› then Set Up Strand. It adds to what you have; it doesn't wipe anything.

Finding Settings

Every version of Settings can be searched: the first row on Apple TV, and the search field at the top on iPhone, iPad and the Mac. Type a word like "subtitle" or "frame rate" and pick the result to open the page it's on.