# Fregata Mobile > Fregata Mobile is the free, native app for Frigate, the open-source NVR, on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. It also works with Fregata, Frigate built natively for Apple silicon Macs. It shows your cameras live, lets you scrub through a day of recordings, and sends notifications with the picture, then a short clip, straight from your own NVR: no Home Assistant, no MQTT, no subscription and no account. Notification filters choose which cameras, objects and zones may alert you, and Live Activities, widgets and Control Center put what’s happening on the Lock Screen. **Your cameras. Your iPhone. No cloud.** Fregata Mobile is a free, native app for both Frigate and Fregata NVRs: live view in a tap, a timeline you can scrub like a photo roll, and encrypted notifications that Apple’s servers can never read. - Download on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fregata-mobile-for-frigate-nvr/id6807582466 - Documentation: https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/ - Free, no subscription. No account. No tracking. ## At a glance - **Free. Actually free.** No subscription, no ads, nothing locked away. We run the notification relay at our own cost. - **Straight to your NVR**: The app talks to your server directly, at home or away. Your video never passes through us. - **Alerts Apple can’t read**: Real push notifications with no Home Assistant or extra server to run, encrypted so Apple’s servers can never read them. - **Native, not a web view**: Written in Swift for iOS 26: Live Activities, widgets, Control Center, Siri and Shortcuts, and hardware video decoding. ## Notifications **Know what happened before you unlock.** Alerts come from your own NVR with the picture attached, then quietly upgrade to a clip. No Home Assistant, no MQTT, no second buzz. - **The picture, then the clip**: Every alert lands with its snapshot. A little later, Upgrade to video, on by default, swaps in a playable clip of what happened. - **Described on your iPhone** (iOS 27): Turn on Describe alert pictures and Apple Intelligence writes a one-line caption on the device: nothing is sent anywhere, and there’s no AI server to run. Frigate’s GenAI summary takes over when your server writes one. - **Your words, your sound**: Build the text from the camera, objects, zones and recognised names, like “Alice · Front Porch”. Pick your own alert tone. - **Loud only when it matters**: Time Sensitive alerts break through Focus. Set each camera or object to Silent, Normal or Time Sensitive, or let a Focus filter choose which may wake you. - **One event, one buzz**: Each review alerts once. Updates arrive silently, so a busy driveway doesn’t turn your phone into a pager. - **Set up for you**: One tap turns on Frigate’s notifications, restarts it with your OK and sends a test to prove it. Prefer to do it yourself? It shows the exact YAML. Encrypted before being sent to Apple, so Apple’s servers can never read what’s in an alert. ## Lock Screen **Watch it unfold without unlocking.** For the cameras you choose, an alert that’s still going on stays on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island as a Live Activity, with its picture and a running clock. Widgets and Control Center keep the rest a glance away. - **Live while it happens**: The camera, what it saw and how long it’s been going, on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. Watch Live opens the camera, Snooze 1 Hour quiets it, and once it ends, View Clip opens the recording. - **Six widgets**: Latest Alert, Cameras, Camera, Alerts to Review, Notifications and Activity, on the Home Screen, and four of them on the Lock Screen too. - **Control Center and the Action button**: Switch the notification filter, or snooze every alert or the cameras you choose, without opening the app. - **On your wrist too**: The same Live Activity shows in the Apple Watch’s Smart Stack. ## Notification filters **Only the alerts you want.** Filters like Home, Away and Sleep decide which cameras, objects and zones may alert you, and how loudly. An alert a filter holds back never reaches your iPhone: no buzz, no banner, nothing to clear. - **Home, Away, Sleep**: Start from a suggestion or name your own, each with its own icon. One is on at a time on each device, and your filters sync through iCloud. - **Down to the object and zone**: For each camera: which objects may alert, which zones count, and how loud it is. Cars off on the driveway still lets a person through. - **Quiet hours**: Overnight, alerts arrive silently in Notification Center. A camera or object you’ve set louder still sounds. - **Snooze anything**: One camera, a server or every alert, for up to 24 hours: from the alert itself, the camera, a widget or Control Center. It ends by itself. - **See what was held back**: Held back lists the last day’s alerts your filters kept from you, and the setting that stopped each one. - **Switches itself**: Shortcuts can change the filter for you: “When I leave home, set Fregata to Away”. ## Recordings **Scrub a whole day like a photo roll.** Drag through hours of footage and every frame follows your finger. The strip shows where the action is, snaps to it with a haptic tick, and spans five minutes to a full day with a tap. - **Frames under your finger**: Preview frames load as you drag. On cellular it fetches only what’s around the playhead, and nothing ahead in Low Data Mode. - **Magnetic events**: Alerts and detections pull the playhead in, with a haptic tick when it lands. - **The story so far**: When Frigate’s GenAI has summarised a review, the summary rides along as you watch. - **Event to event**: Skip to the previous or next review; the list beside the video follows playback. - **Clip it, send it**: Trim a range and save it to Photos or Files, or send it in Messages. Your NVR does the cutting. ## Live view **Live in a tap. Gentle on your battery.** Your camera grid refreshes still pictures; only the camera you open streams. Leave it, and the connection closes rather than hides. - **Low-latency live**: Streams over MSE through go2rtc and decodes in hardware on your iPhone. - **Stills in the grid**: The camera grid refreshes pictures, not streams. Only the camera you open goes live. - **Closed, not hidden**: Leave a camera and its connection closes. Nothing streams in the background. - **The right quality**: On Fregata NVR, live view opens at a lighter quality away from home, any other step is a tap away, and it says what you’re watching: 720p · 1.5 Mbps. - **Sound and talk**: Camera audio plays, including AAC, Opus and G.711 cameras, and you can talk back through cameras Frigate has two-way talk set up for. - **PTZ and switches**: Pan, tilt, zoom and presets on PTZ cameras, and the camera’s own switches, each saying exactly what turning it off stops. ## And the rest **Everything you’d expect. A few things you wouldn’t.** Everything from Frigate’s web interface you reach for on a phone, plus the things only a native app can do. - **Search the way you think**: Type “black car” and Frigate’s semantic search finds it. Find Similar pulls up every look-alike, and recognised faces and plates show by name. - **Review, sorted**: Alerts and detections, filtered by any mix of cameras and objects. Opening one marks it reviewed on your NVR. - **AI descriptions on your iPhone**: On iOS 27, Apple Intelligence describes an alert’s picture, and the events you open in Explore, on the device. Nothing is sent anywhere, and there’s no AI server to run or pay for. Rewrite the Description prompt and the caption length, then test it on your latest alert. - **Automations**: On iOS 27, an alert can start a shortcut: choose Fregata Mobile in the Notification trigger, and a camera, object or zone. Shortcuts also switch filters, snooze and fetch snapshots, and Siri opens a camera. - **Home and away, automatically**: Give it both addresses. On every network change it tries them together and keeps whichever answers. - **Behind any front door**: Cloudflare Access, Tailscale, reverse proxies: add the headers or client certificate your proxy asks for, and self-signed certificates are pinned. - **More than one NVR**: Every server sends its alerts; switch between them with a tap. - **Set up once, everywhere**: Servers sync through iCloud, passwords through iCloud Keychain, which is end-to-end encrypted. Or keep it to one device. - **Diagnostics in plain words**: When alerts don’t arrive, it works out which usual cause it is and how to fix it. ## iPad **On iPad, everything sits side by side.** Review opens in three columns: the list, the timeline and the details. Cameras, Explore and Settings keep what you tapped beside what you were looking at. ## Apple Watch **Who’s at the door? Glance and know.** On Apple Watch, Fregata Mobile does three things well: it tells you what happened, shows you what’s happening now, and hands everything else to your iPhone. - **Look now**: Pick a camera and its picture keeps refreshing while your wrist is up. Turn the Crown to zoom; swipe to the next camera. - **Honest pictures**: Every frame says how old it is, “Live” or “8 s ago”, so a stale picture never passes for a live one. - **Alerts on your wrist**: Who and where in words first, then the picture. Double Tap opens that camera live. - **Complications**: Your unreviewed count and last alert, on the watch face and in the Smart Stack. - **Nothing to set up**: Servers come from your iPhone. There’s no sign-in on the watch. ## Privacy **Your footage stays yours.** No Fregata account, no analytics, no trackers, no ads. Private by design. Live view, recordings and snapshots go from your NVR to your devices, and nowhere else. **Encrypted notifications that Apple’s servers can never read.** - **No account**: The only sign-in is to your own NVR. - **No tracking**: No analytics, no crash reporters, no ad identifiers. - **Direct video**: Live view, recordings and snapshots come straight from your server. - **Secrets in the Keychain**: Passwords, headers and client certificates stay in the iOS Keychain, never on our servers. The privacy policy: https://mobile.fregata.app/privacy/ ## Compare **Fregata Mobile vs. the usual ways.** How people watch Frigate on an iPhone today. We’ve tried to be fair, and corrections are welcome on GitHub: https://github.com/3rdBitLabs/Fregata/discussions/categories/fregata-mobile | | Fregata Mobile | Frigate in Safari | Home Assistant | Other Frigate apps | Cloud cameras | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Price | Free | Free | Free | Free tiers, paid upgrades, camera limits | $6–$25 a month | | Native iPhone & iPad app | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Adaptive transcoding for weak cellular connections (Requires Fregata NVR) | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | | Alerts with no Home Assistant or extra server | Yes | Yes | No | Varies | Yes | | A picture in the alert | Yes | Text only on iOS | Yes | Yes | Often paid | | Encrypted notifications (Apple’s servers can never read them) | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | | Scrub recordings with previews | Yes | Yes | With a community card | Often paid | Subscription | | Search your footage | Yes | Yes | No | Some | Subscription | | Choose alerts by object, zone and time of day | Yes | Per camera only | With automations | Varies | Often paid | | Lock Screen widgets & Live Activities | Yes | No | With automations | Rarely | Widgets, some | | AI descriptions on your iPhone, free (iOS 27 with Apple Intelligence) | Yes | Needs your own AI server | Needs an AI model | Rarely | Paid, in the cloud | | Siri & Shortcuts | Yes | No | Not camera-specific | Rarely | Varies | | Apple Watch | Yes | No | Not camera-specific | Some, often paid | Rarely | | Your video stays private. No cloud. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Mostly | No | Summarised from public documentation and App Store listings, September and October 2026. “Other Frigate apps” are the third-party Frigate viewers on the App Store, which differ from one another. Cloud prices are Ring Protect, Nest Aware and Arlo plans. ## Get started **Up and running in three steps.** 1. **Install.** Download it free from the App Store on your iPhone or iPad. The Apple Watch app comes with it. 2. **Add your server.** Type its address and sign in. Set up on another device already? It’s waiting in iCloud. 3. **Turn on alerts.** Tap Set up automatically: the app configures Frigate, restarts it with your OK and sends a test. Needs iOS or iPadOS 26, watchOS 26 for the Apple Watch app, and Frigate 0.17 or later or any version of Fregata. Picture descriptions and starting a shortcut from an alert need iOS 27. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is it really free? Yes. No subscription, no ads, nothing locked away. We run the notification relay ourselves and pay for it, because an app that makes Frigate great on an iPhone is the best promotion [Fregata NVR](https://fregata.app) could ask for. ### Do I need Home Assistant or MQTT? No. Alerts use Frigate’s own web push, delivered through our relay and encrypted so Apple’s servers can never read them. If you already run Home Assistant, it keeps working alongside. See [How alerts work](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/alerts/how-alerts-work/). ### What do I need? An iPhone or iPad on iOS or iPadOS 26, an Apple Watch on watchOS 26 for the watch app, and Frigate 0.17 or later, including 0.18, or any version of Fregata NVR. Picture descriptions need iOS 27 and an iPhone or iPad with Apple Intelligence, and starting a shortcut from an alert needs iOS 27. See [Compatibility](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/reference/compatibility/). ### What’s the difference between Frigate and Fregata? [Frigate](https://frigate.video) is the open-source NVR. [Fregata](https://fregata.app) is our native macOS build of it for Apple silicon. Fregata Mobile works with both, with a few extras on Fregata. See [Extras on Fregata NVR](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/reference/compatibility/#extras-on-fregata-nvr). ### How is this different from Frigate’s web app? Frigate’s web app is excellent, but on iOS its notifications are [text only](https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/notifications), and a web app can’t reach Siri, Shortcuts or your Apple Watch. Fregata Mobile adds pictures and clips to alerts, a native timeline, iPad layouts and a watch app. ### Does my video pass through your servers? Never. Live view, recordings, snapshots and the pictures in your alerts all come straight from your NVR. Only the notification itself passes through us, on its way to Apple. See [Privacy and your data](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/reference/privacy/). ### Can I watch when I’m away from home? Yes, whenever your phone can reach your NVR: Tailscale or another VPN, Cloudflare Tunnel with Access, a reverse proxy or a forwarded port. The app switches between your home and away addresses by itself. See [Away from home](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/getting-started/remote-access/). ### How do I get help? Ask on [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/3rdBitLabs/Fregata/discussions/categories/fregata-mobile), where the people who build the app answer, or email us from Settings › Help & Support. It also shows how to copy a diagnostics report to paste in, with your server’s addresses and username masked and your password never in it. See [Getting help](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/troubleshooting/get-help/). ### Can I choose which alerts reach me? Yes, down to the object and the zone. Build named filters like Home, Away and Sleep: turn a camera off, mute particular objects or zones on it, add quiet hours, and set how loud each camera or object is, from Silent to Time Sensitive. An alert a filter holds back never reaches your iPhone, and Held back lists what was kept from you and why. One filter is on at a time, and Shortcuts can switch it, so “don’t alert me for people in the garage when I’m at home” is a Home filter plus an automation that turns it on when you arrive. You can also snooze one camera, one server or every alert for up to 24 hours, from the alert itself, the camera, a widget, Control Center or Shortcuts. See [Notification filters](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/alerts/filters/) and [Snooze and mute](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/alerts/snooze/). ### Are there Frigate widgets and Live Activities for iPhone? Yes. Fregata Mobile has six widgets: Latest Alert, Cameras, Camera, Alerts to Review, Notifications and Activity, four of which also fit the Lock Screen. For the cameras you choose in Settings › Live Activities, an alert that’s still going on shows as a Live Activity on the Lock Screen, in the Dynamic Island and in the Apple Watch’s Smart Stack, with its picture, a running clock, Watch Live and Snooze 1 Hour. Control Center controls switch the notification filter and snooze alerts. See [Widgets and Control Center](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/beyond-the-app/widgets/) and [Live Activities](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/alerts/live-activities/). ### Can a Frigate alert run a shortcut, like turning on a light? Yes, on iOS 27. In the Shortcuts app, add an automation with the Notification trigger, choose Fregata Mobile, and add a camera, object or zone name, such as “Front Door” or “Person”, so it runs only for those alerts. The shortcut can do anything Shortcuts can, like turning on a porch light in the Home app. See [When an alert arrives](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/beyond-the-app/siri-and-shortcuts/#when-an-alert-arrives). ### Can it describe alerts with AI without a GenAI server? Yes, on iOS 27 with Apple Intelligence. Turn on Describe alert pictures, and your iPhone writes a one-line description of each alert’s picture itself. Nothing is sent anywhere, and there’s no Ollama, OpenAI or Gemini to set up. You can rewrite the Description prompt, set the caption’s length and test it on your latest alert. Like any AI, it can be wrong. When Frigate’s own GenAI describes the review, that description takes over. See [AI descriptions](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/alerts/ai-descriptions/). ### Is Fregata Mobile in Spanish, French or German? Yes. The app, its notifications, widgets and Live Activity, and the Apple Watch app are in English, Spanish, French and German, following your device’s language. Frigate’s object names appear as Frigate’s own web UI translates them. ### Does it work behind a reverse proxy that requires a client certificate (mTLS)? Yes. Import the .p12 or .pfx file under Advanced in the server’s Connection settings, and the app presents it whenever that server asks: for live view, recordings, the pictures in alerts and on Apple Watch. Each server can have its own. A certificate installed in iOS Settings with a profile isn’t used, because iOS keeps those for Safari and Apple’s own apps. See [Client certificate](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/getting-started/connect/#client-certificate). ### Will it work on a slow cellular connection? Yes. Scrubbing loads only the preview frames around your finger, and none ahead in Low Data Mode. On Fregata NVR, recordings step their quality down by themselves, and live view opens at a lighter quality away from home and shows what you’re watching, like 720p · 1.5 Mbps. See [Extras on Fregata NVR](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/reference/compatibility/#extras-on-fregata-nvr). ### Can I use more than one NVR? Yes. Each server sends its own alerts, you switch between them with a tap, and they sync to your other devices through iCloud. See [More than one server](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/cameras/several-servers/). ### Does it work with Frigate+ and Frigate’s AI features? Yes. Search your footage in plain words when Frigate’s semantic search is on, send false positives to Frigate+ from Explore, and read Frigate’s GenAI summaries with each review. See [Explore and search](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/cameras/explore/). ### Is this an official Frigate app? No. Fregata Mobile is made by 3rd Bit Labs LLC. It works with Frigate, and isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by Frigate, Inc. ### Can I check on or restart my Frigate server from my iPhone? Yes. Settings › Server Status, named after your server if you’ve named it, shows what Frigate’s System page does: detection and AI enrichment speed over the last 20 minutes, every camera’s frame rate, CPU, GPU, memory and storage, and any problems Frigate would warn about. It has live logs, and an admin can restart Frigate. The app asks first, then follows the restart until every camera is streaming again. See [Server status, logs and restart](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/server/status/). ### Can I control a PTZ camera from my iPhone? Yes, when Frigate has ONVIF set up for it. Live view shows the PTZ controls Frigate’s web interface does: hold an arrow to pan and tilt, zoom and focus, go to a saved preset, or turn on tap to move and tap the picture to point the camera there. On Frigate 0.18, dragging a box zooms in on it. Any account can use them, and an administrator can turn autotracking on and off. See [Move a PTZ camera](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/cameras/live/#move-a-ptz-camera). ### Can I talk through my camera or doorbell from my iPhone? Yes, on cameras Frigate has two-way talk set up for: live view shows Talk wherever Frigate’s web interface shows its microphone button. It’s a conversation, with echo cancellation, so you hear the camera while you talk. Your voice goes to go2rtc’s WebRTC port, 8555, so it works at home, over a VPN or with that port forwarded; through a tunnel alone, such as Cloudflare Tunnel, you can watch but not talk, as in Frigate’s web interface. See [Talk through a camera](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/cameras/live/#talk-through-a-camera). ### Does it work on Apple Watch? Yes. Pick any camera to see it on your wrist, alerts come with a Live button, and complications show what’s waiting to be reviewed. Your servers come from your iPhone, so there’s nothing to sign in to on the watch. See [Apple Watch](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/beyond-the-app/apple-watch/). ### Does it work on a Mac? Yes, on a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 26: the iPad app runs there, from the [Mac App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fregata-mobile-for-frigate-nvr/id6807582466), with live view, recordings, Review and Explore. Alerts don’t come to a Mac, though. The notification relay sends them only to a device that can prove it’s running the real app, and Apple offers that proof on iPhone and iPad but not on a Mac, so your alerts go to your iPhone or iPad. See [Compatibility](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/reference/compatibility/). ### Can I try new features before they reach the App Store? Yes. Every new build of Fregata Mobile goes to a public beta on TestFlight, Apple’s app for testing apps, before it reaches the App Store. To join, open [the beta’s invitation](https://testflight.apple.com/join/VP8qbJNw) on your iPhone or iPad. The beta takes the App Store version’s place, and you can go back to the App Store version whenever you like. See [Join the TestFlight beta](https://mobile.fregata.app/docs/getting-started/beta/). ## Ready when you are **Put your NVR in your pocket.** Free for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, on the App Store now. Download on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fregata-mobile-for-frigate-nvr/id6807582466 ## Running Frigate on a Mac? Fregata NVR is a native high-performance macOS port of Frigate built to unlock the raw power of Apple silicon. Object detection on the Neural Engine, AI Enrichments on the GPU, video decoding & encoding on the Media Engine and adaptive bitrate streaming that keeps Fregata Mobile smooth on weak cellular connections. https://fregata.app