Fregata Mobile on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch
Fregata Mobile is a free, native app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, made by 3rd Bit Labs, the team behind Fregata. It shows your cameras live, lets you scrub through a day of recordings, and sends alerts with the picture, then a short clip, straight from your Mac. There is no Home Assistant, MQTT or account to set up. It is in public beta on TestFlight, and it also works with Frigate 0.17 or later.
This page covers the Fregata side. The app’s own documentation, with every screen and setting, is at mobile.fregata.app/docs.
What it does
Section titled “What it does”- Live view in a tap. The camera grid shows still pictures; only the camera you open streams.
- Recordings. A timeline you can scrub through a whole day, plus Review and Explore, including Frigate’s semantic search.
- Alerts with the picture. The snapshot arrives with the alert, then a short clip. Alerts are encrypted so Apple’s servers can never read them. Notification filters, such as Home, Away and Sleep, choose which cameras, objects and zones may alert you.
- Around the system. Live Activities, widgets and Control Center on iPhone, three columns on iPad, and alerts plus a live look on Apple Watch.
- More than one NVR. Every server sends its alerts, and servers sync to your other devices through iCloud.
- On iOS 27. Apple Intelligence can describe an alert’s picture on the device, and an alert can start a Shortcut.
Live view, recordings and snapshots go from your Mac to your devices directly. They never pass through 3rd Bit Labs.
What you need
Section titled “What you need”- An iPhone or iPad on iOS or iPadOS 26 or later. The Apple Watch app needs watchOS 26.
- Fregata (any version) on your Mac, or Frigate 0.17 or later.
- Port
8971, the one that asks for a sign-in. Viewing also works over port5000, but while sign-in is on (Fregata’s default) alerts registered there are silently dropped, and5000has no sign-in to protect it. On Fregata, sign-in itself is optional for alerts: with it off they’re filed under theadminaccount Fregata creates at first launch. - An administrator account, if you want the app to set up alerts for you.
- For alerts, a Mac that can reach the internet: Frigate hands each alert to
the app’s push relay at
push.fregata.app.
Install the app
Section titled “Install the app”Join the public beta from mobile.fregata.app on your iPhone or iPad. The Apple Watch app comes with it. Details are in the app’s Install page.
Add your Mac
Section titled “Add your Mac”In the app, add your server:
| Address | |
|---|---|
| At home | https://<mac-ip>:8971 |
| Away (optional) | https://<tailscale-ip>:8971, or a reverse proxy’s domain |
Sign in with the same username and password you use for the Fregata web UI. Fregata’s default certificate is self-signed: on a home-network address the app trusts it the first time and remembers it, and on any other address it shows the certificate’s fingerprint and asks first. The app’s Connect your server page has the details.
Turn on alerts
Section titled “Turn on alerts”Signed in as an administrator, tap Set up automatically. The app turns on Frigate’s notifications for your cameras, registers the phone, and asks before restarting Frigate once. Frigate reads its list of registered devices only when it starts, so alerts begin after that restart.
To do it by hand instead, follow the app’s Set up alerts page. Notifications and MQTT compares Fregata Mobile with Frigate’s own browser notifications and Home Assistant.
Away from home
Section titled “Away from home”Give the app an Away address that reaches your Mac from outside. It tries the home and away addresses together and uses whichever answers, switching by itself as you move between networks.
- Tailscale or another VPN is the simplest: nothing is exposed to the internet.
- Cloudflare Tunnel or another reverse proxy works too. Point it at port
8971and let WebSocket connections through. - Port forwarding works, but read the warnings in Network & remote access first.
Without an Away address, alerts still reach the phone away from home, but without their picture, and live view and recordings only work at home. More in Fregata Mobile: away from home.
Lighter streams on cellular
Section titled “Lighter streams on cellular”This part only works with Fregata. Adaptive transcoding encodes lighter versions of each camera’s video on the Mac’s Media Engine, and Fregata Mobile uses them away from home:
- Recordings step down on a slow connection, and back up, by themselves. Turn on Enable adaptive transcoding.
- Live view opens at a lighter quality away from home. Turn on Enable live-view transcoding as well.
Both are in Settings → Fregata (macOS) → Global configuration → Adaptive transcoding, or per camera under Camera configuration. Behind a reverse proxy or tunnel on your own network, read the caution in Network & remote access so remote viewers aren’t treated as being at home.
Getting help
Section titled “Getting help”Ask about the app in the Fregata Mobile category on GitHub Discussions. If it can’t connect or alerts don’t arrive, start with Phone app can’t connect, or no alerts and the app’s own troubleshooting pages.