Installation

System requirements

• macOS 13 (Ventura) or later. Older versions don’t expose the CoreML / Apple Neural Engine surface Fregata’s detector targets.
• Apple Silicon (M1 or newer). Intel Macs aren’t supported — Fregata’s detection path runs on the ANE, which Intel chips don’t have.
• About 2 GB free disk space for the app itself and the bundled detection model. Camera recordings live wherever you point Fregata (default ~/Fregata/media/); size depends on your retention policy — see Recordings & retention.
• A wired or strong-wireless network path to your cameras. RTSP over Wi-Fi works but is sensitive to packet loss; Ethernet to the cameras is the boring, reliable choice.

Download

The latest version is at:

https://releases.fregata.app/Fregata-latest.dmg

This URL always serves the most recent release. Specific versions are kept at https://releases.fregata.app/Fregata-X.Y.Z.dmg if you need to pin or re-download a known build.

Install

1. Open the downloaded .dmg.
2. Drag Fregata.app to the Applications folder.
3. Eject the disk image.
4. Launch Fregata from Applications (or Spotlight, or Launchpad).

The first launch will show a Gatekeeper prompt — Fregata is signed and notarized by 3rd Bit Labs, so the standard “Open” confirmation is the only gate. The app is not distributed through the Mac App Store; the App Store sandbox forbids spawning the helper processes (ffmpeg, nginx, go2rtc) Fregata relies on.

What happens on first launch

You’ll see a small menu-bar icon (the Fregata mark in the top-right of the macOS menu bar) and a welcome wizard that walks you through:

1. Granting local-network access — required so Fregata can reach your cameras over RTSP.
2. Choosing where data lives — the config file and recordings. Defaults are ~/Fregata/config/ and ~/Fregata/media/. You can change these later from the tray’s Settings → Folders menu.
3. Choosing recording-buffer memory — Smart memory (tmpfs, recommended) or a Basic RAM disk for the few seconds of footage Fregata buffers before writing it to your media folder. See Performance — RAM-disk cache for the tradeoffs.
4. Activation — entering a license key or starting a 30-day trial. See Activation for the walkthrough.
5. Creating your dashboard sign-in — sets the password you’ll use to open the web dashboard. See Your dashboard sign-in below for the details — this is the one thing worth writing down before you click Done.
6. Finding Fregata later — where the menu-bar icon lives, how to surface it if a full menu bar hides it, and an optional checkbox to also show a Dock icon. See Finding the menu-bar icon for the full walkthrough.

Fregata does not run as a system daemon; it runs as a regular macOS app that lives in your menu bar (optionally also in the Dock — see Finding the menu-bar icon). Quitting it via the tray menu stops recording and detection cleanly. If you want the app to launch on login, toggle Settings → Launch at Login in the tray menu.

Your dashboard sign-in

Fregata’s web dashboard — where you add cameras, watch live tiles, and review events — sits behind a login. The first-run wizard’s account step creates it for you:

• The username is admin.
• Fregata fills in a strong, random password. Use the eye icon to reveal it, the copy button to put it on your clipboard, or the regenerate button for a different one. You’re free to type your own instead — it just has to be at least 12 characters long.

Copy the password somewhere safe — a password manager is ideal — before you click Done. You’ll need it the first time you open the dashboard: choose Open Frigate Web UI (⌘O) from the tray and sign in with admin and that password.

Your browser will warn “Not Private” — that’s expected

Fregata serves the dashboard over HTTPS with a self-signed certificate for localhost, so the first time you open it your browser shows a security warning. It’s safe to proceed: in Chrome click Advanced → Proceed to localhost, in Safari Show Details → visit this website. The warning is just how browsers treat self-signed certificates — it isn’t a sign that anything is wrong.

It’s logged once, at first start

When it first creates the account, Fregata also writes the credentials to the log — a safety net if you didn’t copy them. This happens only on that first start, never on later restarts, and the log is trimmed over time so the line eventually scrolls out. Copy the password during setup rather than counting on finding it later; see Finding or resetting the password.

Finding or resetting the password

Find it (only right after first start). The password is logged once, when the account is created — so shortly after setup it’s still there: in the tray choose Settings → Open Frigate Logs and search for Password: for the banner line *** Password: <your password> (also at ~/Fregata/logs/frigate/current). It is not re-logged on later restarts, and the log is trimmed once it crosses ~5 MiB (the oldest ~2 MiB get chopped, ~3 MiB of tail is kept), so on anything but a just-set-up install that line has usually scrolled out — reset it instead (below).

Change it. Once you’re signed in, use the dashboard’s Settings → Users page.

Reset a forgotten one. If you’re locked out completely, have Fregata mint a fresh password. Open ~/Fregata/config/config.yml and add:

auth:
  reset_admin_password: true

Restart Fregata (Restart Frigate in the tray). A new random password is generated and freshly written to the log — read it right after the restart with Settings → Open Frigate Logs. Then remove those two lines (or set the value back to false); otherwise Fregata mints and logs a new password on every start.

Upgrading from an earlier version?

The sign-in step only appears on a brand-new install. If you upgraded and already had an admin account, your password is unchanged — but it was logged only on that account’s original first start, so it’s long since been trimmed out of the log. If you don’t still have it, follow “Reset a forgotten one” above.