Fregata NVR is a private, local-first network video recorder for macOS, built on the fantastic open source Frigate NVR. Object detection on the Apple Neural Engine. Hardware accelerated decode and encode through VideoToolbox. One app - drag to Applications, done.
Video, object detection, recordings - none of it leaves your Mac. No Fregata account exists to hand your data to.
Detection runs on the Neural Engine via CoreML. Video Decode and encode run on the dedicated Media Engine via VideoToolbox.
$10 one-time. A full year of updates that never stop working even if your license expires. No subscription, no price per camera, no features hidden behind paywalls.
Fregata Mobile puts live view, recordings and alerts with pictures on your iPhone and iPad, with alerts on your Apple Watch too. Free, and no Home Assistant needed.
Object detection runs on the Apple Neural Engine via a custom CoreML detector written in Rust - not your CPU, not your GPU. Lower latency, lower power, cooler fans.
Bundled model: YOLOv9-tiny, 320×320. Drop in your own ONNX model anytime - including full support for Frigate+ models.
Hardware accelerated H.264 and HEVC decode and encode on the dedicated media engine - not your CPU, not your GPU. Bandwidth-adaptive transcoding for weak LTE, 5G, or VPN connections, all on the Media Engine at zero CPU cost.
Auto-detected at first launch - no codec configuration, no accelerator planning, no external GPU.
Fregata can use Apple’s on-device model as Frigate’s GenAI provider. It describes what your cameras saw, summarizes review items and answers questions on the Chat page, without sending anything off your Mac.
Tracked objects get a plain-language description in Explore, written from their pictures, for the cameras and objects you choose.
Alerts in Review get a short summary of what happened, so a busy day is quick to skim.
The model can search your tracked objects and check your cameras to answer a question.
Always Apple’s on-device model, never Private Cloud Compute. No API key, no server, no bill.
Fregata Mobile is our free, native app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. It talks straight to your Mac: live view in a tap, a timeline you can scrub, and alerts with the picture attached. No Home Assistant, no MQTT, no subscription.
The snapshot arrives with the alert, then a short clip. Encrypted so Apple’s servers can never read them.
Turn on adaptive transcoding and recordings step down by themselves on a slow connection. Add live-view transcoding and live view opens at a lighter quality away from home.
Give it your Mac’s home and away addresses (Tailscale works well). It uses whichever one answers.
Review in three columns on iPad. Alerts and a live look on your wrist.
A 4K recording won’t play on one bar of LTE. Fregata turns each camera’s video into a ladder of lighter streams, encoded on the Media Engine instead of the CPU, so you can still see what happened from the road.
The player takes the best quality your connection can keep up with, and steps down and back up as it changes.
Every quality is in the live stream menu, labelled with its size and bitrate.
On your own network, recordings play the original stream. The ladder is for viewing from away.
Not part of upstream Frigate. The free iPhone app uses the same ladder on cellular.
The Frigate engine you know, packaged as a Mac app and running on the hardware Apple Silicon already has.
Synchronized scrubbing across cameras. WebRTC and MSE for sub-second latency in the browser.
Only alert on motion that matters. Pixel-precise polygons, per-object thresholds, ignore-zones.
Retention rules per camera and per object. Continuous, motion-only, or event-only - your choice.
People, vehicles, animals, packages, and more - all on-device, on the Neural Engine, at full camera resolution by default.
Full support via the official Frigate HACS integration. MQTT-native. Works out of the box.
Sub-second latency live view in any browser. No Flash, no plugin, no transcoding hop.
Fregata-exclusive. VideoToolbox transcoding for recordings and live view, with zero CPU. Lighter streams for weak LTE, 5G, or VPN.
Start, stop, status. Fregata settings. Lives in your menu bar by default, with an optional Dock icon if you’d rather.
No Fregata account, no cloud. Pull the network cable - it keeps recording.
Built on the open-source Frigate project. Inspect the engine, contribute upstream.
Frigate 0.18’s Settings pages and Add Camera wizard cover almost everything, so YAML is optional. Fregata adds its own section for the Apple Silicon detector and adaptive transcoding.
Driveway · 2:14:08 PM car · 0.87 Front Porch 2:14:08 PM person · 0.94If you’re on a Mac, this is what the landscape looks like. We’ve tried to be fair - corrections welcome on GitHub.
| Fregata NVR | Frigate Docker | Scrypted | Blue Iris | Synology | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native macOS app | ✓ Signed .app | ✗ Docker only | ✓ Desktop app / Homebrew | ✗ Windows only | ✗ Runs on NAS |
| Apple Neural Engine (CoreML) | ✓ Built-in | ✗ Blocked by Docker VM | — Via CoreML plugin | ✗ | ✗ |
| VideoToolbox decode/encode | ✓ Auto-detected | ✗ Blocked by Docker VM | — Via ffmpeg | ✗ | ✗ |
| Adaptive transcoding (recordings + live) | ✓ VideoToolbox hardware transcoding, zero CPU; lowers quality to fit bandwidth | ✗ None | — CPU transcoding via paid NVR plugin; manual quality | — CPU transcoding; manual quality | — NAS CPU/GPU transcoding; manual quality |
| Works with Fregata Mobile (free iPhone, iPad and Watch app) | ✓ Plus lighter streams on cellular | ✓ Frigate 0.17 or later | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| No detection sub-streams required | ✓ Full-res detection | ✗ Sub-stream needed | ✗ Sub-stream needed | ✗ Sub-stream needed | ✗ Sub-stream needed |
| Custom Trained AI Models | ✓ (Frigate+) | ✓ (Frigate+) | — Via ONNX plugin | ✗ | ✗ |
| RTSP camera support | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Local-only / no cloud required | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open-source core | ✓ Frigate upstream (MIT) | ✓ MIT | — Core only; NVR plugin paid & proprietary | ✗ Proprietary | ✗ Proprietary |
| Home Assistant integration | ✓ Frigate HACS | ✓ Frigate HACS | ✓ Plugin | ✓ via MQTT | ✗ Community via Scrypted |
| HomeKit Live View | ✓ Via go2rtc HAP | ✓ Via go2rtc HAP | ✓ +HKSV | ✗ | ✗ |
| Pricing | $10 one-time | Free | $10 per cam per year NVR subscription | $39.95–99.95 + $44.95/yr for updates | 2 cameras free, then ~$50–60 / camera |
| Best for | Mac users who want Frigate with extreme performance and without Docker | Linux users with Coral or NVIDIA hardware | HomeKit-first households unifying many brands | Windows users with large deployments | Existing Synology NAS owners |
If you’re already happy on Frigate, Scrypted, Blue Iris, or Synology - keep what works. Fregata exists for Mac owners who want the Frigate engine, hardware accelerated by Apple Silicon and packaged the way macOS apps should be packaged.
Download the app and drag it to Applications. The first launch walks you through permissions, your recordings folder and a 30-day free trial.
Any RTSP-capable camera - Reolink, Amcrest, Hikvision, Unifi, Dahua. The Add Camera wizard walks you through it, with detection at full resolution by default.
Open the web UI from the menu bar, or visit your Mac’s address on port 8971 from any device at home. Away from home, Fregata Mobile puts live view and alerts on your iPhone.
Pay once. All updates released within 12 months of purchase never stop working, yours forever.
.appSecure checkout
Already on a trial? Convert it from Fregata’s menu bar instead: same price, no reinstall.
Something else? Ask on GitHub Discussions, where the people who build Fregata answer.
Frigate is the open-source, Docker-based NVR project. Fregata is a commercial native macOS port of Frigate, repackaged as a signed, notarized .app that runs natively on Apple Silicon with extreme performance - no Docker, no VMs, no terminal setup. (New here? See how to run Frigate on a Mac.)
Fregata adds Apple Neural Engine detection, VideoToolbox hardware accelerated video decode/encode, Fregata-exclusive bandwidth-adaptive HLS transcoding for recordings and live view, and hundreds of other performance optimizations for Apple Silicon (see docs.fregata.app for more). The Frigate Python core is open source; the macOS runtime port, Apple Silicon optimizations, and the Fregata brand are proprietary.
You’re paying for the performance and ease of use of the macOS port, the bundle, the Apple Silicon work - a custom CoreML detector written in Rust, VideoToolbox integration for hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding, bandwidth-adaptive HLS transcoding for recordings and live view (hardware-accelerated on the Media Engine — zero CPU; not in Frigate — lets you watch your cameras on LTE and 5G connections that can’t carry a high-bitrate stream), a native process supervisor, hardware accelerated frame crop and zoom for object detection - and ongoing maintenance and updates.
If you’d rather run Docker, Frigate is free and excellent - go to frigate.video.
An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer. Fregata does not support Intel Macs - the whole point of the port is leveraging the Apple Neural Engine and the hardware accelerated video decoding/encoding provided by Apple Silicon.
Anything that speaks RTSP - that’s almost every IP camera on the market today, including Reolink, Amcrest, Hikvision, Dahua, and Unifi Protect. The bundled go2rtc proxy also handles WebRTC, ONVIF, RTMP, and HLS, plus cloud-API cameras directly: Ring, Google Nest, Wyze, Tapo / TP-Link, Tuya, and HomeKit-paired cameras all work without RTSP. The full source-type list is on go2rtc’s README.
Yes. Fregata Mobile is a free, native app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, made by the same team. It shows your cameras live, lets you scrub through recordings, and sends alerts with the picture attached. It’s in public beta on TestFlight and needs iOS 26.
It also works with Frigate 0.17 or later. Lighter streams on cellular need Fregata NVR, with adaptive transcoding turned on.
Yes. Fregata Mobile gets alerts straight from your Mac, with no Home Assistant, MQTT or extra server to run. Each alert arrives with its snapshot, then a short clip, and is encrypted so Apple’s servers can never read it. If you use Home Assistant, it keeps working alongside.
Yes, on macOS 27 or later. Fregata can use Apple’s on-device model as Frigate’s GenAI provider, for descriptions of tracked objects, summaries of review items, and the Chat page. It always runs on your Mac and never uses Private Cloud Compute, so there’s no API key and no bill. Apple Intelligence has to be available on that Mac, which depends on its region and language. See the Apple Intelligence guide.
Yes. Fregata performs a license check periodically, but can operate without any contact with our license servers once the license is validated on startup. All detection, recording, and playback happens entirely on your Mac.
License validation pings only. We never see your video, your camera URLs, or your detection events. There is no Fregata cloud account.
Yes, Fregata uses Frigate as its core and is fully compatible with Frigate+ and Frigate+ custom trained models. For more information about Frigate+, see https://frigate.video/plus/
No. Due to the performance of Apple Silicon, a Mac can easily decode full-resolution streams from your cameras and run object detection on the full-resolution frames allowing object detection to run with greater accuracy and capture small or distant objects. In our testing, Fregata can easily handle object detection on 8x (or more) 4K cameras using only a base M4 Mac Mini.
Yes. Drop any compatible ONNX model into your config directory and point Fregata at it. The bundled default is YOLOv9-tiny at 320×320, optimized for the Neural Engine. Fregata also works with Frigate+ models natively.
Yes. A license activates on one Mac at a time, and you can transfer it between Macs up to 3 times per 30 days from your license page - no support ticket required. For larger or fleet deployments, get in touch.
No. App Store sandboxing forbids spawning child processes like we need to - Fregata needs to run ffmpeg, nginx, and go2rtc as subprocesses to do its job. We also need to manage the RAM disk and shared memory in a way App Store apps cannot. Direct DMG distribution with Apple notarization is the right model for software like this.
Your installed version keeps working forever. You stop receiving new updates unless you renew for another year of updates (also $10) - but nothing breaks, no features are remotely disabled, and your existing recordings remain fully accessible.
Community discussion, feature requests, support, and bug reports happen on GitHub. You can also get private support via email to share logs or your config file - reply to your license email for direct, private support. We will read and reply to every single one.
Yes — this is a Fregata-exclusive feature not available in upstream Frigate. A 4K or high-bitrate stream is completely unwatchable on weak LTE or 5G; without adaptive transcoding you simply can’t see your cameras from the road when signal is poor. Enable adaptive_transcoding on a camera and Fregata serves its recordings as an HLS adaptive bitrate stream — the player automatically steps between 1080p, 720p, and 360p based on your measured connection speed, with no buffering or manual quality selection.
Adding live: true does the same for the live view — the stream dropdown shows each quality rung as a selectable option, and the player switches automatically as signal strength changes. All transcoding runs entirely on Apple Silicon’s dedicated Media Engine via VideoToolbox — zero CPU. Clients on your local network bypass the ladder entirely and receive the full-resolution source stream. See the adaptive transcoding docs for configuration details including VPN and Tailscale setup.
Yes. Fregata is fully compatible with the official Frigate Home Assistant integration. Install it from HACS, point it at your Mac’s IP, done.
Frigate is the open-source NVR project by Frigate, Inc. that this software is built on. Frigate relies on a Docker-based system and has set the standard for local, AI-powered camera recording.
Fregata is a native macOS port of Frigate and the docker runtime that manages the external process supervisor, RAM disk, shared memory system and much more. All redesigned and optimized to run as a self-contained .app bundle and unlock the raw power of Apple Silicon - no Docker, no Virtual Machines, no terminal required.
Fregata is the scientific genus that frigatebirds belong to. They have the highest wing-to-body weight ratio of any bird, soar for weeks without landing, always watching for prey.
Frigate® and the Frigate NVR brand are trademarks of Frigate, Inc. Fregata is an independent derivative - not affiliated with or endorsed by Frigate, Inc.
macOS 14 or later · Apple Silicon · Signed by Apple
Already on a trial? Convert it from Fregata’s menu bar instead: same price, no reinstall.
Live view, recordings and alerts with the picture, straight from your Mac. With adaptive transcoding on, recordings stay watchable on weak cellular connections.