Applies to: iOS and iPadOS 26 / macOS 26.5 / Frigate 0.17+

Troubleshooting

On this page

Grouped by what you are seeing. One diagnostic covers most of this: Settings › Server › Connection Doctor.

Connecting

Check the server URL including the port, and confirm you can open that same address in a browser on the same device. Then run the Connection Doctor, which walks the chain and names the rung that broke.

Common causes it distinguishes for you:

The address does not parse, or App Transport Security will refuse it. A self-signed certificate falls here; it will not work.
The hostname does not resolve. For a .ts.net name this usually means Tailscale is not connected on this device.
The server answers but login returns 401, which is a wrong username or password.
The server answers 200 but is not Frigate. Something else is listening on that port, or a proxy is intercepting.
Login succeeds but returns no cookie, or redirects to another host. That is a reverse proxy configuration problem.

If you connect through Marcellus, a misconfigured frigate.proxy_base_url shows up as a login loop. It must point at Frigate's authenticated origin, usually port 8971.

The app cannot reach my server after a network change

Confirm your device's current network path can reach the configured address. Switching between Wi-Fi, cellular, and a VPN or tailnet changes which addresses are routable. The Connection Doctor's network and reachability rungs will tell you which one failed.

I need to point the app somewhere else

Settings › Server, edit, Save settings. See changing servers.

Live video

Live view works but feels delayed

The app fell back to HLS because low-latency WebRTC media could not reach your device. HLS is segmented and runs several seconds behind. This is expected graceful degradation, not a bug.

It is most common on restrictive networks and on plain reverse proxies, because WebRTC media travels on its own port and many proxies only forward HTTP. An overlay network such as Tailscale usually fixes it where a reverse proxy cannot.

A tile says Stale, or shows a grey dot

Stale (with a yellow dot) means frames arrived and then stopped, which usually points at the camera or at Frigate. A grey dot over a camera placeholder means no frame ever arrived, which usually points at the network path or at that camera's configuration in Frigate.

Live was fine and then froze

The app watches for a stream that starts and then starves, and falls back to HLS on its own. If the picture is genuinely frozen rather than delayed, leave and re-enter the camera to force a fresh negotiation.

Scrub

The reel is empty or will not preview

Scrub previews come from the sidecar's scrub cache. If the sidecar's media and recordings path mappings do not match where Frigate actually writes its recordings, the strips come back empty. Check those paths in the sidecar config and look at /healthz.

Against bare Frigate, with no sidecar, the reel works but has no pre-rendered previews, so it will not feel fluid.

Previous and Next chips have disappeared on a camera

That camera's newest event is older than the threshold in Settings › Scrub › Hide event controls after (default 5 days). Raise it, or set it to Never.

Export fails

Export writes to Photos, so it needs add-only Photos permission. If that was denied, the app says so and offers to open Settings.

Notifications

Run Settings › Server › Connection Doctor first. Its Notifications section has six checks (seven with a doorbell), ordered so the first failure is the real one.

Nothing arrives at all

Push requires the Marcellus sidecar. Plain Frigate cannot send notifications.
Notification permission must be granted. If iOS has denied it, Settings › Alerts shows a warning row that links straight to the right page.
On the sidecar, check /healthz shows MQTT connected, and that the push transport is not still set to mock.
A TestFlight or development build registers with Apple's sandbox environment; a production build does not. If the app's status shows an environment that does not match the build you are running, that is the problem.
If the device's push token was pruned by Apple, reinstalling the app forces a fresh registration.

Notifications arrive but without a picture, or with a generic title

The snapshot and the real title are filled in on your device by the notification extension, which fetches them directly from your sidecar. Two things stop that:

The app is in the foreground. iOS delivers to the app itself rather than to the extension, so no enrichment runs. Lock the device or background the app and try again.
The sidecar was not reachable in time. The extension has a short budget; if it runs out, the notification still displays, just without the image.

Live Activities never start

Live Activities need their own permission, separate from notifications, and they are iPhone and iPad only. Check Settings › Alerts › Set up alerts, step one, which shows both switches and links to each. If the push arrives and the Live Activity still never starts, reinstalling the app is the remaining user-side fix.

A Live Activity stops updating

Reopen the app. The per-activity token can fail to re-register if the app relaunched while the activity was already running; opening the app re-registers it. An activity that has genuinely stalled says "No longer updating" rather than showing you a stale frame.

I get too many, or too few

Settings › Alert History. Swipe real decisions to mark them too much or not enough. Correcting decisions converges faster than guessing at the attention ladder, though the ladder is there if you would rather set it directly.

Also check quiet hours, and whether notifications are paused. The current posture readout at the top of Settings › Alerts states both.

Explore

Explore is not available

Explore is built on encounters, which the sidecar produces. Without it, the entry points do not appear.

Where next keeps suggesting the wrong camera

Tap Not same on the wrong suggestion, and Same on the correct ones. On Mac these are buttons in the Explore side panel. The sidecar learns camera adjacency and typical transition times from those corrections. See Same and Not same.

Still stuck

Email support with the Connection Doctor transcript (Copy report), the live diagnostics if live video is the problem, and your app, Frigate, and sidecar versions.