TreasureBoat Desktop

This covers what the app does today. It will grow as features land — if something here is missing or wrong, write to office@treasureboat.org.

What it is

TreasureBoat Desktop shows the video channels on your TreasureBoat server: channels on the left, the videos of the selected channel on the right, and playback in its own window. It needs macOS 26 or newer.

Getting started

You can use it without setting anything up. With no identity configured the app shows the channels shared with everyone, so it is useful immediately and you can see what it does before deciding to configure it.

Seeing the channels shared with you

Channels can be shared with everybody, or with particular people. To see the ones shared with you, the app has to know who you are. There are two ways, and it prefers the first:

Pair this Mac — open Settings (⌘,) and choose Pair this Mac. A QR code appears; scan it with the Approve App screen in TreasureBoat Mobile on your phone. The credential is then stored in the Keychain rather than typed.
A TreasureBoat ID — paste it into Settings. Used when the Mac is not paired.

Unpair this Mac removes the credential and returns to the shared view.

Watching

Select a channel, then click a video. A window opens showing the poster, the description and a Play button. Nothing is downloaded until you press Play, so opening a video by mistake costs nothing.

The player is a normal window: resize it, zoom it, or send it full screen. You can leave one playing and open another.

Likes

The heart beside a video shows how many people liked it, and is filled when you are one of them. A like cannot be taken back — the server refuses a second one, so the heart becomes an indicator once given.

Liking needs your own identity. While the app is showing the shared view, the count is visible but there is nothing to press: everyone reading publicly resolves to the same identity, so one anonymous like would be everybody's and could never be undone.

Monitors

File → Open Monitor lists the TreasureBoat Monitors you have configured and opens the chosen one in a window inside the app. Each Monitor gets its own window, so several can be open at once.

Add and remove them under Settings → Monitors. Opening a Monitor in the app is also noticeably faster than opening it in Safari, which spends time trying HTTPS first on a plain-HTTP address before falling back.

Access ID

When this Mac is paired, Settings shows an Access ID. It identifies you to a Monitor without revealing your TreasureBoat ID, and a server administrator can allow it so that this Mac is accepted wherever it is — rather than allowing an IP address that has to be edited when you travel and removed when you get back.

Each Monitor in the list has its own Send my access token to this server setting, ticked automatically for the port Monitors normally use. Anything else you add is not sent a token unless you say so.

If something is not working

No channels appear

Check the server in Settings. If a message mentions a method that does not exist, the app is talking to a server that has not been updated yet.

A channel picture is missing

The picture is named by the server. If the name refers to something the app does not carry and is not a web address, the app shows a placeholder rather than an error — the channel itself still works.

Pairing says the credential could not be saved

The server approved the Mac but the Keychain refused to store the result. The message names the reason. Until it is stored the pairing is not usable, so pair again once the cause is fixed.