Megacubo is a free, open-source, cross-platform IPTV player for the M3U ecosystem, built for people on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android who want to organize and watch publicly available live TV, radio, and community stream lists in one place.

What it is

Megacubo is a JavaScript application, distributed under the GPL-3.0 licence and maintained in the EdenwareApps/Megacubo repository, that plays IPTV streams. It ships as an Electron-based desktop app for Windows, Linux, and macOS, with a separate Android build for phones and TV boxes. The player handles M3U playlists, live TV, and radio streams, and adds bookmarks, watch history, a miniplayer or picture-in-picture mode, a multi-language interface, hardware-accelerated playback, Chromecast output, and support for launching an external player. Development has stayed active: the repository holds 604 stars, 91 forks, and 15 open issues, and it last received a push on 6 September 2026.

The concrete problem it solves is organization. The internet already carries thousands of publicly available TV channels, radio stations, live streams, and community broadcasts, and many broadcasters, public networks, and independent media outlets distribute their own streams online. That material is real but scattered across raw M3U links, M3U8, HLS, DASH, and MPEGTS sources that are awkward to collect, label, and revisit in tools that were not designed for them. Megacubo replaces that ad-hoc handling with a dedicated IPTV player: the user adds personal playlists or a community source, and the app keeps the resulting channel list, history, and bookmarks in one place. It sits in the IPTV and M3U ecosystem rather than in general-purpose media playback, and it deliberately takes no position on content, since the application does not decide what users watch and the responsibility for the sources and playlists added rests with the user.

Key capabilities

• Plays IPTV streams from M3U playlists, with support for live TV and radio sources alongside the M3U8, HLS, DASH, and MPEGTS formats listed in its topics.
• Community mode, which surfaces community-shared public streams for discovery rather than requiring every playlist to be found manually.
• Miniplayer and picture-in-picture mode, so a channel can keep running in a small window while the user works on something else.
• Bookmarks and watch history, which preserve frequently watched channels and previously opened streams.
• Hardware-accelerated playback, with Chromecast output and the option to hand a stream to an external player.
• A multi-language interface, distributed across Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android, with Linux packages offered as AppImage, Snap, and Flatpak.
• Cross-platform support including Android TV boxes, and Electron-based desktop builds.

Who uses it and how

• Viewers who want to watch free-to-air channels already available in their own country without hunting for a separate player per source.
• Listeners who use it for radio streams rather than video, since radio is a supported first-class source type.
• Households and individuals who maintain personal IPTV or M3U playlists and want one place to load, browse, and revisit them.
• People who follow international public channels and broadcaster-operated streams, using community mode to find shareable public lists.
• Users who keep the miniplayer running while working or studying, treating live TV as background rather than a full-screen activity.

Getting started

The recommended path is to download the official installer for the target platform from https://megacubo.tv, which provides Windows installers, Linux packages, macOS builds, and the Android version, with portable and release assets also published on the GitHub Releases page. Developers can build from source by cloning the repository, then running npm install, npm run prepare, and npm run debug, with installer builds available through npm run build:electron:win, npm run build:electron:linux, and npm run build:electron:mac.

How it compares

No list of paid products this project replaces is provided in the facts, and no comparable tool is named alongside it either, so Megacubo stands alone in this registry rather than being positioned against another entry. Its distinguishing attributes are the ones already stated: GPL-3.0 licensing, source-available code, and no cost to the user.

When to use it — and when not to

There is no server, database, or mail service to operate, because Megacubo is a client application, so the operational burden falls on the user's own machine and on the quality and legality of the playlists they choose to add. Anyone expecting the app to supply channels, guarantee uptime, or curate content should not choose it, since the project explicitly leaves source responsibility to the user. The honest weaknesses are scope limits: mobile coverage is Android only, the release and build documentation lives in separate DEVELOPING.md and BUILDING.md files rather than the README, and there are 15 open issues against an otherwise steady development pace.

# clone repository
git clone https://github.com/EdenwareApps/Megacubo.git

# enter folder
cd Megacubo

# install dependencies
npm install

# prepare project
npm run prepare

# run development build
npm run debug

# Linux
npm run build:electron:linux

# Windows
npm run build:electron:win

# macOS
npm run build:electron:mac