I've been running Blue Iris for a while (cameras at two properties). The one part I never liked was the phone side, so over the last couple of months I built my own native iPhone app for it. It's at the point where I use it every day, and now I'm trying to decide whether to clean it up and open-source it, or whether it's just me who cares.

Yes, I know there's the official Blue Iris app ($9.99).** It works, and it does connect. My issue is how you reach it away from home: the usual setup is to port-forward BI's web server, which puts your NVR's login page on the open internet. You can run a separate VPN app instead, but then you're juggling two apps and remembering to turn the VPN on. In my experience the official app is also noticeably slower to load the grid and switch between cameras. What mine does:*

• WireGuard built into the app. No port forwarding and no separate VPN app. On your home Wi-Fi it connects directly; away from home it brings up its own tunnel automatically. The tunnel peer can be firewalled so the phone reaches only the BI port and nothing else on the LAN. Lose the phone, delete one peer, and its access is gone.
• Fast live grid. Tiles are scaled by BI on the server, and the app adapts to Wi-Fi or cellular, so a grid of 9+ cameras stays smooth on LTE. A traffic meter shows how much data you're actually using.
• Fullscreen with pinch zoom, and PTZ controls on cameras that support them.
• Alert history with a week strip and day grouping. Any alert can be exported as an MP4 and shared (Save Video, AirDrop, Messages…).
• Multiple sites/groups (one tap to switch between properties).
• Face ID lock. Credentials and tunnel keys live only in the iOS Keychain; nothing is hard-coded or sent to a cloud.
• Careful about BI's auto-ban. A rejected login is never retried automatically, so the app can't lock you out of your own NVR by looping on a bad password.

Optional AI add-on (separate service). I also wrote a small companion service that runs next to BI on a box with an NVIDIA GPU. It does YOLO person/vehicle detection with tracking, reads licence plates, groups repeat visitors by face, and works out whether a car is arriving or leaving. Then it sends a push notification with a distinct sound for "person" or "car". The app has an AI Detector tab: a log of every vehicle with the plate, a crop, a visit count ("seen 4 times") and a calendar. Quiet hours mute car alerts overnight (people still ring). All of it runs locally; no video leaves the house. Frankly,it way better than BI addons for such features.

So, the question:

• Would you actually use this if it were open source (you'd build it yourself in Xcode, or I'd look into TestFlight)?
• Is the built-in VPN the selling point for you, or the AI/plate part, or neither?
• Or is everyone happy with the official app + Tailscale/WireGuard and I should just keep it for myself? 🙂

Honest answers welcome, including "no one needs this."

That was fun talking about it.

Oh well

I currently have an iPhone. Love blue iris and the mobile app. However, I have one issue I haven’t been able to figure out. Any time my phone is connected to CarPlay, it stops notifications on my phone. So I no longer receive alerts when my cameras go off. If I’m in my car and not home, that is the exact time I want to know that something is going on! Wonder if anyone has found a fix for this? I’ve also contemplated switching to Android and wondering if Android Auto has the same problem?

Open https://blueirissoftware.com/bbs/ and there is nothing there. But it says "Total posts 18750 • Total topics 2994 • Total members 8639". The forum used to be open for reading without registration. I asked support and was told that requiring an account to access helps reduce spam bots, which makes no sense. How can letting people read a forum increase spam bots? I understand that an account is needed to post. But for reading???

This prevents potential solutions from appearing in searches. Is it the beginning of the end?

Not sure if there is any interest in this, but i have been going pretty hard with Codex over the last week. I've just been building so many things that didn't meet my needs (6 linux apps, 2 android apps, and 2 windows only apps now run on linux). Part of this was because i didn't like having to run a heavy window VM was one of them. I was able to get BI working in Zorin. If there is any interest, i can have Codex put together a git hub with the info needed to do it! Happy Friday!

Edit: 5pm 10/9 Tons of interest. I found out today that I had v5 32 bit running. I have burnt through 2× 5 hour token limits and a token reset. I dont feel like buying another $20 GPT account right now. I have my local ai agent helping some. I did get v6 running as 64 bit now. I have a git hub mostly ready, however it's messy, but it includes a prompt for Ai to help do this, or steps to do it yourself. Ones my tokens reset, I hope to get to a comfortable point to share later tonight or tomorrow.

If anyone is going to complain about AI, save it, I dont care im doing this for myself and sharing it because I want to help others.

745PM 10/9 Im still within 24 hours of initially starting this, but its working for now. I am using a Zorin VM inside of PROXMOX for this to work for me.

The best help i can offer is these two repositories for now. There is about 12 hours of trial and error here. I may spin up a new VM, start over and document what should be the fresh and full process. I WILL NOT BE GETTING RID of my windows VM for BI for a while, until i can stability test this long and ensure i wont have any issues. I ended up making a page for BI5 32bit and BI6 64bit.

https://github.com/TTdriver/blue-iris-6-wine-linux

https://github.com/TTdriver/blue-iris-5-x32-wine-linux

Its like 230AM, but shout out to u/verylittlegravitaas for the awesome idea like an hour ago. I made a new web browser. I got it functionally working. I need to package it up and make a way to share it, but this is sick. Thanks for the idea!

https://imgur.com/a/1iM5k5Y

So I've been using an old version of Blue Iris for years. I recently went to upgrade to the newest version. Went to their website blueirissoftware.com. Went through with the purchase, and then received an email that just says "Contact Merchant for License". I've emailed both emails listed on their website under contact. I get no replies whatsoever. SO I paid 100$ and got no key, and there is no way to contact them???? How is this software so highly regarded by people???

Has this happened to anyone else? I'm about to just stop payment and find some different software.

I have had four 8tb harddrives recording continuous for about 6 years now. They were the cheapest seagate drives I could get back before AI. They are starting to get a bit noisey. I simply cant afford to replace them when they die.

Thats my rant.

OK, it's budget production video, but yeah, I have been using Blue Iris for almost 4 years to record projects I do in my shop, and when it's h.264 in, h.264 out, it has been pretty dope.

I told Blue Iris to buffer the last minute of all of the cameras in my shop, and to only save the buffer when I want to, which happens to be via hitting a giant button.

It's been pretty transformative as far as documenting stuff in the shop, but not worrying about setting up cameras.

If anybody is in that category, message me or check the link in the bio and all that stuff.

Last time I posted something about this project in new reddit, people kind of came at me, which is fine.

Point is, it's really flexible software that does stuff that costs orders of magnitude more for fancy videography.

Anyway, Blue Iris is powerful and flexible for this.

If anybody is in a similar boat of wanting to use BI for documentation and not circular security, hit me up. It's great software.

I haven’t touched anything in months. Server runs 24/7.

Any ideas? It’s worked perfect for years.

Not sure how to understand that "rame bottleneck" in the 6.1.3.4 version.

My ram is steady at 50% usage but this rame bottleneck is osilating between 0-1 and 2.

Hi, first time I have this issue with Blueiris. Running version 5, I have 11 cameras. When I add a new one (click +, add all the infos - ip, rtsp, etc..., click OK) it never appears.

License: Extended (but expired in 2025).

Anybody else had the same issue before?

EDIT: after update to the latest blueiris 5.9.9.98 problem solved (either an actual bug, or just the upgrade progress cleaned out something odd)

I have a unifi g6 turret camera and about a month ago it stopped connecting to Blue Iris. In trying to resolve problem I noticed ip address on camera changed. Please advise if I should change settings on blue iris under "web server". Thanks in advance

Has anyone been able too get reolink cameras with ai detection (person-pet-car) too trigger a camera in BI over ONVIF

I know reolink said not possible few years ago has it changed yet or anyone found any work arounds

I exported the config from Ver 5, imported to the new PC which has Ver 6 freshly installed. As soon as BI starts, CPU is at 100% and doesn't go down. and the web browser interface is not working, spinning wheels but no video.

any idea what's going on? I wish I could still download Ver5 but it's no longer on their website, i was forced to pay $50 to upgrade.

Upgraded to Blue Iris 6 a few weeks ago and noticed the timeline at the bottom is only showing alerts (e.g., car, person) in orange as single events and is no longer showing the nice long colored bars of actual motion taking place. Did something change?

I've always recorded in mp4 so I hope that's not an issue because it previously worked okay in BI 5. My filter in the clips section is set up for "all clips". When I click in the timeline I get a view with all 6 of my cameras showing black and nothing. If I click a clip on the left side though it plays perfectly.

Hello,

I’ve been quite satisfied with Blue Iris, and I’m currently running Blue Onyx Stable on two homes.

However, I recently bought a €20 Tapo camera for monitoring my kid, and I was surprised by how good and fast its person detection is.

I can’t figure out why I’m not getting the same level of speed and accuracy on a powerful GHz-class PC running Blue Iris.

Can anyone explain why this is the case? Are there better AI solutions for Blue Iris, or perhaps better alternatives to Blue Iris altogether?

Thanks!

Good afternoon. I’m trying to set up BlueIris motion alerts that trigger in Home Assistant and I’ve hit a wall. My current setup is that any time a motion alert is registered, an mqqt payload is sent to HA, which then updates a dashboard card. This works perfectly now.

My goal is to have AI analyze and tag the motion events (person 65%, etc) and pass that through to HA, but NOT have AI gatekeep the event itself, in other words prevent it from firing because the confidence is too low, etc.

I tried &MEMO as the payload as advised by ChatGPT, but it returned (empty) as the result when triggered. I assume because BI is currently not set to confirm events.

TLDR: I want ALL motion triggered events to show up in HA, with AI tags passed through mqqt.

Possible?

I emailed support at blueiris dot com a few days ago about changing the email address attached to a license before putting maintenance on it and dragging it up to date. (We don't have access to the old email address at the moment.)

I'm not complaining about the delay as we don't have maintenance on it presently anyway, so we don't have paid support. But should I have received a receipt to say that they actually got the email?

If so, they didn't get my email so I'll resend.

If not, any ideas what the support queue time is?

My previous install had some issues where it would go 100% CPU and then drop cameras until I restarted. So I did a fresh install. This has stayed stable so I will be moving over to it.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason it is not generating "Clips" from my cameras. I don't remember having to do anything special with my previous install to make this function work.

Clipboard files are set to store in e:\BlueIris\Clipboard:

Folder is empty:

Here's one of the cameras. It is set to continuous recording like my previous setup:

I have tried the DB Repair, Delete and Rebuild, but there are no files in the Clipboard folder to rebuild from anyway. Is there a setting I missed somewhere to turn this feature on? I am still on the Demo if that matters...

TIA.

I've been a blue Iris user for about 5 years. I definitely don't know the ins and outs but I'm good enough to add a camera and try to work my way through settings etc.

I love the UI3 access which is something we use daily. (which can be terribly delayed at times)

About 2 years ago I upgraded my home pc to a Dell xps

Specs:

- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 14700 (33 MB cache, 20 Cores, 28 threads, up to 5.4 GHz)

- 16GB, 2X8GB, DDR5, 5600MT/s; up to 64GB

- NVIDIA(R) GeForce RTX(TM) 4060 8GB GDDR6

(ram should prob be upgraded to the max)

At this point I can barely use the system for anything as it lags due to heavy BI usage.

I can use help because I don't think my BI is set up right or maybe I just need a dedicated system.

I'm running about 7 cameras.

Direct to disk recording.

(not sure what else to include)

Cameras lag.

Alerts are non existent or not reliable.

Ai doesn't work because I prob don't have it set up right.

I would like to add better cameras.

License plate reader

Etc etc.

At this point I'm reaching out for guidance in the hopes of sticking with BI and not moving on.

I've heard good things about Frigate but I don't think it can run the cameras I have and seems to not have much room for expansion (I can be wrong again).

I'm just looking for a smoother experience.

Alerts that work.

A system that is either seperate or will allow me to work.

Appreciate all help and guidance in advance.

Thank you.

Morning, well my Dell SFF PC (Hard Drive) just died, it's over 13 years old so I just plan on upgrading. I have about 8 IP 4mp Cams, would like to have them run 24/7 and wouldn't mind diving into the AI on Blue Iris, but not a deal breaker. That said, was looking for a i5-12500 16-32GB RAM and SSD w/ a separate DVR drive. Any thoughts? Any deals out there? I definetly want Quicksync correct?

THANKS!

So when I am connected to BI at home
Works
Perfect, minus alerts are delayed
As soon as I leave my house
It works as intermittent as can be

send me alerts , but no image display, cannot view when click it
Just keeps .. connecting
Then will randomly start showing me image and works fine

Trying out blue iris have 3 cameras, going from nvr to blue iris.

Managed to connect 1 camera out of 3 and its displaying wrong date/time on blue iris but correct time/date on nvr.

Other 2 are not appearing at all trying to figure out what im doing wrong