Self-hosted VMS for Mac & Linux · iPhone companion

Your cameras. Your machine.
Your footage.

Sentinel is a free, self-hosted video management system with on-device AI. Record every camera at full quality, watch live on your network or from anywhere, and keep every frame on hardware you own. No subscriptions, no cloud relay, no monthly fee. Optional Claude AI runs on your own Anthropic key.

Get Sentinel free See pricing

Free for Mac · iPhone companion on the App Store · unlimited cameras

Sentinel VMS for Mac showing a live multi-camera grid with AI detection, recording timeline, and the camera inspector
ONVIF & RTSP On-device AI H.264 / H.265 recording Mac, Linux & iPhone No cloud relay Unlimited cameras, free
Live view

See every camera, the moment it happens

A native macOS live wall in 1, 4, 9, or 16 tiles, with motion and person markers on the timeline and 6–8 second glass-to-glass latency over standard HLS. Scrub back through recordings without leaving the grid.

  • ✓ Multi-camera grid with drag-to-reorder and fullscreen
  • ✓ Timeline scrubber with motion & AI-event markers
  • ✓ One camera, many viewers, with built-in restreaming
Sentinel live camera grid on macOS
On-device AI · free

AI that understands what it sees

People, vehicles, faces, license plates, animals, and loitering. All detected on-device with Apple's Vision framework. No internet, no per-event cloud bill. Every detector lives in one AI Center, each with a live status, today's event count, and a one-switch toggle.

  • ✓ Six detection types, processed locally and free
  • ✓ Live person tracking with stable IDs and on-frame boxes
  • ✓ One AI Center with every detector, its status, and recent activity in one place
Sentinel VMS AI Center on macOS, every on-device detector with live status and today's event counts, plus optional Claude cloud AI
Cloud AI · Claude · bring your own key

Ask your footage anything

The AI features run on your own Anthropic (Claude) API key. Paste your key into the app once, and Claude turns raw detections into answers: a Ring-style sentence for whoever's at the door, a threat read on every event, and plain-English search across everything your cameras have seen. Calls go straight to Anthropic on your account, your key never leaves your Mac, and only the frames you choose to describe ever leave your machine.

  • ✓ Scene descriptions, "person in a dark jacket left a package by the door"
  • ✓ Threat classification, each event rated routine → suspicious, anomalies flagged on the timeline
  • ✓ AI search, "anyone in a red shirt last night?" across every recorded event
  • ✓ Daily digest, a plain-English recap of what happened today

Bring your own Anthropic key · you pay Anthropic directly, typically pennies per alert, no caps from us. Every other detector stays on-device and free.

Sentinel AI event feed with Claude scene descriptions and threat reads
iPhone & iPad · free

Take it with you

Pair once with a QR code, then watch live, scrub recordings, and get push alerts on your home Wi-Fi, or from anywhere on cellular with the Remote Access add-on. A tapped alert opens straight to the camera that triggered it. The companion app is free on iPhone and iPad.

  • ✓ Universal app for iPhone and iPad
  • ✓ Live grid, pinch-zoom, Picture-in-Picture & fullscreen
  • ✓ Push alerts that deep-link to the right camera
Sentinel on iPad showing the home dashboard with cameras and recent AI activity
Sentinel on iPhone showing the home dashboard with live alerts and recent activity
Self-hosted & private

Own your footage. Every frame stays on your machine.

Your machine is the only server. Video, recordings, and AI all run on your hardware and your network. No third-party cloud can read your cameras, and there's no subscription just to watch your own footage.

No cloud relay in the data path Keychain + Touch ID credentials Signed evidence export · SHA-256 Remote access add-on · no port-forwarding
Easy setup

Find your cameras in minutes

Sentinel discovers cameras automatically over ONVIF, mDNS, and an active subnet scan, with brand presets for Hikvision, Dahua, Axis, Reolink, Amcrest and more. The media engine is bundled inside the app, so there's nothing else to install.

  • ✓ Auto-discovery: ONVIF, Bonjour & subnet sweep
  • ✓ 12 brand presets + generic ONVIF / RTSP
  • ✓ Bundled GStreamer + MediaMTX, zero dependencies
Sentinel Add Camera dialog with ONVIF network scan and automatic profile discovery
Simple pricing

It's all free.

Unlimited cameras with full recording, live view, on-device AI, and remote access from anywhere, no subscriptions, nothing per camera. Optional Claude AI scene descriptions, threat reads, search & daily digest run on your own Anthropic API key, so you pay Anthropic directly. The iPhone app is always free. Donations welcome, never required.

Get Sentinel free See full pricing
FAQ

Questions before you download

Everything you need to know about running Sentinel on your own hardware.

Do I really not need the cloud?+
Correct. Sentinel runs entirely on your Mac. Cameras stream to your machine over your local network, and recording plus on-device AI all happen there. Nothing is uploaded to a third-party server, and your cameras keep recording even fully offline.
Which cameras work with Sentinel?+
Any ONVIF camera, which covers the vast majority of IP security cameras. Sentinel auto-discovers them over ONVIF, Bonjour, and a subnet scan, with one-tap presets for Axis, Hanwha, Hikvision, Dahua and more, plus generic ONVIF/RTSP for everything else.
How does pricing work?+
Sentinel VMS is free. Unlimited cameras, full recording, live view, on-device AI, and remote access from anywhere are all included at no cost, with no subscriptions and nothing per camera. Optional AI scene descriptions run on your own Anthropic API key, so you pay Anthropic directly and nothing to us. The iPhone and iPad app is always free. Donations welcome, never required. See full pricing →
Do I need a subscription for the AI?+
No. The Claude-powered AI features are bring-your-own-key: you create an API key in your own Anthropic account and paste it into the app. Calls go straight to Anthropic on your account, your key stays on your Mac, and you pay Anthropic directly (typically pennies per alert, with no caps or markup from us). On-device detection like person, vehicle, and license plate runs free without any key.
Do I need an account to download?+
Yes, a free one. You create a free account to download the app and get update notices, which also lets us tell who's using Sentinel. It's free, takes a second, and after that the app runs without signing in, even fully offline. There's no payment and no card, ever.
What do I need to run it?+
A Mac on macOS 13 or later (Apple Silicon or Intel) that stays powered on to record. The media engine (GStreamer and MediaMTX) is bundled inside the app, so there's nothing else to install. Recordings are written to your Mac, so how much history you keep is limited only by your own disk.
Continuous recording or motion-only?+
Both, configurable per camera. Record 24/7, or only when motion or a person/vehicle is detected. On-device AI marks motion, people, vehicles, faces, license plates, and loitering right on the timeline so you can jump straight to what matters.
Can I watch when I'm away from home?+
Yes, free. On your home Wi-Fi everything works out of the box, and remote viewing from cellular or any other network is included at no cost. It tunnels securely with no port-forwarding and nothing exposed on your router.
How private is my footage, really?+
Every frame stays on your machine. There's no cloud relay in the data path, camera credentials are stored in the macOS Keychain behind Touch ID, and evidence exports are SHA-256 signed. No third party, including us, can see your cameras.
Is there a Linux or Windows version?+
Yes. Sentinel for Linux is in beta: the same self-hosted server for a mini-PC, NAS or home server, for x86-64 and ARM64, with a web dashboard and the free iPhone app. How to install it. A Windows version isn't planned yet.

Still have a question? Email us. We read every one.

Get started

Up and running in three steps

Free to download, free to run. The only optional extra is AI, on your own Claude key.

Step 1

Create your free account

A free account gets you the download and update notices. After that the app runs without signing in, even fully offline.

Step 2

Add your cameras

ONVIF auto-discovery finds cameras on your network, or paste an RTSP URL. Live view and recording start right away, for as many cameras as you like.

Step 3 · optional

Turn on AI with your Claude key

Paste your own Anthropic (Claude) API key in the app to add scene descriptions, threat reads, search, and a daily digest. You pay Anthropic directly, typically pennies per alert.

Get Sentinel

The Mac server app is ready to download, and Linux is in beta. The free iPhone companion lets you watch from anywhere.

Desktop app · version 1.1

Sentinel for Mac

The server: discovery, recording, live view, and on-device AI. Run as many cameras as you like, free.

macOS 13+Apple Silicon & IntelDeveloper ID signedNotarized
Free account required. Confirm your email and the download starts automatically.
Server · beta · version 0.4.0

Sentinel for Linux

The self-hosted server for a mini-PC, NAS or home server: camera discovery, 24/7 recording, live view, motion, person & vehicle detection, alarms, and the free iPhone app. Runs as a service with a web dashboard.

x86-64 & ARM6464-bit Linux with systemdWeb dashboardBeta
Free account required. Unpack, run sudo ./install.sh, then open http://your-server:8090. Install guide
Field companion · free

Sentinel for iPhone

Pair with a QR code and watch live cameras, recordings, and AI alerts on your network, or anywhere with Remote Access. Free, no in-app purchases.

iOS 16+iPhone & iPadFreeNo tracking
Get it on the App Store
Free companion app. Pairs with your Mac by QR code.
Install Sentinel for Linux (beta)+

Works on 64-bit Linux with systemd: Ubuntu, Debian, Raspberry Pi OS and similar. Pick x86-64 for Intel/AMD machines and ARM64 for ARM boards like the Raspberry Pi 5. The media engine, person & vehicle detection and remote access are all included; nothing else to install.

tar xzf sentinel-0.4.0-linux-*.tar.gz
cd sentinel-0.4.0-linux-*/
sudo ./install.sh

Then open http://your-server:8090 in a browser on the same network, create the administrator account, and use Scan network on the Cameras page. To watch from your phone, install the free Sentinel VMS app and pair it from the dashboard's iPhone page. Upgrading is the same three commands with the new download; your cameras and recordings are kept.

This is a beta. Please send problems and feedback to [email protected].

SHA-256
x86-64 4c2f0b8d281601f112308a026ed66cda76b8519b136644284360d85b653072e6
ARM64 cde3044db0b4818bf242bb7bfdd4256e9ba055ed9674a63d4cef6dc1946c6017