Contributing¶

Fathom is built with Flutter. Contributions, bug reports, and translations are all welcome.

Build from source¶

flutter pub get
flutter build linux --release      # or: flutter build windows --release

ffmpeg is recommended but optional (it merges YouTube's separate video and audio streams for higher-quality downloads).

For the packaged, self-contained AppImage that bundles libmpv, use tool/build_appimage.sh. It takes an ARCH of x86_64 or aarch64.

flutter test                              # offline, deterministic
flutter test --tags live --run-skipped    # hits real YouTube / network endpoints

ARCHITECTURE.md is a tour of the code and the design decisions worth knowing before touching things.
ROADMAP.md tracks what is planned, done, and parked.

Fathom's interface is internationalized with Flutter's built-in ARB localization, the same approach the wider Jellyfin ecosystem uses.

English, lib/l10n/app_en.arb, is the source of truth. Every other language is an app_<lang>.arb beside it.
Only English is edited in-repo; other locales flow in from translators, and the setup is Weblate-ready.
After editing an ARB file, regenerate the bindings with flutter gen-l10n.

Translations are welcome by pull request.

The documentation site is built with MkDocs Material from the docs/ folder and deploys automatically when changes reach main. To preview locally:

pip install mkdocs-material
mkdocs serve      # then open http://127.0.0.1:8000

Keep the docs in step with the app: when a change alters something a user sees or does, update the relevant page in the same pull request.

Fathom is free software under the GNU AGPL-3.0 license.