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How to watch Synology cameras on Apple TV

Updated August 2026

Synology has no Surveillance Station app for Apple TV. This guide covers the route that works, and the DSM permission that catches most people on the way.

Why there is no official app

Synology ships Surveillance Station clients for the desktop browser, for Windows and macOS, and for phones and tablets through DS cam. Apple TV has been asked for on the Synology forums for years, but no tvOS client has appeared.

People usually try one of three workarounds first:

• AirPlay from an iPhone. Works, but it ties up your phone and the stream quality suffers.
• A generic RTSP viewer app. These stream a camera's raw feed. You add every camera by hand, and none of them can show your recorded event history, because that lives inside Surveillance Station, not in the camera.
• A browser on another device. Fine at a desk, awkward from a sofa with a remote.

NasCam signs in to Surveillance Station itself, so your camera list, your recordings, and your motion and AI events all come across.

What you need first

• A Synology NAS running DSM 7 or later.
• Surveillance Station 9 or later, with at least one camera online.
• An Apple TV HD (2015) or any Apple TV 4K, on tvOS 17 or later.
• Both devices on the same network.

Check the camera works in Surveillance Station itself before you go further. If the feed is broken there, no client can fix it.

Set the DSM permissions

NasCam only sees what the account you sign in with is allowed to see, which is where most failed setups end.

In Surveillance Station, open Settings → Privilege Profile and confirm the account has:

• Live View permission on the cameras you want to watch. Without it, the camera list is empty.
• Playback permission as well, if you want recordings, events and thumbnails. Live View alone gives you live feeds and nothing else.

A dedicated viewing account is a good idea. It keeps your admin credentials off a device in the living room, and you can revoke it on its own.

Connect NasCam to your NAS

1. Install NasCam from the App Store on the Apple TV.
2. Enter the address. On your own network the local IP is the most reliable choice, for example 192.168.1.20. You can find it in DSM under Control Panel → Network. A QuickConnect ID also works.
3. Enter the port. DSM defaults to 5000 for HTTP and 5001 for HTTPS. Use your own if you changed it.
4. Sign in with the DSM account. If it uses two-factor authentication, NasCam asks for the six-digit code.
5. Open a camera for full screen, or move into the event timeline to review what was recorded.

If nothing connects, open http://your-nas-ip:5000 in a browser on the same network first. If DSM does not load there either, the problem is the network or the address, not the app.

Watching from away

NasCam never proxies your video through an outside service, so there is nothing for us to route. To watch away from home you set up your own remote access. A VPN back to your home network is the safe option, and Synology's VPN Server package does the job.

The full-resolution RTSP path needs an admin account and a local network connection. Over a remote link NasCam falls back to what your account and connection allow.

Questions