iCap FAQ (Troubleshooting)

The incomplete mark means the download for that video did not finish (for example, due to an interrupted connection). While it's showing, offline playback isn't available, and even if tapping it plays something, the app is actually just reloading it from the original site each time, which uses data and will stop working if the source video is removed or changed. Choosing "Download" again from the video's menu will retry the download using the saved source URL.

However, some sites generate a fresh video URL on every playback and invalidate it after a short time, so retrying after a delay can fail on those sites. On such sites, retry the download right after playing the video in the built-in browser, without much delay.

icap can handle three kinds of video: MP4, HLS, and encrypted HLS. Encrypted HLS cannot be converted to mp4 after it has already been downloaded as-is.

To reliably convert HLS (including encrypted HLS) to mp4, choose "Convert to mp4 (recommended)" at download time instead of converting later from the share menu — this converts while saving, and succeeds even for encrypted HLS. Note that on some sites, conversion-while-downloading can still fail; some sites deliver video in a way that cannot be converted, so not every site can be supported.

Subtitles are saved only when you choose "Keep as HLS" at save time. If you choose "Convert to mp4 (recommended)", subtitles are not included. After saving, play the video in the iCap player and pick a subtitle track from the "…" menu.

However, subtitles can only be saved when the video's own data (HLS) contains them. Subtitles that a site loads through a separate mechanism cannot be saved.

Saving subtitles has been supported since iCap 8.8. Videos saved before that have no subtitle data, so please update to the latest version and save them again with "Keep as HLS". If subtitles are still missing, contact me with the site name (or page URL) and the format you chose when saving.

In iCap 8.3 and earlier, the app did not fully disable the MediaSource playback path used on iPadOS. On some sites this caused iPad to use adaptive streaming played through a blob: URL, so iCap could not detect or save the video. This bug was fixed in iCap 8.4, released September 7, 2026. Please update to the latest version from the App Store. If the same site still fails only on iPad with 8.4 or later, contact support with the page URL and your iPadOS and iCap versions.

First, open the same page in Safari on the same device. That is the quickest way to tell where the problem is. The browser inside the app uses the same rendering engine as Safari, so a page that is blank in Safari cannot be shown by the app either, whatever you change in its settings.

If Safari is blank too, your iOS version is most likely outside the range the site supports. Check it under Settings > General > About. In September 2026, several people reported that TVer stays blank on iOS 15 devices — in Safari as well — because TVer moved to supporting iOS 16 and later only. Details and what to do are on this page. If your device can be updated to iOS 16 or later, updating fixes it.

Freeing up storage and clearing the cache make no difference to this symptom, and neither does switching the device mode (User-Agent). On older devices, choosing “Mac” or “Windows PC” actually makes more pages fail to load.

If the page loads in Safari but stays blank only in the app, then something on the app's side is still wrong. Please get in touch and include the page URL and your iOS version.

There is currently no feature for freely reordering videos. Sort settings are shared across all folders, so a different sort mode cannot currently be remembered for each folder. As a workaround, you can prefix each video's name with a number indicating your desired order (e.g. "001", "002") and then sort by name. It's a bit of extra work, but it does the job.

A video saved as mp4 is a single file, so you can save it to your camera roll or hand it off to another app via the share menu. From the video list, tap the "≡" icon next to a video, then "Share", then "Save Video" to save it to your camera roll. Tapping any other app icon in that same menu sends the video directly to that app.

Note that HLS (m3u8) represents one video as a collection of multiple files, so it isn't supported for handing off to other apps or saving to the camera roll. Convert it to mp4 first, either via "Convert HLS to mp4" from the video's menu, or by choosing "Convert to mp4 (recommended)" at download time. Once converted, videos that were originally HLS can also be saved to the camera roll or handed off to other apps.

There used to be a bug where "Save Video" appeared only some of the time, even with Settings > Save Videos - iCap > Photos > All Photos allowed — when a saved file's name collided with another, its extension was broken, and iOS could no longer tell what kind of file it was. It is fixed in iCap 8.3, so please update to the latest version if you are on an older one.

icap creates a dedicated folder for each video, storing the video file (mp4) and management records inside it. Normally, the top level of icap's managed folder should only contain each video's folder plus a few settings files such as bookmark.json and history.json — if any other file exists there, this error appears. In most cases, this happens because of a bug that created a file there, or because a file was copied or moved directly into that top-level folder using the Files app or similar.

Open the "Save Videos - iCap" folder in Apple's own Files app and delete the offending file at the top level (the .mp4 file named in the error message) to resolve it.

icap never automatically deletes videos you've saved (there's no limit on how many videos you can store or how long they're kept — they won't disappear unless deleted). If a video is missing, open the "Save Videos - iCap" folder in Apple's Files app and check whether that video's folder (containing files like movie.mp4, movie.info, and thum.png) actually exists.

If it doesn't, the most common causes are:

• Swiping left to delete it from icap's video list (this deletes immediately and cannot be recovered, and it won't appear in "Recently Deleted" or similar)
• Deleting an individual file from Settings > General > iPhone Storage (this also deletes immediately and cannot be recovered)

Note that if you deleted files or folders inside the icap folder via the Files app itself, they move to "Recently Deleted" (kept for roughly 30 days), so recovery may be possible from there. If a ".Trash" item appears in the video list, that's also a sign the deletion likely happened via the Files app.

This is not a rare question. If none of the above matches your situation, please get in touch and tell me what happened. Either way, your saved data lives only on your device and I cannot restore it, so I strongly recommend backing up to a Mac, PC or iCloud Drive regularly.

I'm sorry, but deleting a video from icap's own video list (as opposed to via the Files app) removes it immediately and completely, with no temporary storage such as a trash, so it cannot be recovered. If you have a backup on a Mac or PC, you can restore it from there.

On the other hand, if you delete data inside the icap folder via Apple's own Files app, it moves to that app's Trash, so an accidental deletion there can be recovered from it. I recommend backing up regularly going forward.

Bookmarks are stored as a file named "bookmark.json" in the Files app under On My iPhone → iCap. If this file is deleted in the Files app, or if iCap's Documents & Data are removed from Settings → General → iPhone Storage, the bookmarks become empty.

If you deleted it in the Files app, check Browse → Recently Deleted: if "bookmark.json" is there, tap Recover to bring it back (within about 30 days). If you deleted and reinstalled the app, the only way back is restoring from an iCloud or other backup made before the deletion (When your saved data is missing).

If what you can't find is the button that opens bookmarks rather than the data, look for the bookmark-shaped icon among the browser's buttons.

There are two different kinds of ads, and they work differently.

• Ads the app itself shows (the full-screen one before a download, and the banner at the edge of the screen) — these stop once you buy Premium.
• Ads inside the page you are viewing — these belong to that site and have nothing to do with Premium. The ad blocker below is what reduces these.

Most "I paid but the ads are still there" reports turn out to be about the second kind.

Ad blocking is under Settings → Ad Blocking → "Use ad blocking". It is on out of the box and works the same for everyone, with or without Premium. If it seems to be doing nothing, please check that it has not been switched off.

That said, it cannot remove the ads on every site. Sites deliver ads in different ways, and depending on how a page is built some of them remain.

Also, if you have an iOS "content blocker" (a Safari ad-blocking app) installed, it has no effect inside this app's browser. This is not a setting you can change — it is how iOS is built.

A content blocker is registered with iOS in a form only Safari can read, and there is no way for another app to receive its contents and use them. This is not specific to iCap: it is the same for every other third-party browser app on the App Store.

So the only way for an in-app browser to cut ads is to carry its own list, which is why one is built in. The blocking machinery itself is the same one iOS provides for Safari content blockers, but the list of what to block has to be supplied by each app separately.

First, check whether Settings → Cache / Cookies / History → "Clear on launch" is turned on. When it is on, cookies are erased every time the app starts, so you are logged out again each time you reopen the app. It is off by default, but once turned on it keeps clearing them.

Buying Premium has nothing to do with being logged out. Purchase and restore never touch cookies, so if you were logged out right after a purchase, the cause is the setting above or the "Clear all cache" button on the same screen.

There used to be a bug where tapping a video on certain sites sent you to that site's app or login page. This is fixed in iCap 7.5, so please update to the latest version if you are on an older one.

On some membership sites — especially those whose login lives on a different domain — the logged-in state is not always carried over. Opening the member page in a new tab often works in that case. If it still fails, please tell me through the contact form whether the same page opens in Safari; that helps narrow it down.

Open the Settings tab, tap "Clear All Cache", and confirm "Yes" in the dialog to clear the cache. As a precaution, fully quitting and restarting icap afterward should resolve it.