Features

Everything Loki Eye does, on one page.

Loki Eye is a network video recorder for IP cameras. Footage stays on storage you control, and recording takes a fraction of one CPU core.

Recording

Loki Eye writes what your cameras send straight to disk, so the recorder does very little work.

No re-encoding: H.264 and H.265 streams are copied to disk exactly as the camera sends them, with no loss of quality and no decoding.
Continuous or on motion: Record around the clock, or only when a camera reports motion.
Pre-roll and post-roll: Adjustable seconds before and after each event, so a clip starts before the door opens and ends after it closes.
Your recordings folder: Choose where footage is written and how long each recorded segment is.
Almost no load: 3.0% of one CPU core to record eight 1080p cameras, with 40 MB of memory. Measured on macOS while the settings screenshot was taken.

Your cameras already know when something moves. Loki Eye listens to them instead of analysing video itself.

ONVIF motion events: Motion detection comes from each camera’s own ONVIF events, so the recorder never analyses video.
Person and vehicle events: Record on the person and vehicle events of cameras that report them.
No accelerator needed: No GPU, Coral, or NPU. No AI runs on the recorder, so an old laptop or a Mac mini is enough.

Simple limits that keep the disk from filling up, and tell you what they mean in days.

Retention by age: Delete footage once it is older than the number of days you set.
One storage cap: A hard cap across all cameras together, so recordings never grow past the space you give them.
Free-disk floor: Keep a minimum amount of free space on the disk for everything else on the machine.
Days of footage: Loki Eye shows how many days of recordings your storage cap allows.

One calm interface for watching live, going back in time, and checking the recorder.

Camera layouts: Drag, resize, and save layouts, such as one large camera with the rest around it.
Combined playback: Every camera on one timeline for the day, with motion clips and events, playing back in step.
24-hour timeline: The last day of recordings sits under the live view, so you can jump straight to a clip.
Storage and system health: See disk use and the state of the recorder on the same screen as your cameras.

Install the app, add your cameras in the browser, and it starts recording.

Any ONVIF or RTSP camera: Add a camera by its stream address. Cameras with ONVIF or an RTSP stream work, whatever the brand.
Tested brands: We run Loki Eye against Dahua, Hikvision, Reolink, TP-Link Tapo, Amcrest, Annke, and Uniview cameras. Setup guides for each brand
Stream probing: Loki Eye checks each stream as you add a camera, so you know it works before you rely on it.
ONVIF port test: Confirms the camera’s ONVIF port answers, so motion events will reach the recorder.

With a licence, open the recorder from any browser on your network.

Phones, laptops, and wall displays: Open the recorder’s address in any browser on your network and sign in. No app to install.
Password protected: An access password you set on the recorder, stored only as a bcrypt hash. Repeated wrong attempts are slowed down.
Away from home: Connect to your network over your own VPN, such as WireGuard or Tailscale. Nothing is exposed to the internet by us.
On the recorder, free: The free version is viewed on the recorder computer itself.

A local HTTP API puts your cameras in Home Assistant and other home automation, with no cloud account.

MJPEG stream: A continuous live stream for every camera. Use it on dashboards, wall tablets, and camera cards that should always be moving.
Still image: A fresh JPEG of any camera on request. Attach it to a notification when a door opens, or save it from an automation.
Home Assistant and more: Both work with Home Assistant’s built-in camera integrations, and with Node-RED, openHAB, and anything else that reads an MJPEG or image URL.
Webhooks and MQTT: Send data only to the addresses you enter. None of it goes through us.

Your footage never passes through anyone else’s servers.

No cloud: Live video, recordings, snapshots, camera addresses, and camera passwords stay on the recorder.
Usage statistics you can switch off: The app sends only a count of installs: version, operating system, and how many cameras. No footage or camera details. Switch it off in About.
No account for the free tier: The free edition needs no account and makes no licence checks.
Signed updates and licences: The app refuses any update or licence reply that was not signed by us. The update check can be switched off. See every connection it makes

Free for two cameras. Unlimited cameras for €29 + VAT a year, or €99 + VAT once.

Windows, macOS, and Linux: A 64-bit installer for Windows 10 and 11, disk images for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and a 64-bit AppImage for Linux.
One recorder per licence: Move a licence to another computer by removing it from the current installation first.
Works offline: A signed licence stays valid offline for up to 48 hours between checks.
If a licence lapses: Your cameras and settings remain, and Loki Eye keeps recording your first two cameras.

See how these features line up against Blue Iris, iSpy Agent DVR, Synology, and Frigate.

Install Loki Eye, add your cameras, and it starts recording to your own disk.