A small lab  —  serious craft

We build
software that
earnsits place.

Cove Labs is an independent product studio. We make apps, tools, and platforms with the conviction that good software is rare — and worth the effort to get right.

See Our Projects Who we are →
Current Projects

What we're
shipping.

One focused product, built right. More will follow — but only when they're ready.

Cove Media Service
Live iOS Web

Cove Media
Service

Your own private streaming service — for the media that matters to you. Upload audio and video, stream it beautifully to the people you trust, and keep full control. No ads. No tracking. No platform deciding what's allowed.

Download on the App Store
Visit site → Privacy policy →
What makes it different
Adaptive streaming, not file downloads
Content is transcoded into HLS with multiple quality levels — 360p to 1080p for video, 128k to 320k for audio — and streamed directly to any device.
Private by default, no social layer
Everything you upload belongs to your private library. You decide what's visible — no public feeds, no algorithmic recommendations, no engagement metrics.
No ads. No tracking. No profiles.
We don't monetize your viewing habits. No watch-time data sold, no behavioral profiles built, no third-party analytics embedded anywhere in the stack.
Find anything, semantically
Search combines full-text and AI-powered semantic matching — so "relaxing evening music" finds the right tracks even without exact title matches.
Built on an open protocol
HZMediaP is fully documented and open. Any app that implements the spec connects natively — build your own client for any platform.
HZMediaP v1.0

An open protocol.
Build your own client.

The control plane between Cove clients and servers is fully documented and open. Any app that implements HZMediaP connects natively to Cove streaming infrastructure — on iOS, Android, desktop, or the web. The spec covers the full message lifecycle, payload schemas, error codes, and includes working code examples.

Read the protocol spec → Quick start → 
{
  "hzmp":    "1.0",
  "msgid":   "b3f2a1c4-…",
  "type":    "STREAM_INIT",
  "ts":      1712000000000,
  "ref":     null,
  "payload": {
    "content_id":  "abc123",
    "resume":      true
  }
}
How We Work

A few things
we believe in.

Labs exist to experiment — but experiments mean nothing if they never ship. These principles keep us honest about what we're building and why.

01
Ship, then refine.

Good software in people's hands beats perfect software on a roadmap. We bias toward launching and learning over specifying and waiting.

02
Build in public.

Transparency builds trust — with users and with ourselves. We share what we're making, what broke, and what we learned from it.

03
Craft compounds.

The details aren't extras. Typography, interaction feel, error messages — they add up. Users notice craft even when they can't name it.

About the Lab

Small team.
High standards.
No fluff.

We started Cove Labs because the tools for sharing media privately — really privately — don't exist at the quality level they should. Every platform extracts something: your attention, your data, your content rights. We think that's the wrong trade.

So we build what should exist. Starting with Cove Media Service: a private streaming platform where the content is yours, the audience is yours, and no one is watching over your shoulder to monetize the moment.

Get in touch →
Independent
No outside investors. No growth-at-all-costs. We build what we think is worth building.
Focused on Apple platforms
iOS, macOS, and the web. We go deep on the platforms we know best.
Open source where it counts
Some things are better shared. Libraries, tooling, and experiments we think the community can use.
Remote, async-first
Writing is thinking. We document decisions, share updates in public, and move deliberately.
Stay in the loop

Follow what
we're building.

We share updates, early access, and the occasional behind-the-scenes on what's happening in the lab.

Say Hello