If you’re reinventing the camera, why not make it fly? That’s the concept behind Lily, a drone that puts flying photography at its core, but doesn’t require a pilot’s license to use. Promising not only autonomous flight but eye-catching drone footage with zero operator talent, the new quadcopter wants to usurp the GoPro as the extreme sportsperson’s go-to gadget, and snap the selfie-stick for family gatherings. I ventured into the park to strike a pose as I was filmed from the sky.

Aerial is the official companion app for the Aerial screen saver for macOS. It takes care of install, automatic updates and more. This utility will install the Aerial screensaver and keep you up to date! I thought Aerial had auto-updates with Sparkle? ‎The aerialBox/satBox Remote Control App which controls aerialBox T2200 & satBox S8200 Set-Top Boxes within same WiFi network. App will identify your aerialBox / satBox STB devices automatically. User can identify the device by its IP Address or user-friendly name.

Turns out, Lily’s origins weren’t in the desire to make an easier drone, but simply a better camera. When I met with company founders Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow, they explained that the impetus had been incomplete family photos: Antoine’s mother always ended up holding the camera, and as such was never in the shots themselves.

The solution, the pair decided, was Lily. Described as a flying camera, it’s been two years in the making and, though it might clearly resemble a regular quadcopter, it’s intended to be operated in a very different way.

Your Versatile Flight Companion. Built to optimize your aerial experience, the DJI Fly app empowers users to fly, capture incredible images, edit, and share with ease. The app interface was designed to be simplified and ultra-intuitive. Aerial Companion 1.2 (the app that installs/keep Aerial up to date) now includes a new cool feature, fullscreen mode! If you have a multi monitor setup, you can now launch Aerial on just one screen while you keep working on the other. This is still a bit experimental so feel free to read this post for more information about it if you are.

Most of us are familiar with drone photography and videography: sweeping arial shots, tight circling pans, and diving tracer footage. What they all generally require is a talented operator at the remote and, often, a second person manually controlling what the camera is pointing at.

Lily aims to retire both of those people. Launched by tossing it into the air, the camera-drone stabilizes in a few seconds and then follows a tracking device – a small, circular control pad with just five buttons – wherever it’s carried. Put that tracker in your pocket as you walk through the park, and Lily will follow along, recording as it goes. Drop it in your rucksack as you kayak, or snowboard, or do any number of extreme sports, and Lily will zip along after you.

The goal is to make drone photography as plug-and-play as possible. Lily has a built-in, non-removable li-ion battery good for around 20 minutes of flight time, and which recharges in two hours. It’s waterproof, to IP67 standards, so if it plummets into the river or gets caught in the rain, it’s not game-over (plus it floats, too); the remote is water-resistant and comes with a waterproof wrist-case, and lasts for four hours. The rotors are easily-replaced plastic, and the four motors are standard parts which can be readily swapped out.

From the outside it’s clearly designed to be unintimidating, down to the cutesy light-up eyes which also work as status LEDs, but inside there’s a whole lot going on. Hematology oncology calculators. WiFi a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.0 take care of connectivity, and there’s 4GB of storage for recording 1080/60p or 720/120p video, or 12-megapixel stills; a microSD card slot can augment that. A microphone in the remote adds audio to the video file.

As for sensors, Lily uses an accelerometer, three-axis gyroscope, barometer, and GPS – as well as footage from both front-facing and bottom-facing cameras – to fly itself at up to 25 mph. The camera is mounted on an internal rubber bracket for stabilization, and there’s digital gimbaling so that even though it doesn’t physically move – beyond the drone itself swiveling and tilting – it can still shift the frame around.

When Balaresque and Bradlow demonstrated the current Lily prototype to me, a backup manual controller was nearby but turned off, just for safety purposes. Instead, the drone followed us through the park, smoothly twisting and turning to keep us in frame.

It can roam between 5 feet above head height to 50 feet, depending on the shot, and between 5-100 feet away from the controller; out of range, or with a dying battery, and it’ll automatically land (you can also be flashy and have it land directly onto your outstretched hand).

From either the tracker or the companion app for iOS and Android (which can also be used to watch a live stream of what the drone is capturing), you can control how Lily films. Initially, that will mean the basics: keeping the user in-frame, and then either following them, looping around them, zooming in at them or pulling back out from them, or hovering near them.

However, Balaresque and Bradlow explained, the goal is increasingly advanced camera intelligence, effectively turning Lily into a self-determining cameraman. That might mean switching between high-speed burst stills and video depending on how the subject is moving, or automatically increasing the frame rate for shots that could look great in slow-motion, like ski jumps.

There are also plans for supporting multiple drones in use simultaneously: a flock of autonomous cameras, that not only position themselves for their best shot, but intercommunicate while doing it.

So, one Lily might be focusing on low-level close-ups, while a second could be flying higher up, getting a broader view. If the idea gains traction, the duo – whose team includes former Google and Dropbox talent – plan different models and sizes of Lily, with various degrees of flight time and filming capabilities.

It’s ambitious stuff, but the tracking works and there’s certainly an appetite for drone-style photography out there. While existing models have attempted to make both flying and filming easier – both DJI’s Phantom 3 and 3D Robotics’ Solo have some degree of autopilot abilities – none have gone quite so far in autonomy as Lily does.

As someone who loves drones but who is a terrible drone pilot, I’m definitely intrigued. However Lily’s goal of convincing, not just geeks like me, but the mass market looking for a cleverer camera for their outdoor fun is a taller order.

Lily pre-orders kick off today at $499 for the first 29 days, though the final retail price will be $999. It’s expected to ship in February 2016.

MORE Lily

Table of Contents

How to Install Aerial

If this is your first time on GitHub or you are new to this, we reccomend the following steps:

1. Navigate to the latest release
2. Select AerialCompanion.dmg Disregard the remaining files/assets
3. Navigate to your Downloads folder (or wherever you chose to save AerialCompanion.dmg)
4. Double click on AerialCompanion.dmg
5. It will momentarily pause to open the DMG file.
6. You will then see a window that prompts you to drag Aerial Companion.app to the Applications folder. Plese drag and drop as shown below:


7. Now double click on the Applications folder that you just dragged the icon to.
8. Find and double click on Aerial.app
9. This will launch and install Aerial. You will notice a small circle in your menubar (at the top of your screen)
10. Lastly, go to the menubar, click on the Aerial icon and select Open screen saver settings..


11. Click on the 'Screen Saver' tab at the top of System Preferences
12. And select Aerial on the left hand side.
13. You're all set! If you want to change your settings, simply click on on the right hand side.
14. You can now eject and delete AerialCompanion.dmg

How to Change Aerial's Settings

1. Open System Preferences
2. Click on Desktop & Screen Saver in System Preferneces


3. Scroll down until you see 'Aerial' in the left hand panel
4. Click on Screen Saver Options
5. Now you are ready to manage your Aerial settings!

Understanding and Using Aerial Companion

Aerial Companion was introduced with Aerial 2.0. It's an independent application that allows for additional functionality for Aerial. Built entirely in Swift, the program is agile and doesn't hog a significant amount of memory while performing vital tasks. If you installed Aerial directly from GitHub, you may not have Aerial Companion, but if you installed it through the instructions above, you likely do.

The main benefit of using Aerial Companion is that it allows for automatic updates of Aerial in the background. To enable this, please follow the steps below.

1. After installing Aerial Companion, launch Aerial.app from your Applications folder
2. You will notice a menubar icon appear at the top of your screen. Click on the icon.
3. Set your Desired Version as either the current stable release or beta releases (if you like taking a risk!). At times, these version numbers may be the same if there's no public beta available.
4. Set your update mode as Automatic to enable automatic updates. You can also choose to be notified about new updates, but this will require you to use Aerial Companion more frequently.
5. Set Aerial Companion to check for updates every Hour, day, or Week. For the best experience it is reccomended that you set this to check for updates every day.


If you want Aerial Companion to automatically check for updates and automatically install them, it is not important for Aerial Companion to be visible in your menubar. Instead you can have it run in the background.
6. To run in the background choose Launch and then select In the background (no menu).

Videos Not Playing

If you have a selection of videos you want to play, but they aren't playing check the following:

• Have you selected the videos you want to play?
• Have you cached the videos you want to play?

Have you selected the videos you want to play?

You can do this in two different ways. Either favorite the videos and then choose to play only your favorites, or limit the selection of videos that you play.

To play only favorites:

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Favorite the videos you want to play.
• You can favorite an entire selection by right clicking on the left hand panel


3. Click on the tab in the sidebar (at the top)
4. At the top of System Preferences, click on the dropdown next to and select Only Favorites.

To play a single category of videos:

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Click on the tab in the sidebar (at the top)
3. At the top of System Preferences, click on the dropdown next to and select Location, Time, Scene, or Source then select the proper sub-section to play.

Have I Cached the Correct Videos?

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Click on the tab in the sidebar (at the top)
3. Click Download rotation on the top right (or right click on Currently playing in the sidebar and click Cache missing videos

Managing Cache Size

Aerial can cache videos in two different ways:

• Manually
• Automatically

When caching is set to manual you will need to download and manage your cache entirely manually. When set to automatic, you can set the size of your cache and Aerial will fill it with the videos you love!

Manual Cache Management

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Click on the settings tab (gear at the top of the sidebar)
3. Click on Cache on the sidebar
4. Uncheck Automatically download videos


5. Now download any videos you want to cache manually.
6. Note that this may take up a significant amount of disk space. To delete or prune your cache, click the Show in Finder button and delete any videos you no longer want.

Automatic Cache Management

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Click on the settings tab (gear at the top of the sidebar)
3. Click on Cache on the sidebar
4. Check Automatically download videos


5. Set your cache limit size - This is the MAXIMUM size you want your cache. If you don't want to set a maximum, move the slider all the way to the right.
6. Select how often you want to rotate your videos in your cache

NOTE: If you have fewer videos selected than your cache size limit, videos will not rotate. If your cache is larger than your limit, then over the course of the selected time period your cache will be automatically pruned until you are under your cache limit and then videos will periodically rotate).

Selecting a Video Format

The short answer is:

• Aerial will select what it believes is the best choice for your machine by default
• If you have an older Mac (2011-2014) you should use 1080p H.264.
• If your Mac is 2015-2017 consider use of 1080p HEVC.
• If you have a newer Mac (Late 2017-present) you can consider using 1080p HEVC, HDR, or, if you have more than 8GB of RAM you can give 4K a shot!
• If you have the Pro Display XDR, 4K HDR is reccomended.
• If you find that videos are 'stuttering' or 'lagging' decrease your video quality.

NOTE: 4K HDR requires the most intensive processing and requires a HDR compatible monitor and a reccomended minimum of 8GB of RAM.

If you'd still like to learn more, we have written about it more extensively in the dropdown below.

About HEVC, hardware decoding, and HDR

Aerial uses Apple's AVFoundation framework to play the videos as your screen saver. When available, AVFoundation will use hardware decoding (from your CPU or your graphics card) to minimize the resources needed for video playback. You can find guidelines in the help button next to the Preferred video format setting.

By default, Aerial uses 1080p H.264 videos which is the most compatible format. Please note that all 4K HEVC videos are encoded with the Main10 profile, which may not be hardware accelerated by your machine, while some other HEVC videos (encoded in Main profile) will be.

While we wish to provide everyone with the best setting for their machine, the GVA framework from Apple doesn't let us distinguish HEVC Main10 profile acceleration from general HEVC acceleration. Early feedback we gathered also seems to point that on machines with multiple decoding options (Intel QuickSync and AMD UVD), QuickSync will always be preferred (even if you 'force' the discrete GPU use with an external monitor or via code, as of macOS Mojave).

These are our recommendations so far:

• Macs older than 2011 may lack H.264 acceleration.
• Macs with an Intel CPU (With iGPU) from the Sandy Bridge (2011) generation to Broadwell (Early 2015) should have H.264 hardware acceleration available.
• Late 2015 and 2016 Macs (Skylake and Kaby Lake) may only have partially accelerated HEVC decoding. We recommended you stick to 1080p H.264 on laptops. You may consider the HEVC format on desktops but understand that decoding may be CPU intensive and spin up your fans.
• Macs 2017 and up should have full HEVC acceleration (the 2017 12 inch Macbook being a notable exception, only having partially accelerated HEVC decoding).

You can easily check for yourself what to expect by opening a video in Quicktime (Use the Show in Finder option in the Cache tab to find the cached videos). In Activity Monitor, the AV Framework GVA process is called VTDecoderXPCService.

About macOS Versions

Because we use Apple's Framework, what is supported will depend on the version of macOS you use.

• You need at least macOS 10.13 to play HEVC videos
• You need at least macOS 10.15 to play HDR videos

How to Change Your Video:

1. If you have previously downloaded/cached videos please open Aerial Settings and click on 'Advanced' in the sidebar. Click on


2. Inside this folder, click on the Cache folder
3. Keep the folder, but delete all content inside. Then empty your trash.
4. Go to Aerial > Settings > Advanced
5. Select your preferred video format


6. Close and relaunch System Preferences.
7. Open Aerial Settings again and select the videos you want. Then download (cache) these videos and they will download in the selected format.

Downloading Your Rotation

The Download Rotation button is visible under the tab on the left.

Videos in Aerial only play when they are cached on your computer. This allows them to play while you are not connected to the internet and always play immediately when your screen saver starts.

To download (cache) an entire rotation:

1. Click on the tab in the sidebar (at the top)
2. Click the Download Rotation button on the top right

3. In the event that you want to download videos from a specific category (for example if you want to select only certain videos to play) you can additionally right click on any category and select 'Cache missing videos'

NOTE: If this option is not available, it is because you have already downloaded these videos!

REMINDER: Only videos that are cached AND that are shown in the tab will play when you start your screen saver.

tvOS Versions

All the videos are still available in Aerial, don't worry!

Datacolor driver download for windows 10. Aerial 2.0 takes advantage of the latest available videos from tvOS. tvOS 11 and 12 are not shown as tvOS 13 actually contains these videos!

tvOS 10 videos support 1080p quality while tvOS 13 can support 4K and 4K HDR videos. You can still play videos from tvOS 13 in 1080p as well.

Time Settings

Aerial has the ability to adapt the videos that are played to the time of day in the categories of:

• Morning/Sunrise
• Daytime
• Evening/Sunset
• Nighttime

The option to adapt your own videos is entirely optional but can be based on a variety of different settings on your Mac as seen below:

Use My Location

Use my location is the reccomended setting here. Aerial does not collect your location data but instead uses macOS Location Services to determine an approximate latitude and longitude in order to set Sunrise and Sunset times to be exact to the second.

Use macOS Night Shift

Another option is to use your existing Night Shift settings to adapt videos. If you have customized your Night Shift settings this may be a good option to adapt your videos as night shift is enabled or disabled.

Manually Specify Sunrise and Sunset Times

If you want to take advantage of adapted videos but without Night Shift, Light/Dark Mode, or Location Services, you can isntead set a specific time for Sunrise and Sunset and the videos will adapt based on that pre-set time

Adapt Videos Based on Light/Dark Mode

If you already have Light/Dark Mode enabled to switch automatically, this will allow the videos to be shown based on your Light or Dark Mode settings.

Do Not Adapt Videos

If you do not wish to adapt videos based on your settings or location, this option will disable this feature.

You can also choose to alternatively manually set Light or Dark Mode and only show the nighttime videos in Dark Mode so as not to be too bright!

Installation Errors/Corporate VPNs and Firewalls

Under specific circumstances it is possible for installation to fail due to a variety of reasons. We have received reports that certain antivirus applications, corporate firewalls, and corporate VPNs can block Aerial from installaing or functioning properly. Errors such as the one below (..That were never supposed to be seen) may be a sign that this is the issue.

Currently, the only workaround under these circumstances is to disable the corporate VPN/Firewall. If this is not possible, we recommend checking back later to see if a workaround has been implemented into Aerial.

Issues with Little Snitch and Network Monitors

Little Snitch and other network monitors can create similar issues to Corporate VPNs or Firewalls. If you have a network monitor a variety of issues may arise. You can try and troubleshoot these issues:

Reset Aerial's Settings

To fully reset Aerial's settings back to default:

1. Open Aerial Settings in System Preferences
2. Click on the Settings Tab
3. Click on Advanced in the sidebar


4. Click
5. Once clicked, you will see the following popup and your settings will be reset
6. You must quit and restart System Preferences for this to take effect
7. On your next launch you will be prompted to set up your settings for Aerial

Uninstall Aerial

Uninstallation of Aerial depends on your current macOS version and how you installed. Please click the relevant macOS version or installation method below to learn how to uninstall Aerial.

Aerial Companion

macOS Big Sur

If you installed Aerial Companion:

1. Please go to your /Applications folder.
2. Right click on Aerial.app and select Move to Trash
3. Click on your Desktop then at the top of your screen select Finder>Empty Trash

macOS Catalina (10.15)

This guide will walk you through how to remove Aerial and it's library files.

If you installed Aerial Companion:

1. Please go to your /Applications folder.
2. Right click on Aerial.app and select Move to trash
3. Click on your Desktop then at the top of your screen select Finder>Empty Trash

If you additionally want to delete all your remaining library and preference files, enter the following commands into Terminal. Download latest google chrome.

These instructions will remove Aerial and all its files on macOS 10.15.

To remove Aerial if installed for all users

Remove Aerial if installed for your user

Remove preferences

Remove Application Support files

Remove Caches files if any

Pre-macOS Catalina (10.15)

This guide will walk you through how to remove Aerial and it's library files.

If you installed Aerial Companion:

1. Please go to your /Applications folder.
2. Right click on Aerial.app and select Move to trash
3. Click on your Desktop then at the top of your screen select Finder>Empty Trash

If you additionally want to delete all your remaining library and preference files, enter the following commands into Terminal.

These instructions will remove Aerial and all its files on macOS 10.14 and earlier

Remove Aerial if installed for all users

Aerial Companion App Download

Remove Aerial if installed for your user

Remove preferences

Remove Application Support files

Aerial Companion App Free

Remove Caches files if any

More Technical Questions

This FAQ was made largely to help those who are new to Aerial and GitHub. If you have more technical questions you need answered, please visit our Additional Documentation available here