What you need to fly: devices, browsers and your television

By the Dronify team · Updated October 2026 · 5 minute read

The short answer is almost nothing. Dronify runs in an ordinary web browser, so there is no app to install, no drone to buy and no licence to hold. If you can watch a video on the device you are reading this on, you can almost certainly fly from it.

The longer answer matters in one place only — putting the picture on your television — and it is worth reading before you spend money on a streaming device. Everything below is what we have measured ourselves, not what a specification sheet claims.

On a computer

Any current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, on Windows, macOS or Linux. You steer with the keyboard and point the camera with the arrow keys, so a laptop's own keyboard is enough; no gamepad, no mouse gymnastics.

The one thing your browser genuinely must have is WebRTC, the same technology video calls use. Every browser named above has had it for years. A browser so old that it lacks it will tell you so rather than showing a black rectangle.

On a phone

Phones fly too, with on-screen sticks instead of keys. Hold the phone sideways — the controls are laid out for landscape, and upright it will simply ask to be turned rather than letting you fly badly. Android and iPhone both work for flying.

For casting to a television, though, the phone has to be an Android phone using Chrome. This is not our choice: no browser on iOS can start a cast, including Chrome and Safari on an iPhone. iPhone owners are not shut out of the television — see the code method below, which works from any device.

Putting the picture on your television

There are two ways, and they end in the same place: the drone's camera fills the television while your phone becomes the controls. The readings, the map and the flight details move to the big screen, and what is in your hands is sticks.

• Cast it. Press Show on a TV in the cockpit, pick your device, and the picture moves across. Needs an Android phone with Chrome and a cast-capable television or streaming device on the same Wi-Fi.
• Type a code. Open novadra.eu/#/tv in the television's own browser and enter the six-character code the cockpit shows you. This works on any television that has a web browser, from any phone or computer, iPhones included. The code is good for two minutes, then a fresh one is offered.

Both routes are view-only by design. A television is a screen in a room where anyone might pick up the remote, so it is never given the ability to fly, turn or land the drone — not by hiding the buttons, but because the system refuses the television every flying command outright. The pilot stays the pilot.

Which cast devices actually keep up

Here is the part worth knowing before you buy. A drone sends a 1080p picture, and decoding 1080p video twenty-five times a second is real work. A streaming device that does that work in dedicated hardware handles it without breaking a sweat. One that has to do it on its general-purpose processor cannot keep up — and when it falls behind, it does not tell you, it simply drops frames and the picture stutters.

We measured both kinds on the same feed, over the same network, on the same evening:

• A device with hardware video decoding — a Google TV Streamer, or any television with Google TV built in — decoded the 1080p picture and dropped none of it at all. Not a single frame across repeated runs.
• An older Chromecast (3rd generation) decoded the same picture in software and dropped about half the frames — 47 to 48%, with no network problem whatsoever and not one lost packet. It simply could not decode fast enough.

So the requirement is a capability rather than a product: a cast device that decodes H.264 video in hardware. The good news is that most televisions sold in the last few years have Google TV built in and already satisfy it, which means most people need to buy nothing. If yours does not, a current streaming box does the job; the original Chromecast dongles do not, and the model we would otherwise have recommended has been discontinued since early 2025 in any case.

If you already own an older Chromecast, it is not useless — it is simply a poor match for a flying picture. The typed-code route to your television's own browser bypasses the cast device entirely, and so does flying on the phone or computer itself.

Your internet connection

Around 5 Mbit/s of download speed is comfortable for a smooth 1080p picture, and the service works on less by sending a softer one. Speed is not the whole story though: flying is a live activity, so delay matters more than it does for films. A video that arrives a second late is fine to watch and awkward to fly by.

If the picture stutters, the usual culprits in order are a distant Wi-Fi access point, a 2.4 GHz network crowded with neighbours, and a VPN. Moving the television or the streaming device onto 5 GHz Wi-Fi, or a cable where one is available, fixes most of it. Casting also requires your phone and your television to be on the same network — a guest network, or a router with device isolation turned on, will hide one from the other.

What you do not need

• A drone. Every location has its own, waiting in a dock.
• A pilot's licence, training or any prior experience.
• An app, a download or a plug-in on any device.
• A games controller, a VR headset or any other accessory.
• A fast computer. The video is decoded by hardware that every modern device already has — the one exception being the older cast devices described above.

Worth knowing before your first flight

• One television per flight. Opening a second ends the first.
• The television shows the picture, the place, the speed and where the drone is over the ground — not the obstacle map, which stays on the pilot's screen where it is read. Safety does not depend on anything being drawn: the limits are enforced by the system regardless of which screen is showing what.
• An administrator approves each new pilot before their first flight, so there is a person in the loop rather than only a sign-up form.