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**I got Stremio running natively on Raspberry Pi 5 (ARM64 Ubuntu) — no emulation, real .deb install** #477

Description

@fragarray

Repo: https://github.com/fragarray/stremio-rpi5

So… I went down the rabbit hole of trying to run Stremio on ARM Linux.

Spoiler: there’s no official support for ARM64, and most attempts out there are broken, outdated, or require painful manual builds.

I wanted something simple:

install → launch → watch

So I built it myself.


What actually works now

  • Native ARM64 build (no box64, no hacks, no emulation)

  • Install with a single command:

    sudo apt install ./stremio_*.deb
  • Hardware decoding enabled (RPi5 V4L2 M2M — smooth 1080p playback)

  • Auto-starts everything (server + UI) like a normal desktop app

  • Proper integration (icons, magnet links, file associations)


What was broken (and now isn’t)

  • Stremio wasn’t compatible with modern mpv (0.40+)
  • Web UI was disabling hardware decoding
  • Qt WebEngine had initialization issues on ARM
  • No packaging system for ARM64

All of that is patched in this repo.


Under the hood (quick version)

Stremio =

  • Node.js streaming backend
  • Qt/WebEngine frontend + mpv player

I added a launcher that:

  • starts the backend if needed
  • waits for it to be ready
  • launches the UI
  • cleans everything on exit

So it behaves like a normal app, not a science experiment.


Who this is for

  • Raspberry Pi 5 users
  • ARM mini-PC / SBC users
  • Anyone tired of fighting builds that almost work

Goal

Make Stremio on ARM:

boringly easy


If you test it on other ARM boards or improve something, let me know. Curious to see how far this can go.

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