The Complete Guide to Stremio (2024)

Stremio is a media center app focused on streaming movies, TV shows, live channels and more. It is available on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, and other devices.

Stremio aggregates titles from different streaming services under one app, offering a convenient way to organize and watch your favorite content. However, it does not provide any content by itself, it relies on addons to stream files hosted on the internet.

Some of Stremio’s main features are: a media library to organize your content, a calendar to keep track of your shows, support for Chromecast, settings synchronization across all your devices, an integrated torrent engine, and even an internal streaming server to access the app on unsupported devices.

In this guide, we are going to install Stremio and we’ll take a look at all its features and settings. If you’re looking for addons, please read The best Stremio addons.

1. How to install Stremio

Stremio has apps for many devices. There’s a desktop app for Windows, Linux and MacOS. An Android app for smartphones, and an Android TV app that you can also sideload on Fire TV.

In addition to the desktop and mobile apps, there’s a web app accessible through any browser and an iOS app. However, both the web and iOS apps have limited functionality, as they cannot play certain video formats and do not support torrents.

1.1. Installing Stremio on Windows or MacOS

Let’s install Stremio Desktop on Windows or MacOS.

Go to https://www.stremio.com/downloads and select the appropriate version for your operating system.

Wait for the download to complete and run the installer.

On Windows, run the downloaded Stremio+version.exe file and follow the onscreen instructions.

On MacOS, run the downloaded Stremio+version.dmg file and follow the onscreen instructions.

1.2. Installing Stremio on Android, Android TV or Fire TV

Most Android and Android TV users can install Stremio directly from Google Play.

Use the Google Play app on your device to install the App.

If you’re using a Firestick, Fire TV or other Android device without Google Play, you must sideload the APK or use Aurora Store.

Go to https://www.stremio.com/downloads, scroll down to the Android TV section and download the appropriate APK file for your device.

Note: Firestick uses the ARM APK version. You must use an app like Send Files to TV to load the APK on your Fire TV device.

1.3. Installing Stremio on Linux

You can install Stremio Desktop on any Linux distribution, including the Steam Deck, from Flathub.

There are also official packages for Debian and Arch based distributions available on the official Stremio website.

To install the desktop app using Flatpak, open the terminal and enter the following command:

flatpak install flathub com.stremio.Stremio

2. Create a free account

You can create an account using the desktop, mobile or web app.

A Stremio account offers certain advantages. It allows you to synchronize your settings, addons and progress across all your devices. And it also enables the media library and calendar features.

We are going to create an account using the web app.

Go to https://web.stremio.com/#/intro and sign up for a free account.

3. Stremio Interface

The desktop and web app interface presents a Search Bar, a couple of buttons for Settings and Full Screen, and a main menu with 6 tabs: Home, Discover, Library, Calendar, Addons, and Settings.

3.1. Search Bar

In addition to searching for movies and shows, the search bar can also play links or to install addons.

Paste an HTTP or magnet link into the search bar to start streaming a video. Or paste the URL of an addon to install it.

3.2. Home

The Home screen offers direct access to some catalogs like popular movies and series.

When you log in with your account, it will also show you the Continue Watching and New Episodes sections, so you can resume your shows and movies right where you left them.

The default catalogs (Popular movies/series, Featured movies/series) are provided by the Cinemeta addon, an official addon pre-installed by default.

You can add more catalogs and customize the home screen by installing some official and community addons. Check out our favorite catalog addons for Stremio for more info.

3.3. Discover

The discover section allows you to browse titles in the catalogs by using filters. It also shows useful information about the titles like synopsis, duration, cast, poster, and other meta-data.

Use the filters on the top left of the screen to browse catalogs.

The three buttons on the bottom right corner of the screen are “Watch trailer”, “Add to Library” and “Show” (Looks like a green play button)

3.4. Library

The Library is where you keep all your favorite movies and series. You need to sign in with a free Stremio account to use this feature. Items in the library are synchronized across all your devices.

You can add items to your library from the Discovery screen or from the Media info screen.

3.5. Calendar

The calendar shows you the upcoming dates for episodes of series in your library. With this feature you’ll never miss an episode again.

The calendar feature is not yet available on the Android or Android TV apps.

3.6. Addons

The Addons screen is where you can install and manage addons. The app offers a list of official and community addons for you to choose from.

See Also

Fix: Stremio 'No Streams Were Found' - Solutions for Addons Not Working

Some notable official addons are WatchHub, which allows you to stream content from official streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and others, provided you have an account on these services. And the OpenSubtitles addon that allows you to get subtitles in many languages.

There are many different addons developed by the community, some addons offer extra catalogs for the Home and Discover screens, while other addons can find sources to stream content via torrents or HTTPS.

Some addons are not shown by app and must be installed manually. Please read The Best Stremio Addons for more information about the most popular community addons and how to install them.

3.7. Settings

As the name implies, the Setting screen allows you to adjust the settings of the app.

We’ll do a more detailed exploration of the settings later, in the Settings Overview section of this article.

4. Stremio and Trakt

Stremio already synchronizes your progress, library and watched items across all your instances, so using Trakt with Stremio is optional.

But what if you also use other apps to watch content? That’s where Trakt comes in.

Trakt.tv is an free online service that lets you track and organize your favorite movies and series. Trakt also generates suggestions based on your watched content and it can be integrated with many media centers like Kodi, Plex, Emby, Jellyfin and more.

When you enable Trakt Scrobbling on Stremio, your progress and watched status will be synchronized with Trakt, this process is known as scrobbling.

Furthermore, the official Trakt Integration addon will be installed. This addon adds the following features:

• Synchronize your Trakt Collection and Stremio Library.
• Add catalogs for movies and series: Trakt History, Trakt Watchlist, Trakt Collection, and Trakt Recommendations.

Let’s integrate Trakt with Stremio. Before we begin, go to the Trakt.tv website and sign in with your Trakt account.

1. Go to the Settings section and press the Authenticate button next to Trakt Scrobbling.

2. A browser window will open, press yes to authorize Stremio with Trakt.

Now, the official Trakt Integration addon will be installed. You can access the newly installed catalogs in the Home and Discover screens.

3. Use the filters on the Discovery screen to select catalogs.

4.1. Import Trakt Collection into the Library

If you’ve been using Trakt for a while, it is possible that you have many items in your collection and want to import them into the library.

To import your Trakt collection to Stremio, you must use the User Dashboard on Stremio’s website.

1. Go to https://www.stremio.com/login and sign in with your account..

2. Select the Integratons tab, then press Import next to Trakt Scrobbling.

All the items in your Collection should now appear in the Library. The Calendar should also display the upcoming episodes for the imported shows.

5. Stremio Web and the Streaming Server

If have an unsupported smart TV, or a iOS device, or maybe you just don’t want to install the Stremio app in all your devices. The Stremio Web app with streaming server backend might be the right solution for you.

Stremio offers a web app that you can use in any browser by visiting https://web.stremio.com. The web app is very similar to the desktop app but has some limitations, as it can’t play certain video formats, stream torrents or local files.

To solve these limitations, the Stremio Desktop app has an internal streaming server that handles advanced streaming methods, and does on-the-fly transcoding of non-standard media formats.

As long as one of your devices is running Stremio Desktop, you’ll be able to access the fully featured version of Stremio Web from any other device via the web browser.

1. On Stremio Desktop, go to Settings, select Streaming. Press the Enable remote https server dropdown and select an IP address.

2. Then, copy the URL in Streaming HTTPS endpoint.

Now go to Stremio Web and sign in with your account. You’ll probably see a “Streaming server not available” message, let’s fix that.

3. On Stremio Web, open the Settings, select Streaming and press the cog icon next to the URL. Enter the Streaming HTTPS endpoint URL.

All done! Stremio Web is now connected to the streaming server in your Stremio Desktop app. Verify that the Status is Online.

On iOS, you should also change Play in external player to VLC or Outplayer since Safari does not support many standard video formats.

There is also a headless server called Stremio Service that you can run on Windows, MacOS, Linux and even Docker. It is currently on alpha stage and can only run on the host machine as a companion for Stremio Web.

6. Settings Overview

Now, let’s take a look at the settings on the Desktop app. These are a bit different than settings in the mobile or TV app.

6.1. General

In the general section you can manage your account and UI settings.

The following options are available in this section.

• Import from Facebook: Import your liked movies and series from facebook to your library.
• Export User data: Get a json file with all the data that Stremio collects for your account.
• Suscribe to calendar: Integrate Stremio’s calendar with your device’s calendar.
• Contact support: Open Stremio Help Desk website.
• Request account deletion: Close your account and delete your data from Stremio’s server.
• Change password: Request a password reset link that will be sent to your email address.

You can also enable Trakt Scrobbling, please read Stremio and Trakt for more information.

6.2. Player

The Player section has settings for Subtitles, Audio, Controls and more.

Some of the settings on this section are:

• Default Subtitles Language: Select your preferred language for subtitles.
• Default Subtitles Size: Set the size for subtitles.
• Subtitles background: Add background shade to subtitles.
• Subtitles color: Set font color.
• Subtitles outline color: Set color for font outline.
• Default Audio Track: Select your preferred language for audio. If specified audio track is not present, it plays the first available audio track.
• Arrow keys seek time: How many seconds of video to skip when pressing arrow keys.
• Auto-play next episode: Enable to automatically play next episode.
• Show notification to start next episode: Show information of next episode in notification at the end each episode.
• Hardware-accelerated decoding: Enable this option if your device supports hardware accelerated decoding.

6.3. Streaming

Configure streaming parameters.

• Caching: Select cache size. Files bigger than the selected cache size will still be fully downloaded to your disk temporarily, exceeding the cache limit.
• Caching Drive: Set a folder to use as cache.
• Enable the local files addon: Turn it on to add your local files to Stremio.
• Enable remote HTTPS connections: Allows you to connect to your own Stremio server using Stremio Web. Read Using Stremio on unsupported devices for more information.
• Torrent profile: Select the torrent profile engine, change only if you’re having issues streaming torrents.
• Streaming server URL: Stremio Desktop has an internal streaming server that’s usually connected to your device’s loopback interface.
• Streaming HTTPS endpoint: The URL you need to input in Stremio Web to remotely connect to your Stremio Desktop streaming server.

6.4. Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts to navigate the interface and control playback.

Now that you know all the details about the Stremio app, why not install a couple of addons. Please visit our list of The best Stremio addons for more information.