androshack/stremio-libtorrent-server repository overview

⁠🎬 stremio-libtorrent-server

⁠Your own Stremio streaming server — open, fast, and yours. One command to run it. 🚀

Self-host the complete Stremio experience — the web player and a powerful, open BitTorrent streaming engine — in a single container on your own hardware. It's a full torrent client, not just a streamer: it downloads whole files and can pin favorites to keep & seed. Point any Stremio client (browser, Android TV, Tizen, webOS, desktop) at it and press play.

No subscription. No tracking. No black box. 100% free and open — our gift to the community. 💛

⁠✨ Why you'll love it

• 🚀 Install in one command. docker run … — that's the whole setup. No building, no config files.
• 📺 Just works on TVs. Automatic trusted HTTPS (a real Let's Encrypt cert) that smart TVs actually accept — zero certificate headaches.
• ⚡ Faster, more reliable. Unlike the closed stock server, this one accepts inbound peers and fetches playhead-first, so streams start quicker and hold up on thin swarms.
• 🎛️ Truly yours to control. Real dials for cache, buffering, peers, and transcode — tune deeply, or never touch a thing.
• 🖥️ Hardware transcode, optional. Intel VAAPI / NVIDIA NVENC when you expose a GPU to the container (opt-in — see Advanced⁠), with graceful CPU fallback — and a missing GPU never stops it from starting.
• 🧩 Your addons, your choice. It's neutral infrastructure: it streams whatever a Stremio addon hands it. It bundles no content and is not a source.
• 📚 A real torrent client, if you want one. Turn on the optional library page and the server stops being a passthrough: queue a download before you sit down, see which episodes of a pack are actually on the disk, and keep the ones you want protected from the cache evictor — and it seeds what it keeps, like any decent client should. It also publishes itself as a Stremio addon, so what is on the box shows up as a row on your board and as a "play the local copy" entry beside every other source — on your LAN only, and off unless you turn the library on — see Watch your library inside Stremio⁠ for the four steps. Off by default; set STREMIOSRV_LIBRARY_UI=true to try it.
• 🔓 Open source. Read it, change it, trust it.

⁠🚀 Quick Start — anyone can do this

1. Install Docker⁠. 2. Copy one command below — whichever matches your hardware — and replace YOUR_SERVER_IP with your machine's LAN IP (e.g. 192.168.1.50). Not sure which? Use the first one — it works on everything. (The GPU options only speed up the occasional video that needs converting; they're not required.)

💻 No GPU — works everywhere (start here)

docker run -d --name stremio --restart unless-stopped \
  -e IPADDRESS=YOUR_SERVER_IP \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 12470:12470 -p 6881:6881/tcp -p 6881:6881/udp \
  -v stremio-data:/root/.stremio-server \
  androshack/stremio-libtorrent-server

🟦 Intel / AMD GPU (VAAPI) — same, plus --device /dev/dri

docker run -d --name stremio --restart unless-stopped \
  -e IPADDRESS=YOUR_SERVER_IP \
  --device /dev/dri:/dev/dri \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 12470:12470 -p 6881:6881/tcp -p 6881:6881/udp \
  -v stremio-data:/root/.stremio-server \
  androshack/stremio-libtorrent-server

🟩 NVIDIA GPU (NVENC) — plus --gpus all (first install the NVIDIA Container Toolkit⁠ on the host)

docker run -d --name stremio --restart unless-stopped \
  -e IPADDRESS=YOUR_SERVER_IP \
  --gpus all \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 12470:12470 -p 6881:6881/tcp -p 6881:6881/udp \
  -v stremio-data:/root/.stremio-server \
  androshack/stremio-libtorrent-server

🟦🟩 Both Intel + NVIDIA — both flags

docker run -d --name stremio --restart unless-stopped \
  -e IPADDRESS=YOUR_SERVER_IP \
  --gpus all --device /dev/dri:/dev/dri \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 12470:12470 -p 6881:6881/tcp -p 6881:6881/udp \
  -v stremio-data:/root/.stremio-server \
  androshack/stremio-libtorrent-server

3. Open it:

• 🌐 In a browser (same network): http://YOUR_SERVER_IP:8080 — browser playback covers MP4/H.264; for MKV/HEVC content use the desktop or TV apps (browsers can't decode those).
• 🔒 Trusted HTTPS (and TVs): run docker logs stremio and use the printed URL — it looks like https://192-168-1-50.519b6502d940.stremio.rocks:12470 (replace 192-168-1-50 with your internal IP, dots written as dashes).

Sign into Stremio, add your addons, press play. 🍿 (Prefer a file? Grab compose.hub.yaml⁠ → IPADDRESS=YOUR_SERVER_IP docker compose -f compose.hub.yaml up -d.)

⁠🧰 Minimum hardware

It's light — direct play (most content) barely touches the CPU; the GPU only matters for transcoding.

⁠📺 On your TV

Smart TVs insist on a trusted HTTPS connection — a self-signed cert won't do. Set IPADDRESS and this server fetches a real Let's Encrypt certificate for you automatically (via Stremio's *.stremio.rocks magic DNS, which maps that long URL back to your server's IP — even on your LAN). In the TV's Stremio app, set the Streaming Server URL to the …stremio.rocks:12470 address shown by docker logs stremio.

Styled subtitles on the TV. A Stremio TV app built on stremio-video 0.0.97 or later can draw a file's own ASS/SSA subtitles with their styling and fonts, instead of as plain text. Turn on the player's ASS subtitles styling setting: each styled track then shows as a second entry, marked (styled), next to the TV's plain one. The server reads only the stretch being watched, a minute at a time, and the TV's own playback keeps priority over it. Older TV apps keep their plain subtitles.

⁠🌍 Want the full swarm? Forward one port.

A lot of BitTorrent's speed comes from peers reaching you — and home routers block that by default. For maximum peers and throughput, forward port 6881 (TCP and UDP) on your router to your server. It works fine without forwarding — you'll just reach fewer peers on sparse torrents. (Unlike the stock server, this one actually listens for inbound peers, so the forward genuinely pays off.)

⁠🔐 Run behind a VPN

Tunnel only the streaming server's BitTorrent traffic through a VPN (kill-switch + optional port-forwarding) using gluetun⁠, while your LAN keeps reaching the player/admin directly:

WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY=... WIREGUARD_ADDRESSES=10.2.0.2/32 IPADDRESS=<your-LAN-IP> \
  docker compose -f compose.vpn.yaml up -d

Notes:

• The VPN's kill-switch is on by default — if the tunnel drops, torrent traffic stops (no IP leak).
• Inbound peers / seeding need a provider that supports port-forwarding (e.g. ProtonVPN, PIA, AirVPN). Without it you still stream, but with outbound-only connectivity.
• Set FIREWALL_OUTBOUND_SUBNETS to your LAN CIDR(s) so the player and admin stay reachable.

⁠🔧 Advanced — tune it your way

Everything is a plain -e NAME=value environment variable:

Trackers & peer discovery. Every torrent is announced to a curated set of public trackers (baked-in defaults) plus DHT, LSD and PEX — so a bare infohash finds peers even when the magnet carries no tracker, exactly like the stock Stremio server. Extend it two ways: add your own with STREMIOSRV_EXTRA_TRACKERS, or point STREMIOSRV_TRACKER_LIST_URL at a maintained list (e.g. ngosang/trackerslist⁠) to keep the set current — that fetch runs in a background thread and never blocks startup or playback (offline → last cached list → the built-in defaults). The bigger peering win, though, is inbound connectivity: forward STREMIOSRV_BT_LISTEN_PORT (6881) so you reach the whole swarm, not just what trackers hand back.

Your node remembers the network. Joining the DHT needs an entry point, and with nothing saved that means a handful of bootstrap routers run by other people — every reboot, forever. So the server writes its DHT routing table to <cache>/dht.state (every 30s, and on shutdown) and restores it on start. A machine that has been online even once rejoins through hundreds of peers it already knows, with nobody else's server in the path. That matters most for a box that sits powered off for months and then gets plugged back in. A corrupt or missing file is not an error — it just falls back to a normal cold start. Set STREMIOSRV_DHT_BOOTSTRAP_NODES if you would rather not use the built-in routers for that first boot either.

Next-episode prefetch (opt-in, off by default) pulls the head of the next episode in a pack so Next starts instantly — see the full description on GitHub⁠.

⁠🧠 Why it exists

The stock Stremio streaming server is closed-source and, in practice:

• outbound-only — it never listens for inbound peers, so you only reach the connectable half of a swarm;
• it hides the torrent levers — no real control over piece picking, connectivity, or cache.

This opens it up: inbound connectivity + playhead-first piece picking for faster starts and better reliability on sparse swarms, plus hardware transcode for clients that can't direct-play — all in an image you run yourself. It is content-neutral infrastructure: it streams whatever infohash a Stremio addon hands it, and bundles or surfaces nothing.

⁠🏗️ Under the hood

One image, two source repos. The runtime image is built FROM a GPU/ffmpeg base (the companion fork) and layers the open server on top:

┌─────────────── stremio-docker-dual  (companion fork, MIT) ──────────────┐
│ jellyfin-ffmpeg (NVENC/VAAPI) · nginx · bundled Stremio web player        │
└───────────────────────────────▲──────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                 │ FROM
┌─────────────── stremio-libtorrent-server  (this repo) ──────────────────┐
│ FastAPI + libtorrent engine · nginx serves web player + proxies the API   │
│ → one container: web player + open engine on a single origin              │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Companion fork: andrewhack/stremio-docker⁠ (builds the stremio-docker-dual image; see its NVIDIA-GPU.md⁠ for GPU/Proxmox setup).

Modules: api/ (Stremio HTTP API) · torrent/ (libtorrent + piece-picker) · stream/ (Range file server) · transcode/ (ffmpeg NVENC/VAAPI → HLS) · config.py · health.py. Protocol reference: docs/protocol-map.md⁠.

How the TV HTTPS URL works (*.stremio.rocks), and the shared third-party hostname it relies on, are explained in the README on GitHub⁠.

⁠📜 License & spirit

MIT — built on the MIT-licensed stremio-docker⁠ fork.

This is not a commercial product, and we don't monetize it. It's our contribution to the people who just want their own open, private streaming server. Use it, share it, make it better. 💛