Installation

Linux and BSD packages

Distribution Installing
Arch Linux (package)
# pacman -S livestreamer
Arch Linux (aur, git) Installing AUR packages
CRUX
$ cd /usr/ports/contrib/livestreamer
# pkgmk -d -i
Debian
# apt-get install livestreamer
Exherbo Linux  
Fedora
# yum install livestreamer
FreeBSD (package)
# pkg install multimedia/livestreamer
FreeBSD (ports)
$ cd /usr/ports/multimedia/livestreamer
# make install clean
Gentoo Linux
# emerge net-misc/livestreamer
NetBSD (pkgsrc)
$ cd /usr/pkgsrc/multimedia/livestreamer
# make install clean
OpenBSD (package)
# pkg_add livestreamer
OpenBSD (ports)
$ cd /usr/ports/multimedia/livestreamer
# make install clean
Slackware Linux Installing Slackbuilds
Ubuntu
# apt-get install livestreamer

Other platforms

Platform Installing
Mac OS X
# easy_install -U livestreamer
Microsoft Windows See Windows binaries.

Source code

If a package is not available for your platform (or it’s out of date) you can install Livestreamer via source.

There are a few different methods to do this, pip the Python package manager, easy_install the older package manager included with python-setuptools or by checking out the latest code with Git.

The commands listed here will also upgrade any existing version of Livestreamer.

Version Installing
Latest release (pip)
# pip install -U livestreamer
Latest release (easy_install)
# easy_install -U livestreamer
Development version (pip)
# pip install -U git+https://github.com/chrippa/livestreamer.git
Development version (git)
$ git clone git://github.com/chrippa/livestreamer.git
$ cd livestreamer
# python setup.py install

Dependencies

To install Livestreamer from source you will need these dependencies.

Name Notes
Python At least version 2.6 or 3.3.
python-setuptools  
Automatically installed by the setup script
python-argparse Only needed on Python 2.6.
python-futures Only needed on Python 2.x.
python-requests At least version 1.0.
python-singledispatch Only needed on Python versions older than 3.4.
Optional
RTMPDump Required to play RTMP streams.
PyCrypto Required to play some encrypted streams.
python-librtmp Required by the ustreamtv plugin to be able to use non-mobile streams.

Installing without root permissions

If you do not wish to install Livestreamer globally on your system it’s recommended to use virtualenv to create a user owned Python environment instead.

Creating an environment
$ virtualenv ~/myenv

Activating the environment
$ source ~/myenv/bin/activate

Installing livestreamer into the environment
(myenv)$ pip install livestreamer

Using livestreamer in the enviroment
(myenv)$ livestreamer ...

Deactivating the enviroment
(myenv)$ deactivate

Using livestreamer without activating the environment
$ ~/myenv/bin/livestreamer ...

Note

This may also be required on some OS X versions that seems to have weird permission issues (see issue #401).

Windows binaries

Installer

This is a installer which contains:

  • A compiled version of Livestreamer that does not require an existing Python installation
  • RTMPDump for viewing RTMP streams

and performs the following tasks:

  • Generates a default configuration file
  • Adds Livestreamer to your $PATH (making it possible to use livestreamer directly from the command prompt without specifying its directory)

Zip archive

This is minimal zip archive containing a compiled version of Livestreamer that does not require an existing Python installation.

Nightly build

This is an automatically generated build of the latest development code from the git repo.

Note

The binaries requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package to be installed.