stremio-presence

Real-time Discord Rich Presence for Stremio 5. While Stremio is open and you are watching something, your Discord profile shows the title, poster, episode, quality, and a synced timeline — updating live (exact position, instant pause/stop). When you pause or quit Stremio, the presence clears itself.

No login. No password. The helper reads your existing Stremio session straight out of the local Stremio app — and, in real-time mode, reads the live player directly. Windows only (it talks to the Discord and Stremio desktop apps).

Why "real-time"? Stremio's cloud only syncs your position every ~60–90s, so most presence tools lag badly. This one taps Stremio 5's WebView2/libmpv player locally for ~1-second-accurate position and instant pause/stop, and falls back to the cloud automatically if you don't enable it.

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What it does

• Real-time mode (recommended): reads the live libmpv playhead straight from Stremio 5's renderer via the WebView2 DevTools protocol — exact position, ~1s fresh, instant pause/stop, and works for every stream type (torrent and debrid/direct). Needs the one-time setup below.
• Cloud fallback: if real-time mode isn't enabled, it polls your Stremio library via api.strem.io and infers playing/paused by watching the playhead advance. Works without any setup, but Stremio only syncs the position every ~60–90s, so it lags and can't tell pause from stop instantly.
• Resolves metadata (title, season + episode + episode name, poster art) from Cinemeta and pushes a Watching activity to Discord (synced timeline + View on IMDb / Open in Stremio buttons).
• Quality badge — shows the stream quality/source (e.g. 4K · HDR, Torrentio) when in real-time mode. Buffering is shown while the stream loads.
• Rich idle state — when you're not watching, shows what you're browsing (the title's detail page, Searching “…”, Browsing Discover, etc.).
• System tray icon — live status (▶ / ⏸ / Browsing) with Open config / Open folder / Quit.
• Config hot-reload — edits to config.json apply live (no restart).
• Gated on the Stremio process: presence only exists while the Stremio desktop app is running, and is torn down the moment it quits.

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Prerequisites

• Node.js 24+ (uses native global fetch and ES modules).
• Discord desktop app running and logged in (the Rich Presence IPC pipe lives in the desktop client — the browser version will not work).
• Stremio 5 (beta) desktop app installed, logged in, and running. The auth key is read from Stremio's local WebView2 store, so you must have signed in to Stremio at least once on this machine.

Install dependencies once:

npm install

Dependencies: @xhayper/discord-rpc (Discord IPC), ws (CDP transport), and systray2 (tray icon).

Then create your config from the template:

cp config.example.json config.json

config.json is gitignored, so your settings (and Discord Client ID) stay local.

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Real-time mode (recommended)

For exact position + instant pause/stop, enable Stremio's WebView2 debug port so the helper can read the live player. Run this once (PowerShell, no admin), then fully quit and relaunch Stremio:

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('WEBVIEW2_ADDITIONAL_BROWSER_ARGUMENTS','--remote-debugging-port=9222 --remote-allow-origins=*','User')

• Both flags are required (--remote-allow-origins=* avoids an Edge WebSocket 403). The port binds to 127.0.0.1 only — no network exposure.
• This env var applies to all WebView2 apps. To scope it to Stremio only (admin), set a REG_SZ named stremio-shell-ng.exe under HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\WebView2\AdditionalBrowserArguments.
• Undo: clear the env var: [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('WEBVIEW2_ADDITIONAL_BROWSER_ARGUMENTS',$null,'User').

Skip this and the helper still runs via the cloud fallback (slower). The log line Real-time playback source active (CDP) confirms real-time mode is on.

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One-time setup: create a Discord application

The presence needs its own Discord application so it has a client ID and a place to host art assets.

1. Go to https://discord.com/developers/applications and click New Application. Name it whatever you want (e.g. Stremio) — this name is what shows above the activity in your profile.

2. On the General Information page, copy the Application ID.

3. Open config.json in the repo root and paste it into discordClientId, replacing the YOUR_DISCORD_APP_ID placeholder:

   {
     "discordClientId": "123456789012345678"
   }

4. (Optional but recommended) In the left sidebar open Rich Presence → Art Assets and upload a small square image named exactly stremio. Then set smallImageUrl in config.json to a direct image URL (or leave it blank to skip the small badge). The large image is always the title's poster, pulled live from Cinemeta, so you don't need to upload posters.

That is the entire Discord-side setup. You do not need a bot token, OAuth redirect, or any scopes — Rich Presence works purely over the local Discord client.

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How auth works (zero-login)

There is no email/password prompt and no password is ever stored.

On first run the helper:

1. Locates Stremio 5's WebView2 LevelDB store under …\StremioService\stremio-shell-ng.exe.WebView2\EBWebView\Default\Local Storage\leveldb.
2. Because Stremio keeps those files locked while it runs, it copies them to a temp directory, then scans them for your saved session and extracts the auth key.
3. Writes just that key to auth.json in the repo root so subsequent runs are instant and don't need to touch Stremio's files again.

If auth.json already holds a valid key, that is used directly. If the key ever expires, the helper refreshes it from the Stremio store automatically on the next API call. As a fallback only, if STREMIO_EMAIL and STREMIO_PASSWORD environment variables are set, it can log in with those — but the normal path never reads or stores a password.

auth.json contains a live session key for your Stremio account. Treat it like a credential — don't commit it or share it.

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Running it

node src/index.js

(or npm start). Leave it running in the background. Expected lifecycle:

• Stremio closed → the helper idles, checking every few seconds for Stremio to launch. No Discord connection, no API polling.
• Stremio open → it connects to Discord and polls your library every pollIntervalMs. Start watching something and the presence appears within a poll cycle.
• Paused / idle / browsing → presence clears (it only shows while playback is actually progressing).
• Stremio quits → the Discord presence is removed immediately.
• Ctrl+C → clears the presence, disconnects, and exits cleanly.

Set the DEBUG environment variable for verbose logging.

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Configuration (config.json)

Edits apply live (hot-reload) — no restart needed, except a discordClientId change.

Key	Default	Meaning
discordClientId	YOUR_DISCORD_APP_ID	Your Discord Application ID. Required — presence stays off until set.
pollIntervalMs	15000	Cloud-fallback poll interval (ms). Real-time mode polls every 2s.
staleSeconds	150	Cloud fallback: a title with no playhead advance for this long → not playing.
pausedMaxSeconds	180	Cloud fallback: how long a paused title keeps showing before it clears.
posterSize	medium	Cinemeta poster size: small, medium, or large.
smallImageUrl	URL	Small badge image (the Stremio logo). Blank = none.
showImdbButton	true	Show the View on IMDb button.
showStremioButton	true	Show the Open in Stremio button.
showQuality	true	Append the stream quality/source (e.g. 4K · HDR). Real-time only.
showBrowsing	true	Show a rich idle state (what you're browsing) when not watching.
showTray	true	Show the system tray icon.

Environment overrides: DISCORD_CLIENT_ID, POLL_INTERVAL_MS, STALE_SECONDS take precedence over the file values.

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Silent autostart (recommended — presence appears automatically)

So presence "just works" without ever running node by hand, the helper runs resident: launched silently at login, idle (a cheap process check, no Discord, no API) while Stremio is closed, and showing presence automatically once you start playing. A single-instance lock (loopback port 48757) prevents duplicate copies.

One-step install (creates the Startup shortcut and launches it now):

powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\install-autostart.ps1

That registers scripts\start-hidden.vbs (which runs node src\index.js hidden) in your per-user Startup folder, so it auto-starts at every login.

Note on timing: "automatically on playback" means ~1 minute after you start playing, not instant. Stremio only syncs the playhead to its cloud library every ~60–90 s, and that cloud value is the only clean source of title + episode + position on the official v5 app — so the first presence update lands after Stremio's first push. The elapsed timer is then accurate (it's anchored to the real playhead).

Stop / uninstall:

• Stop the running helper: end the node.exe whose command line is src\index.js (it's the process listening on 127.0.0.1:48757), or just close Stremio (it goes idle) — though the resident process stays up to catch the next session.
• Remove autostart: delete %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\stremio-rpc.lnk.