HOW-TO:Install Kodi on Apple TV 4 and 5 (HD and 4K)

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Home icon grey.png   ▶ IOS ▶ HOW-TO:Install Kodi on Apple TV 4 and 5 (HD and 4K)

Install from Windows (only for Apple TV 4)

What about the Apple TV 4K?

Stop hand.png Unfortunately the Apple TV 4K does not have a USB-C. If you are not jailbroken the only official way to sideload Kodi on your device is to use Xcode on macOS with a wireless connection.

To get macOS on you computer you can use a virtual machine or check for building an hackintosh, but we will not discuss this here.


Prerequisites

Stop hand.png Cydia Impactor is still a work-in-progress, There might be some bugs that you face while installing Kodi. It is not for the faint of heart.

This method also requires that Kodi be re-installed every 7 days if you are using a free Apple developer account.


Converting deb into ipa

Before beginning the installation, you have to convert .deb file of Kodi into .ipa. That is because Cydia Impactor only accepts .ipa files and not .deb files. If you already know how to convert .deb into .ipa, you can skip to the installation below.

Follow the steps given below and you will be able to convert .deb file into .ipa file.

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Install Kodi on your Apple TV

Connect your Apple TV 4 with power and make sure that it is turned ON before proceeding.

Emblem-important-yellow.png NOTICE:
If you are using a free Apple developper account you will need to do this step every 7 days, so keep your IPA file on your computer

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Install from Mac

Prerequisites

Connect your device

If you have an Apple TV 4 and a USB-C cable you can power on your device and plug in with your Mac. Else if you have an Apple TV 4K or an Apple TV 4 without a USB-C cable you will need to pair your device wirelessly with Xcode. You can follow the step-by-step guide below.

Connect your Apple account in Xcode

Follow the step-by-step guide below in order to connect your iCloud/Apple account in Xcode.

Generate Kodi IPA file from deb file

If you have a free Apple developper account (this is usually the case if you are a "lambda" user) please follow the section FREE Apple dev account, else if you have a paid developper account (99$/year) please follow the PAID Apple dev account section.

(option A) FREE Apple dev account without Top Shelf

Emblem-important-yellow.png NOTICE:
If you are using a free Apple developper account you will need to re-sign and re-install Kodi every 7 days and the Top Shelf feature will not work

Follow the step-by-step guide below in order to (i) obtain a valid signing certificate and provisioning profile for your Kodi app and (ii) pack and sign Kodi .deb file in an .ipa file

(option B) PAID Apple dev account with Top Shelf

During the step-by-step guide below you will need to extract the .deb file and also a .tar.xz file, to do that you can use an extractor app like The Unarchiver, or also a Terminal with the command:

  • ar -p kodi-tvos.deb data.tar.xz | tar -xf -, new directory Applications will appear where you can find Kodi.app


Install Kodi on your Apple TV

Finally you have to install your freshly created IPA file to your device. To do that follow the step-by-step guide below.

Install on a jailbroken Apple TV

It is simple to get Kodi working on your jailbroken Apple TV. Here you can find the current tvOS versions with an available jailbreak for the Apple TV 4 and 4K:

Once your Apple TV is jailbroken:

  1. Download the Kodi .deb file for tvOS: latest Kodi nightly build OR Kodi 17.6 from Memphiz YAB branch (old) and put it on your Desktop.
  2. Open a terminal window on your computer.
  3. Move to your desktop with cd ~/Desktop.
  4. Send the deb file to your Apple TV with scp DEB_FILE root@IP_ADDRESS:/var/root/' (adapt with your case, for example scp kodi-20180227-4a25e62-yab-tvos.deb [email protected]:/var/root/), the default password is alpine.
  5. Connect to your Apple TV with ssh root@IP_ADDRESS, default password is alpine.
  6. Install Kodi with dpkg -i /var/root/kodi-20180227-4a25e62-yab-tvos.deb.
  7. Refresh icons cache with uicache.
  8. Kodi should be on your main Apple TV screen.

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