Table of Contents
Documentation
This section covers general parts of pyatv, like how to install it, concepts and terminology to understand how it works. More or less everything that is not how you develop with it.
Before diving into code, make sure you read and understand the Concepts first.
Installing pyatv
You can install/run pyatv either in a container using pre-built images or a virtual environment.
Container (Docker)
Starting with release 0.9.0, container images for x86_64, aarch64 and armv7 are automatically built and
available from GitHub. Images are published per version (e.g. v0.9.0, v0.9.1, etc.) and the latest
commit on master (just labeled with latest). See the images
page for all available images.
To test atvremote, you can run:
$ docker run -it --rm --network=host ghcr.io/postlund/pyatv:master atvremote scan
It is also possible to run simple scripts and applications like this:
$ docker run --rm --network=host -v $PWD:/app ghcr.io/postlund/pyatv:v0.9.0 python /app/scan.py
Note that network must be used in host mode, otherwise pyatv will not be able to find your
devices when scanning.
System dependencies
You might need some additional packages to compile the dependencies. On a debian based system (e.g. Debian itself or Ubuntu), you can just run:
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev
This is not needed when running in a container.
Virtual Environment
It is recommended to install pyatv in a virtual environment rather than system-wide. To create a new virtual environment:
python3 -m venv pyatv_venv
source pyatv_venv/bin/activate
This creates a virtual environment in a directory called pyatv_venv. The
second command activates the virtual environment and must be done every
time a new shell is started.
Now you can continue by installing the version of pyatv you want.
Latest Stable Version
Install pyatv using pip3:
pip3 install pyatv
Development Version
To try out the latest development version (a.k.a. master on GitHub), you can install with:
pip3 install --upgrade git+https://github.com/postlund/pyatv.git
Specific Branch or a Pull Request
To install from a branch, you can install like this:
pip3 install --upgrade git+https://github.com/postlund/pyatv.git@refs/heads/<branch>
Replace <branch> with the name of the branch.
It is also possible to install directly from a pull request:
pip3 install git+https://github.com/postlund/pyatv.git@refs/pull/<id>/head
Replace <id> with the pull request number.
Testing with GitPod
You can try out pyatv and play around with the code using GitPod. Everything is already set up and ready to go, just login with one of the supported account, e.g. GitHub, and you are ready within a minute. No need to install anything on your own computer and works across operating systems and web browsers. Really cool!
Note: This runs in the cloud, so you will not be able to find your own devices. It’s mainly for development or basic testing.
Dependencies
At least python 3.7 is required to run pyatv. A few additional libraries are needed as well. An updated list is available here.
You also need to have OpenSSL compiled with support for ed25519 in order to connect to MRP devices. More details is here.
Milestones
Current milestones are available on GitHub: