linkstreams Get the app
Step-by-step guide

From an empty app to your first stream

Linkstreams starts with nothing in it — no catalog, no account, no server of ours holding your list. This guide walks the whole set-up: install the app, build your own list, turn it into a short key, and press play.

About 10 minutes No account anywhere Free, start to finish

Before you start

Three separate pieces work together. Knowing which does what makes the rest of the guide obvious.

Linkstreams

The player, on your TV or phone. It holds your keys, decodes your list and streams the video. It never ships content.

Repo Creator

A free browser tool that turns your magnet links and folders into one block of text. It runs entirely on your device.

Pastebin

A free text host. You drop that block there once and it hands back a short code — the key you type into the app.

You also need the magnet links themselves. Linkstreams does not provide them and does not search for them — you bring your own, the same way a torrent client expects you to.

You are responsible for what you add. Linkstreams is a neutral player with no index and no catalog. Only stream material you are allowed to access where you live — see the Terms of Use.

Install the app

Takes about 4 minutes.

Linkstreams is in beta and ships as an Android package (an APK), so you install it directly rather than through a store. Pick the route that matches your device.

Android phone or tablet

  1. Open apk.linkstreams.app in your browser and start the download.
  2. Open the downloaded file.
  3. Android will ask whether to allow installs from your browser. Allow it, then come back and confirm the install.
  4. Open Linkstreams from your app list.

Fire TV

  1. Install the free Downloader app from the Amazon Appstore.
  2. In Settings → My Fire TV → Developer options, allow unknown apps for Downloader. The exact wording shifts between Fire OS versions; look for “Install unknown apps” or “Apps from Unknown Sources”.
  3. Open Downloader, type apk.linkstreams.app and press Go.
  4. Let it download, then choose Install.

Android TV or Google TV

  1. Install Downloader from Google Play on the TV.
  2. Under Settings → Apps → Security & restrictions → Unknown sources, switch Downloader on.
  3. In Downloader, enter apk.linkstreams.app and press Go.
  4. Install when the download finishes.

First launch

Linkstreams shows a short disclaimer the first time it opens. Read and accept it — the player only mounts afterwards. You then land on this:

Illustration of the start screen, not a screenshot.

That empty state is expected — there is nothing in the app until you add your own list.

Once Linkstreams is installed, turn “install unknown apps” back off for your browser or Downloader. You only needed it for the install, and leaving it on weakens a useful protection.
During the beta there is no auto-update. To move to a newer build, download the current APK again and install it over the old one — your saved repos stay put.
Download the Beta APK

Something not behaving? Jump to troubleshooting.

Build your repo

Takes about 3 minutes.

A “repo” is just your own list: titles, magnet links and folders. You build it in Repo Creator, which runs in the browser tab and sends nothing anywhere.

Open Repo Creator

Open Repo Creator in a new tab. It works on a phone, but a laptop is far more comfortable for pasting links.

Name the list

Fill in Collection title — it is required and becomes the name you see in the app. Description is optional; use it to remind yourself what the list is for.

Add your magnet links

Press Add video and paste the link into the Magnet link field. It has to start with magnet: and point at video. Video title is optional — leave it empty and the app falls back to the name carried inside the link itself.

A magnet link looks like this:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:<40-character hash> &dn=Big+Buck+Bunny+2008+1080p &tr=udp://tracker.example.org:1337

The dn part is the display name; the tr parts are trackers. More trackers generally means the app finds peers faster.

Sort it into folders

Add folder creates a folder with a Folder name. Inside one you get Add video and Add folder, so you can nest as deep as you like — a season inside a show inside “Series”, for example. The app mirrors that structure with drill-down navigation.

Save it

Press Copy export. Repo Creator checks the form, encodes the whole list, copies the result to your clipboard and keeps the last valid version in your browser's local storage, so closing the tab does not lose your work.

What lands on your clipboard reads like this:

Winter correspondence abandon ability able about above absent absorb abstract absurd abuse. The corridor remembered nothing, and the dust kept its own schedule. account accuse achieve acid acoustic acquire across act action actor.
That word salad is your list. The lowercase lines carry the encoded config and the sentences between them are filler so the whole thing reads like a fragment of a book. No URLs, no visible titles — anyone glancing at the paste sees prose. Linkstreams decodes it back automatically.

Something not behaving? Jump to troubleshooting.

Turn it into a key

Takes about 1 minute.

Your TV cannot read your clipboard, so the text needs a home on the web. Pastebin does that for free, without an account, and gives you back a short code.

Open Pastebin from Repo Creator

Scroll to the blue Publish. Add the code. Press play. card and press Open Pastebin. Pastebin opens in a new tab.

Paste the text

Click the big empty box and paste with Ctrl + V (⌘ + V on a Mac). Paste all of it — a partial copy will not decode.

Set two options

  • Syntax Highlighting: Plain Text.
  • Paste Exposure: Unlisted — reachable by anyone holding the link, but not listed publicly or searchable.

If an expiry option is offered, choose Never. When a paste expires, the repo stops loading in the app.

Create the paste

Press Create New Paste. The page reloads and the address bar now ends in a short code.

Your key is the last part of the address:

https://pastebin.com/AbC12xyz ↑ this is your key

Write it down or leave the tab open — you are about to type it into the app.

Do not pick “Private”. Private pastes are only readable by the logged-in account that made them, so the app gets nothing back. Unlisted is the setting you want.

Something not behaving? Jump to troubleshooting.

Add the key & play

Takes under a minute.

Back to the device. This part takes under a minute, and you only do it once per repo.

Start adding a repo

On the empty screen, press the green Add repo button. Once you already have repos, use the + icon in the top bar instead.

Type the key

On a phone the keyboard opens straight away. On a TV you get an on-screen keyboard you drive with the D-pad — the key is short on purpose.

Illustration of the TV entry screen, not a screenshot. The highlighted key is where the D-pad focus sits.

The field accepts any of these:

  • the bare key — AbC12xyz
  • the paste address — https://pastebin.com/AbC12xyz
  • the raw address — https://pastebin.com/raw/AbC12xyz

Capitalisation matters: AbC12xyz and abc12xyz are different pastes.

Confirm

Press Add. Linkstreams fetches the paste, decodes it and drops the repo into your list, labelled with pastebin.com/AbC12xyz so you can tell several repos apart.

Browse it

Open the repo. Folders carry a blue folder icon and drill down one level at a time; titles carry a green play icon. Under each title you get badges for what the app could read from the link — the episode code, the year, and how many trackers it carries.

Illustration of the repo browser, not a screenshot. The blue outline marks the focused row.

Anything you have already started shows a thin progress bar under those badges, so you can see where you left off.

Press play

Playback starts as soon as enough of the beginning has arrived — it keeps fetching in playback order while you watch, rather than downloading the file first. If you have watched the title before, you are offered Resume from 00:12:34 or Start over.

Everything is reachable with a remote. The row you are on is outlined in blue, so you always know where the focus sits — handy on a TV across the room.

Something not behaving? Jump to troubleshooting.

Update or share it

A repo is not frozen. You can add titles later, and you can hand the whole list to someone else with a single short code.

Get your list back into Repo Creator

Reopen Repo Creator in the same browser and your last saved version is still there. On a different browser or machine, press Import config and paste the prose block back in — it rebuilds every title, folder and link.

Save the new version

Edit, then press Copy export again. You now have fresh text on the clipboard, and two ways to publish it:

  • Edit the existing paste — only possible if you created it while logged in to a Pastebin account. The key stays the same, so nothing changes in the app.
  • Create a new paste — works without an account, but produces a new key. Add the new key in the app and delete the old repo.

Pull the changes into the app

Linkstreams caches what it fetched. Press the refresh icon (Refresh titles) in the top bar of the repo list to re-read your pastes and pick up edits.

Share it

Sharing a repo means sharing its key. Whoever types it in sees exactly the same folders and titles. Nothing else travels — no account, no invite, no profile.

Troubleshooting

Almost everything that goes wrong at set-up is one of these six things.

The app can't load my repo
Work through it in this order: the key is case-sensitive, so check every character; the paste must be Public or Unlisted, never Private; and the paste must not have expired. Open pastebin.com/raw/YOUR-KEY in a browser — if you see your block of prose there, the app can read it too, and the problem is the key you typed.
The repo is added but shows nothing
The paste body has to be the complete, unmodified export. A partial copy, an added headline, or Pastebin's syntax highlighting reformatting the text will all break decoding. Copy the block again from Repo Creator, create a fresh paste with syntax Plain Text, and use that key.
A title says “Invalid magnet link”
That entry's link is malformed — usually a truncated paste or a page URL that was copied instead of the magnet itself. A valid one starts with magnet:?xt=urn:btih: followed by the info hash. Fix it in Repo Creator, export again and update your paste.
Playback never starts, or stalls part-way
That is the swarm, not the app. A magnet with few or no seeders has nothing to stream from, and one that stops mid-file has run out of peers holding the part you reached. Try a better-seeded link for the same title. Titles carrying several trackers generally find peers faster than ones carrying a single tracker or none at all.
The APK won't install
Android blocks installs from outside a store until you allow the app doing the installing — your browser on a phone, Downloader on a TV. Grant that permission and retry. If the installer complains about an existing app, the device already has a Linkstreams build signed with a different key; uninstall it first.
I edited my paste but the app shows the old list
Press the refresh icon (Refresh titles) on the repo list. If it still looks stale, confirm the edit actually saved by opening pastebin.com/raw/YOUR-KEY in a browser — creating a second paste instead of editing the first is the usual cause, and that one carries a different key.

Ready to set it up?

Grab the app and open Repo Creator side by side — the two halves of the guide take about ten minutes together.

Download the Beta APK Open Repo Creator