How to install CoreELEC

General Guides & How-tos
1

Update

Please follow the more recent installation guide on CoreELEC Wiki

New installation
Prepare an SD card (class 10) / USB flash drive as follows;

NOTE: On some devices, only 1 USB port is able to boot the device, you may have to try them all to see which one works for you, some boxes are also unable to boot from a USB drive.

  1. Download the latest .img.gz file from here.
  2. Use Rufus, usbimager (or your preferred image writing software) to burn the downloaded image file to your SD card / USB flash drive.
  3. If successful, the SD card / USB flash drive capacity will be shown as 512MB, this is OK as there is a second (hidden) partition for CoreELEC user data.
  4. Browse to the Device Trees folder, now present on the SD card or USB flash drive, and copy the correct .dtb image file for your device to the root folder of the SD card / USB flash drive, and rename it to dtb.img.

To boot the system for the first time you have to use one from the following methods, sometimes only one of these methods will work!

  • Khadas VIM: insert the CoreELEC prepared SD card and boot into Upgrade Mode, CoreELEC will start automatically: Howto Boot Into Upgrade Mode - Khadas
  • MINIX U1 / U9: insert the CoreELEC prepared SD card, plug in the power cord, then hold in power button for at least 6 seconds or until the CoreELEC logo appears.
  • Terminal Emulator: boot into Android, insert the CoreELEC prepared SD / USB, install Terminal Emulator app (either from Google Play or APKMirror), run it and type reboot update. Your device should reboot into CoreELEC.
  • Toothpick method: Disconnect the power supply, insert the CoreELEC prepared SD / USB, push and hold the reset button and reconnect the power, wait until CoreELEC logo appears and release the button.
  • Menu Button method (works with very few devices): disconnect the power supply, insert the CoreELEC prepared SD / USB, push the menu button on your remote control and connect the power while holding the button. Wait until the CoreELEC logo appears and release the button.
  • Recovery method: Boot into Android, insert the CoreELEC prepared SD / USB and choose Reboot to recovery. Your device should boot into CoreELEC.
  • Recovery method (2nd variant): If you have the Update app pre-installed in Android, open it, insert the CoreELEC prepared SD / USB and choose any ZIP file displayed in the app as an update. Your device should reboot into CoreELEC.
  • Recovery method (3rd variant): enable ADB (Google it) and issue adb reboot update command on your computer.

Updating

  1. Download the latest .tar file from here.
  2. Copy the .tar file to the /storage/.update folder on your device.
  3. Reboot to start the update process.

Note: You must be using a device tree from 28-10-2017 or later. You can check it by running this command: cat /proc/device-tree/le-dt-id. If this command gives you device tree name, you have all that is needed for an automatic dtb update.

Additional guides
Replace any references to LibreELEC with CoreELEC and instances of LE with CE in the
following guides for more details;

Back to Android?
Simply turn off your device, disconnect the media with CoreELEC and turn on the device.

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