pi-apps

The most popular app store for Raspberry Pi computers. 100% free, open-source and written in shell scripts.

Made with ❤ by Botspot, theofficialgman, and contributors

Check out our website: pi-apps.io

Introduction

Installing software on ARM Linux is easy... until it isn't.
Many popular apps just don't appear in the apt repositories, and it's very easy for inexperienced users to mess up their OS trying to install such apps manually.
We're trying to solve this problem.
Introducing Pi-Apps, a well-maintained collection of scripts that automatically install hard-to-install apps. See the full list here.

Pi-Apps is not your average app store. Rather than require any standardized packaging format or centralized hosting, our shell scripts download the app from where it already is.
Scripts offer tremendous flexibility. If you can manually install it, then Pi-Apps can automatically install it. Please help us expand our list of apps. You don't have to be the app developer to get it added to Pi-Apps! (You just have to know a little bit of bash scripting)

Pi-Apps now serves over 1,000,000 people and hosts over 200 apps.

Install Pi-Apps

Open a terminal and run this command:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Botspot/pi-apps/master/install | bash

Supported systems:

Raspberry Pi (2 v1.2/Zero 2 W/3/4/5)

Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit Bookworm/64-bit Bookworm/64-bit Trixie): fully supported
Ubuntu (Jammy/Noble): fully supported

Nintendo Switch

Switchroot L4T Ubuntu Noble (24.04): fully supported
Switchroot L4T Ubuntu Jammy (22.04): fully supported

Nvidia Jetson

Nvidia Jetpack 7 (Ubuntu Noble): fully supported
Nvidia Jetpack 6 (Ubuntu Jammy): fully supported

Apple Silicon Macs

Ubuntu Asahi (Ubuntu Noble): Not actively tested but all available apps should work

Pine64, Orange Pi, Radxa, Banana Pi, Khadas, Inovato, Libre Computer, and other ARMv7/ARMv8/ARMv9 Devices

Debian Bookworm/Trixie (Official Releases from Debian ONLY): Not actively tested but all available apps should work
Ubuntu Jammy/Noble (Official Releases from Canonical ONLY): Not actively tested but all available apps should work

Unsupported systems:

32-bit ARM operating systems. We've stopped supporting Trixie 32-bit due to how many apps depend on 32-bit packages that Debian renamed to mitigate yk2038.
- Bookworm 32-bit is still supported until EOL.
Raspberry Pi Pico: These devices are microcontrollers and cannot run linux.
All UNOFFICIAL Debian and Ubuntu based releases (unless mentioned above): Expect many apps to have issues.
- Examples: Orange Pi OS, Pop_OS!, Kali Linux, and ChromeOS Crostini Debian Container
Anything Non-Debian and Non-Ubuntu: Expect the majority of apps and the appstore to be broken.
- Examples: Slackware, RHEL, Fedora, SUSE, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Void Linux, NixOS
Anything not already mentioned: Expect nothing to work.
- Examples: Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Android, and ChromeOS

To install Pi-Apps manually if you prefer to see what happens under the hood

git clone https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps
~/pi-apps/install

To uninstall Pi-Apps

This will not uninstall any apps that you installed through Pi-Apps.

~/pi-apps/uninstall

To run Pi-Apps

From the start menu: Accessories -> Pi-Apps
Use the terminal command: pi-apps
Run Pi-Apps from its directory: ~/pi-apps/gui

To update Pi-Apps

Pi-apps will automatically check for updates on boot and display a notification to update.
To manually run the updater, use this command: ~/pi-apps/updater gui
It also supports a cli interface: ~/pi-apps/updater cli

What do others say about Pi-Apps?

Message from a pi-top employee: "Happy to say that I recommend pi-apps to almost every school I work with when they start using Raspberry Pi"

Video by ETA Prime: "It's an awesome Raspberry Pi app store and it works really well and there's lots of great stuff in here and it's super easy to install. I want to give the devs of Pi-Apps a big shout-out."

Video by leepspvideo: "Thanks so much to Botspot for creating this; it's a great program."

Video by Novaspirit Tech (RIP): "This is an awesome application for your Pi."

Email from a Raspberry Pi employee: "I gave Pi-Apps a go a while back and have suggested it to others quite a few times. We can't provide all the options people may want, so it helps a lot that there are people like you who can help bridge the gap. Thank you Botspot!"

ShiftPlusOne (Raspberry Pi forum moderator): "Thanks for the great work making it all simple for everybody."

Message from one of our many satisfied users: "Thank you for making pi-apps, it has helped me a ton (no more searching hours to find how to install etcher) and I cannot thank you enough."

Basic usage

Pi-Apps is very easy to use.

This is the main window.
- Search for apps.
- Open pi-apps settings.
- Click on a category to open it.
Opening a category will reveal a list of apps:
- Go back to the main list of categories.
- Click on an App name to see its details (see details window below)
On the right is the app details window:
- View the shell-scripts responsible for installing or uninstalling the selected app.
- Modify the app's description, icons, or scripts. (This button is hidden unless you enable it in Settings)
- Install the selected app.
- Uninstall the selected app.
If you install/uninstall an app, you will see the progress window, keep installing/uninstalling apps to add them to the queue:
Pi-Apps Settings can be configured by launching Menu -> Preferences -> Pi-Apps Settings.

In addition to changeable settings, this window also gives access to these tools:
- Does that one app seem to be in the wrong category? With this button, you can change it.
- Create a new app with a wizard-style set of dialogs. We recommend reading the tutorial.
- View the past weeks-worth of installation logs. This is useful if you ever encounter an app that won't install and want to see the terminal output after you closed the terminal.
- This allows you to easily import a 3rd-party app from elsewhere. It helps Pi-Apps developers test upcoming apps for reliability on a variety of systems.

To learn more about Pi-Apps, read the documentation and the wiki.

🙌 Contributing

You don't need to be a programmer to help!

The easiest way to help is by "Starring" our repository - it helps more people find Pi-Apps. (Scroll to the top of this page and on the right there is a "Star" button)
If you know somebody else who has a Raspberry Pi, feel free to tell them about Pi-Apps. We would offer you a referral discount, but Pi-Apps is free, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can make suggestions, report bugs, or suggest apps.
You can create and submit an app. Don't worry, it's about as easy as using the terminal (and it's even easier if you're submitting a simple apt-package)!
You can also join our cheerful community:

Badge

If your application is on Pi-Apps, please consider adding this pretty badge/hyperlink to your README (dark and light modes available):

Embed code (Dark):

[![badge](https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps/blob/master/icons/badge.png?raw=true)](https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps)

Embed code (Light):

[![badge](https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps/blob/master/icons/badge-light.png?raw=true)](https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps)

Q&A with Botspot

Why did you make Pi-Apps?

For a long time I have been saddened by how difficult it is to install software on Linux. In that regard, nearly all other operating systems put us to shame.
How will people discover useful, free software?
Most people don't.
One day I realized: Why not make a collection of scripts to install popular apps? This would save so much time, and makes it much easier to use a Raspberry Pi as a daily, desktop computer solution.

How long did it take to program this?

Why would you think it's not still under development? 🤪
Pi-Apps took around 14 days to lay the groundwork, and ever since then it has been continually, and exponentially, improved. I (Botspot) am not the sole programmer anymore - others have stepped in and made improvements too.

Is Pi-Apps free?

Absolutely! Donations are welcome, but Pi-Apps itself will always be free and open-source.