Installation Options

Recommended: Raspberry Pi Imager

Recommended for most users
No command line, no scripts — just flash an SD card and boot. If you’re not sure which method to use, use this one. The scripted install further down is for advanced users who want to install onto an existing Raspberry Pi OS Lite / Debian system or a PC.

The quickest way to get started on a Raspberry Pi is to use Raspberry Pi Imager, where you can find Anthias under Other specific-purpose OS → Digital signage and kiosks → Anthias. Pick the entry that matches your Pi (Pi 2, Pi 3, Pi 4, or Pi 5), select your SD card, and flash — the device boots straight into Anthias.

Raspberry Pi Imager showing Other specific-purpose OS category

Raspberry Pi Imager listing Anthias as a selectable image

Raspberry Pi Imager confirming the SD card target before writing Anthias

Using the images from balenaHub

Important
This option is recommended for those who want to install Anthias without touching the command line interface. When a new rolling release is available, updates will automatically be installed on your device.

Balena made a big update to their IoT marketplace. Included in that change is the launch of Fleets for Good. With that, you may find it hard to find the Anthias images on the marketplace. In the meantime, here are the links to the images:

Raspberry Pi 5
Raspberry Pi 4
Raspberry Pi 3 (64-bit) — recommended for Pi 3 hardware (Qt 6 viewer); ships as anthias-pi3-64 in the pre-built release images
Raspberry Pi 3 (32-bit) — legacy; consider the 64-bit image above
Raspberry Pi 2
Rock Pi 4 (Model B) — ships as anthias-rockpi4 in the pre-built release images

Go to one of the links above and click the Join button, then select either Ethernet only or Wifi + Ethernet for Network options. You can either click the Flash button to open balenaEtcher (make sure that it’s installed) or download the image file and flash it using your preferred imager. Flash the SD card and boot up your Raspberry Pi. It will take a few minutes to boot up and start the services.

Alternatively, you can download our pre-built Balena disk images from the releases.

Using the images from the releases

You can find the latest release here. From there, you can download the disk image that you need and flash it to your SD card. The image file looks something like <yyyy>-<mm>-<dd>-anthias-<board>.img.xz. Take note that the .img file is compressed in this .img.xz file.

Note
We release the images in .img.xz format so that they are smaller in size. Both Raspberry Pi Imager and balenaEtcher flash .img.xz files directly — there’s no need to decompress them first. If you ever want the raw .img, you can extract it yourself:
xz -d <yyyy>-<mm>-<dd>-anthias-<board>.img.xz

macOS: “Error writing to storage device”
Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.2 through at least 2.0.7 has a macOS bug that aborts mid-write with “Error writing to storage device. Some writes failed to complete.” It is triggered by writing any image that is decompressed on the fly — our .img.xz images as well as uncompressed .img files (see rpi-imager #1605 and #1489). The card itself is fine.
The fix was merged upstream in rpi-imager#1621 (May 2026), so the simplest solution is to update Raspberry Pi Imager to a release newer than 2.0.7. If you can’t update, work around it by decompressing the image yourself and flashing the resulting .img:
xz -d <yyyy>-<mm>-<dd>-anthias-<board>.img.xz
Then select the extracted .img in Raspberry Pi Imager (or balenaEtcher), which skips the on-the-fly decompression path that trips the bug.

Devices installed from a disk image join the balena fleet and track the latest stable release. The image ships preloaded with the release it was built from, so the device boots and runs fully offline out of the box, then receives later releases automatically over the air once it has connectivity.

Advanced: scripted install on Raspberry Pi OS Lite or Debian

Advanced method
This method uses the command line and is aimed at users who want more control — a specific OS, an existing Raspberry Pi OS Lite / Debian install, or a PC (x86). If you just want to get going on a Raspberry Pi, use the Raspberry Pi Imager method above instead.

Overview

If you’d like more control over your digital signage instance, you can install it on Raspberry Pi OS Lite or Debian with a single command.

Important
Installing on a PC (x86)? Follow the PC installation guide first to prepare Debian — the script below assumes that setup.

Note
For Raspberry Pi 5:
We recommend using the 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Trixie or Bookworm)
32-bit Raspberry Pi OS is not supported on Pi 5
If you experience any issues, please report them either:
On our forums
As a GitHub issue
In GitHub Discussions

The TL;DR for on Raspberry Pi OS or Debian is:

$ bash <(curl -sL https://install-anthias.srly.io)

Prefer to read the script before running it?
Piping a remote script straight into your shell is convenient, but it’s perfectly reasonable to want to see what it does first. Download it, review it, then run it:
curl -fsSL https://install-anthias.srly.io -o install-anthias.sh
less install-anthias.sh   # read through it
bash install-anthias.sh
The installer is open source — you can also read it in the Anthias repository.

You’ll be prompted with the following questions:

Do you still want to continue?
Would you like Anthias to manage the network for you?
Which version of Anthias would you like to install?
Would you like to perform a full system upgrade as well?

You can either use the arrow keys to select your choice and then press Enter or type y or n (for yes-no questions). The installer will display your responses before proceeding with the installation.

Animated walkthrough of the bash <(curl …) Anthias installer prompts

This installation will take 15 minutes to several hours, depending on variables such as:

The Raspberry Pi hardware version
The SD card
The internet connection

Note
During ideal conditions (Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, class 10 SD card and fast internet connection), the installation normally takes 15-30 minutes.

Prompt: Network Management

Opting for network management will enable and configure the NetworkManager service on your device.

Prompt: Version Selection

You can choose between the following choices — latest and tag.

Selecting latest will install the version from the master branch.
Selecting tag will prompt you to enter a specific tag to install.
Do take note that latest is a rolling release, so you’ll always get the latest changes.

Installing from a Specific Tag

Select this option if you want to install a pinned version of Anthias. You’ll be prompted to enter a specific tag to install. You can find the tags in the releases page.

The script will check if the tag specified is valid and can be installed. If it’s not, you need to run the script again and enter a valid tag.

Prompt: Full System Upgrade

If you’ve selected Yes when prompted for an upgrade – i.e., “Would you like to perform a full system upgrade as well?” – you’ll get the following message when the installer is almost done executing:

Please reboot and run `/home/$USER/anthias/bin/upgrade_containers.sh` to complete the installation.

Would you like to reboot now?

You have the option to reboot now or later. On the next boot, make sure to run upgrade_containers.sh, as mentioned above.

Otherwise, if you’ve selected No for the system upgrade, then you don’t need to do a reboot for the containers to be started. However, it’s still recommended to do a reboot.

Installing with Balena

Go through the steps in this documentation to deploy Anthias on your own Balena fleet.

Installing on a Raspberry Pi 5 with an SSD

Go through the steps in this documentation to deploy Anthias on a Pi5 with an SSD