In order to watch Netflix!



Have you installed Chromium on your linux box, every works well but Netflix don't? Do you know why?

The answer is simple: Chromium browser lacks Widevine module!

Widevine is a decryption module for DRM (digital rights management) used in Google Chrome and Android.
It operates as an encryption scheme to securely distribute video content to consumer devices.

Due to its license, Chromium is distributed without widevine: however, we can download it from Google's CDN and install it on Chromium.

On Google servers, the latest version number is available on the url https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/current.txt so, with a simple script we can automatically download the most recent version:

#!/bin/bash
LATEST=`curl https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/current.txt`
wget https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/$LATEST-linux-x64.zip
unzip $LATEST-linux-x64.zip
sudo mkdir /usr/lib/chromium
sudo mv libwidevinecdm.so /usr/lib/chromium
sudo chmod 644 /usr/lib/chromium/libwidevinecdm.so

That's all, enjoy!

Update 12/24/2019

RooRka, in a comment, suggest another way:

Download last file deb with chrome

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

Extract file in same folder

dpkg -x google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb .

move folder WidevineCdm to /usr…

cd opt/google/chrome/
mv -R WidevineCdm /usr/lib/chromium-browser/
mv WidevineCdm /usr/lib/chromium-browser/

You need to restart browser now

Websites to test Widevine:
https://bitmovin.com/demos/drm
https://demo.castlabs.com/ (Choose videos with labeled “DRM”)
https://shaka-player-demo.appspot.com/demo/