Help & documentation

What XRDB does

XRDB sits in front of your media library and re-renders artwork — posters, backdrops, thumbnails and logos — with overlays: ratings, quality badges, genre and age labels, a trending tag, and aggregate or score-based presentations. You design a look once in the configurator and every image your setup requests is rendered to match.

The workflow

1. Find a title — search by name, or paste an IMDb (tt…) or TMDB ID.
2. Adjust the controls — the preview updates live. Undo any change with Ctrl/Cmd+Z.
3. Style each surface — poster, backdrop, thumbnail and logo are configured separately; use Copy to all surfaces to match them.
4. Save a profile to get a short config key, then open Install to wire it into your media setup. You can also share a link that carries the exact look.

Artwork sources

TMDB

The Movie Database — broad, reliable poster coverage.

Fanart.tv

High-resolution, often textless artwork.

Cinemeta

Stremio's Cinemeta catalogue artwork.

Random

Pick a different source on each render.

Text on poster chooses how much title text the artwork carries:Original keeps it, Clean prefers minimal text, andTextless prefers none.

Rating presentation

Standard

A row of individual rating badges.

Minimal

One pill with the overall average score.

Dual

Critics score on top, audience score below.

Score bar

A full-width bar coloured by the average score.

Editorial

Magazine style: a genre label over a large score.

Hidden

No ratings on that surface.

A source only appears if it actually has a rating for that title — selecting it doesn't force it to show.

Troubleshooting

A rating isn't showing

The provider has no score for that title, or its API key isn't configured on this instance.

Search says it's unavailable

The instance needs a TMDB key for search and shuffle.

“Preview unavailable”

The backend that renders images isn't reachable — check it's running.

More help

Questions or a bug? Join the Discord, read the source on GitHub, or support the project.