Argh! Widevine stopped working on my ARM device!

Who is affected?

Anyone using am ARM Linux device who plays back Widevine DRM content
Either via Kodi Add-ons or Chrome browser

LibreELEC, OSMC, CoreELEC, Xbian, Raspberry Pi OS & others
Android is not affected

See below on the status of the various OS's

LibreELEC 9.2.X (Kodi 18)

Supported since LibreELEC 9.2.8
See "Update Widevine" section below

LibreELEC 10.0.X (Kodi 19)

Supported since LibreELEC 10.0.0
See "Update Widevine" section below

CoreELEC 9.2.X (Kodi 18)

Supported since CoreELEC 9.2.8 (September 7th, 2021)
See "Update Widevine" section below

CoreELEC 19.X (Kodi 19)

Supported since CoreELEC 19.2-Matrix_rc2 (June 6th, 2021)
See "Update Widevine" section below

Xbian (Kodi 19)

Supported since Bullseye update
Update via the XBian-config Kodi add-on.
See "Update Widevine" section below

Raspberry Pi OS / RetroPie

Supported since 07/09/2021
Just need to upgrade via terminal
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=318893&p=1910851#p1910748

OSMC (Kodi 19)

Supported since 20/09/2021
Just need to update via OSMC Settings
https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/widevine-add-ons-stopped-working-from-01-09/90684

OSMC (Kodi 18)

Won't be officially fixed as no longer supported.
Either update to Kodi 19, or run THESE terminal commands

Other

You'll need to ask in your OS forums for them to add support.
If your OS is based on Debian, the commands HERE may help


If you have an updated OS from above that supports the latest Widevine,
you will now need to install the latest Widevine module

Update Widevine (SlyGuy Users)

  1. Navigate to Add-ons > My Add-ons > Services > SlyGuy Common
  2. Select it then select Configure
  3. Now select Playback > Install Widevine CDM
  4. Yes to any prompts and then select 4.10.2252.0
  5. Reboot

Update Widevine (Non-SlyGuy Users)

  1. Navigate to Add-ons > My Add-ons > Program Add-ons > Inputstream Helper
  2. Select it then select Configure
  3. Now select Expert > (Re)install Widevine CDM library
  4. Yes to any prompts
  5. Reboot


What happened?

As you can see above, Google removed support for any Widevine versions earlier than 4.10.2252.0
on ChromeOS on May August 31st 2021. Our old working version was 4.10.1679.0 so no longer is supported.

Why does ChromeOS affect me on Linux?

Google does not (yet) provide an ARM build of the Widevine binary.
Therefore everyone has been using a Widevine binary pulled from an ARM ChromeOS image.
Which worked great... until now.

Why not just pull 4.10.2252.0 from latest ChromeOS image?

They have!

However, Google has made changes to it that don't allow the current method to open it.
In short - it has been compiled to use some specific "stuff" related to ChromeOS.

Some smart users have figured out this "stuff" and have found how to make the OS's work with it.

Discussion

Support