Catalogs

A catalog is a group of titles shown as a row/shelf in Stremio — like a playlist that groups similar movies and shows together.

Beginner Tip

Think of a catalog like a playlist or a shelf: “Bollywood,” “Anime,” “Top Rated,” or your own custom “Weekend Picks.”

There are three kinds: default, automatic, and custom/personal.

Default catalogs

Out of the box, your library is browsable by the standard latest / popular rows for Movies and TV Shows, with genre and search filters supplied to Stremio.

Automatic catalogs

The app can automatically sort every title into smart catalogs based on its metadata. You choose which ones are enabled from Catalogs → Auto Catalog Settings.

The available automatic catalogs are grouped:

Group

Catalogs

Language

Bollywood, Hollywood, Anime, K-Drama, Bengali, South Indian, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Japanese, Korean

Smart

Top Rated, Recently Added

OTT / Platform

Netflix, Prime Video, Hotstar, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO, JioCinema, ZEE5, SonyLIV, MX Player, Crunchyroll

How auto-classification works

For each title, the app looks at data from TMDB and applies rules like:

  • Language → catalog. Original language hi → Bollywood, ja → Japanese, ko → Korean, and so on.

  • Region nuance. A Hindi title from India → Bollywood. A Korean seriesK-Drama. A Japanese animationAnime.

  • Ratings. A rating of 7.5 or higherTop Rated.

  • Freshness. Released in the last year or soRecently Added.

  • Where it streams. Its official streaming platforms (in your region) map to OTT catalogs like Netflix, Prime Video, or Hotstar.

Needs a TMDB key

Language and OTT catalogs require a TMDB API key (the app looks up language and streaming-provider data). Without a key, only “Top Rated” and “Recently Added” populate.

When does it run?

  • Instantly for each new title as it’s added (a quick per-item categorization).

  • In bulk when you run a sync from the panel (processes your whole library in batches, reusing already-classified titles to stay fast).

Good to Know

The default region for streaming-provider lookups is India (IN), falling back to the US. This affects which OTT catalog a title lands in.

Custom catalogs

You can build your own catalogs by hand from Catalogs → Custom Catalogs.

  • Create a catalog with any name (e.g. “Weekend Picks,” “Kids”).

  • Add / remove titles individually.

  • Edit the name and settings.

  • Delete it when you’re done.

Personal / visibility controls

Each catalog has a visibility setting that controls who sees it in Stremio:

Owner only

Visible just to you.

Selected users

Visible only to specific access tokens you choose.

Public

Visible to everyone using your addon.

Beginner Tip

Use Selected users to give friends or paying subscribers their own private shelves without exposing them to everyone.

Tags

Titles carry tags (such as Netflix, Prime, Anime, Hindi, English) derived during classification. These tags are what power the automatic catalogs and help group content consistently across your library.