Install livekit with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• livekit-server

Project history

The livekit/livekit repository was created on September 30, 2020. LiveKit was publicly introduced on July 7, 2021 as free, open source infrastructure for building and scaling realtime audio and video experiences, with its SFU built on Pion WebRTC.

The early project positioned itself against proprietary realtime communications services and hard-to-operate open source alternatives by providing a polished, deployable WebRTC stack with server, SDKs, documentation, and load-testing tools. Later documentation describes LiveKit as an open source framework and cloud platform for building voice, video, and physical AI agents, with the server supplying low-latency transport, routing, synchronization, and session management.

Adoption history

LiveKit's adoption accelerated with the demand for embedded realtime communication after 2020. In June 2024, the company wrote that LiveKit was used by more than 20,000 developers and listed uses ranging from AI assistants and emergency dispatch to drones, vehicles, security devices, and surgical robots.

The GitHub repository's package-culture footprint is large for a media server: by July 1, 2026 GitHub metadata showed roughly 19.5k stars and 2.1k forks, while the repository listed dozens of releases and a broad SDK ecosystem.

How it is used

The Homebrew package installs the LiveKit media server executable. The README documents starting it in development mode with livekit-server --dev, where it uses placeholder API credentials, and points production users toward deployment documentation and explicit configuration.

LiveKit is used as the realtime backbone for browser, mobile, backend, telephony, and agent applications. It handles WebRTC signaling, NAT traversal, RTP routing, adaptive degradation, and quality-of-service controls, while related SDKs expose client and server APIs.

Why package nerds care

For package nerds, livekit is interesting because it packages a serious realtime media server as a local developer binary. Installing it from Homebrew gives developers a quick path to running a WebRTC SFU without first deploying Kubernetes or buying a managed communications account.

It is also part of the broader pattern of open source infrastructure projects that ship a local server, a cloud service, SDKs, and a CLI under one brand, making the package-manager formula one entry point into a much larger platform.

Timeline

• 2020-09-30: The livekit/livekit GitHub repository was created.
• 2021-07-07: LiveKit was publicly introduced as open source realtime audio/video infrastructure.
• 2024-06-04: LiveKit reported more than 20,000 developers using the platform.
• 2026-06-27: The GitHub repository listed v1.13.2 as a release.
• 2026-07-01: GitHub metadata showed about 19.5k stars and 2.1k forks for livekit/livekit.

Related projects

• Related projects include Pion WebRTC, LiveKit CLI, LiveKit Cloud, LiveKit Agents, LiveKit client SDKs, server SDKs, egress, ingress, SIP, WebRTC, and SFU-based media infrastructure.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/livekit/livekit
• https://docs.livekit.io/intro/about/
• https://github.com/livekit/livekit
• https://livekit.com/blog/and-were-live-kit
• https://livekit.com/blog/livekit-series-a