Install KiCad on Raspberry Pi

KiCad

Electronics Design Automation Suite - newer than what is available from APT
On PiOS Bookworm, this will install KiCAD 8.0.3, whereas only KiCad 6 is available from apt. KiCad 8 has a number of improvements over KiCad 6:

  • Thousands of new footprints
  • Easy importing of boards and libraries from other PCB designers
  • Custom fonts
  • Add graphics to the schematic or board
  • Drag and drop
  • Command line interface
  • Smarter algorothms and crash reporting
  • Much more at https://www.kicad.org/blog/2023/02/Version-7.0.0-Released/

To run: Menu -> Other -> KiCad
To run in a terminal: kicad

Note:

  • If you are using PiOS Bullseye, only KiCad 5.1.9 is available from APT, but Pi-Apps will install KiCad 6.0.11 using bullseye-backports.
  • If you are still on PiOS Buster or Ubuntu, Pi-Apps will install the default version available from the repositories.

Fortunately, KiCad is very easy to install on your Raspberry Pi in just two steps.

  1. Install Pi-Apps - the best app installer for Raspberry Pi.
  2. Use Pi-Apps to install KiCad.

Compatibility

For the best chance of this working, we recommend using the latest 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS, which is currently version Trixie.
Raspberry Pi OS has 32-bit and 64-bit variants, both of which will run on most Raspberry Pi computers, including the Pi 3, Pi 4, and Pi5.
KiCad will run on either PiOS 32-bit or 64-bit.

Install Pi-Apps

Pi-Apps is a free tool that makes it incredibly easy to install the most useful programs on your Raspberry Pi with just a few clicks.

Open a terminal and run this command to install Pi-Apps:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Botspot/pi-apps/master/install | bash

Feel free to check out the Pi-Apps source code here: https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps

Install KiCad

Now that you have Pi-Apps installed, it is time to install KiCad.
First launch Pi-Apps from your start menu:

Then click on the Engineering category.

Now scroll down to find KiCad in the list.

Just click Install and Pi-Apps will install KiCad for you!

Pi-Apps is a free and open source tool made by Botspot, theofficialgman, and other contributors. Find out more at https://pi-apps.io