Kodi

It's time! We are very pleased to present the latest and greatest release of Kodi, v21.0 "Omega". With this release we have seen over 3,750 commits since v20.0 "Nexus" was available to the world on January 15th, 2023. As always, this has been a huge effort from many contributors, testers and supporters. Thanks go out to our team members, plus everyone in our community who sent in a pull request, tested and gave feedback, or provided support to users on the forum. We always appreciate your contribution to making Kodi better. Let's review some of the changes you can expect: Major Features FFmpeg 6 Kodi relies significantly on FFmpeg to do a lot of heavy lifting for us. …

New Year, New Kodi? Not quite, but here we go with the next point release of the 21.x "Omega" series. The usual story: bugfixes, not features. The full changelog can be found on Github, as usual. Release Summary Major user-facing changes include: Library/Sources and Management Fixed a bug that ignored images in the ...\season\.actors folder. The \season\.actors folders have been deprecated and all actors are saved in the \TV Show\.actors folder. (forum, PR) Restore performance of movie addition to the library to v20 (Nexus) level (PR) Fixed/improved playback from some UPnP server software (at least UMS and Gerbera. Some NAS UPnP servers are based on UMS under the cov…

In 2015, Kodi’s default theme Confluence was growing long in the tooth. Most of the really exciting skins from that time accomplished far more, and Confluence was ultimately a 2009 update to an existing skin called MediaStream that was itself several years old. It was time for Confluence to retire. We needed something new that adhered to the UX best practices of the time. I proposed some wireframes based on Google’s Material Design that were pretty vague, but I hoped would be enough to get us started. Almost immediately, members of our team of skilled skinners (Phil65 and Piers) jumped on the task. I made my initial suggestion early on the 17th of June, and Piers had…

Things are beginning to heat up for Kodi 21 "Omega" with the first Beta release! This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across. First, we would like to make a few targeted announcements. Android users Many users may still be on the Kodi testing track for thei…

Recently, Team Kodi proudly released Kodi v21 "Omega", the latest major release of our popular media centre software. Our longevity and popularity means that Kodi is installed on literally millions of devices worldwide. For a range of reasons, not all of them are capable of supporting the newer releases; we do, however, try to maintain as much support as we can for the older releases, with our target being support for the previous two versions before the current one. The release of Omega thus moves Kodi Leia out of active support. The final version of Kodi Leia (v18.9) was released in October 2020. Leia was also noteworthy as being the final version which made use of th…

We are keeping things ticking over with Kodi 21 "Omega" with the second Beta release! This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across. First, we'd like to make a few targeted announcements. Android users Many users may still be on the Kodi testing track for the…

Slightly delayed Alpha 2, but here we go. We had a bit of a wild ride more due to behind the scenes update and changes - however, the good news is that it's given us more time for fixes and additions. Release notes Platform Specific Android Fix a stutter when the Kodi Android app was opened, closed and opened again. One of our team members (@thexai) noticed an issue with a recent PR that caused media stuttering to occur only after the app was opened and closed and reopened again without a force close. @ksooo has come up with a fix, so hopefully playback should be a better experience over Alpha 1. Another TrueHD fix - buffers reduced to a specific level to optimise d…

So, here we go, with no further ado, we'd like to present the first Alpha releases of Kodi 20.x "Nexus". This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, it will inevitably cause problems for some people, which is why we'll go through a more traditional Alpha/Beta/Release Candidate model. As such, then, please be aware that installing this will inevitably break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. So, all that aside... what's actually changed? Video AV1 hardware decoding for Android. PR AV1 hardware decoding for Linux via VAAPI PR Bump to FFMPEG 4.4 PR Subtitles Add…

Hello - okay - new teeth, that’s weird. So, where was I? Oh, that’s right... Barcelona! Well, we did it. After a couple of years of pandemic-induced isolation, we managed to get most of the team together in early April for the first time in forever. We successfully brought people in from as far afield as western Canada and Australia, from Europe and from India, for a few days of brainstorming, hacking, direction-setting, updates and, yes, beer. Without straying into politics, we had notable absences, of course, from our Russian and Ukrainian team members. Stay safe, guys: you were genuinely missed. As a break from our normal day-by-day account, this year we're writing t…

Is it too late to say "Happy New Year"? Probably, but this is still the first release of 2022, so let's go with that anyway. It's point release o'clock once more, so, without further fanfare, I give you Kodi "Matrix" 19.4: more bug fixes, some backports, no real new features. Full changelog since 19.3 on Github, as usual. Estuary Fix: Home screen context menu fix for when there are more than 10 items in menu. Fix: Seekbar wouldn't disappear after 5 sec when using remote app e.g. Kore or JSON to pause Kodi. Input Fix: English keyboard missing semi-colon. Fix: Chinese keyboard character now displaying correctly. Music Fix: Artist discography export to NFO. PVR …

Okay, we know that we've only just released 19.2, and some of you are probably even still waiting for that, but that's a big part of the reason we need to push out a new build. We still had some challenges with the Xbox release, and some other issues came to light that we didn't want to ignore - so, rather than get into platform-specific point releases, we thought we'd just nudge up to 19.3 and go for it. As with other point releases, don't go looking for new features, as that isn't really the purpose here. Full details are on GitHub, but here's the short form... We've had some challenges getting the Xbox version released because of some specific platform requirements …

It's been some time since we released 19.1, and numerous issues have revealed themselves and been resolved in the intervening months. As such, we're probably overdue a formal release of the updates, so, without further ado - here's the latest release in the "Matrix" series. As with other point releases, don't go looking for new features, as that isn't really the purpose here. Full details are on GitHub, but here's the short form... PVR Fixed: crash when accessing invalid PVR channel from favourites Fixed: crash on startup while searching for missing channel icons Fixed: crash on startup caused by missing timer type Fixed: "Delete permanently" of recordings from trash …

October... the month that gave birth to the world's most famous and traditional beer festival. What's possibly better than two weeks of collective beer drinking? Under normal circumstances...probably nothing. In the so called new normal? Let's pretend we can tolerate a bit more of this social awkwardness and find an alternative way: let's just celebrate beer... and open-source. Or in Team Kodi's dictionary: just another month at the office :) For yet another year, Kodi is participating as a project in Hacktoberfest. Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open source software run by DigitalOcean. During the month of October, individuals are invited to join open-sour…

The moment is here to move to an even more optimal translation service for our application. Ultimately we have chosen Weblate, and its service will be hosted at https://kodi.weblate.cloud/. This is done to optimize our workflow and to allow easy inclusion of all add-ons in the official Kodi add-on repository. The transition has taken its time during at least the last year, so if you have made any requests at Transifex for new languages or team additions in that period, we're sorry we couldn't implement them. All current translations have been transferred to Weblate, and we would like to thank you for all your efforts in making Kodi the multi-lingual success it is. We h…

Many of you will probably be aware that, since the dawn of time, each version of Kodi takes a vaguely sci-fi/fantasy/movie-themed name, in alphabetical order (Ed: no, don't ask what happens after we get to Z). This has become common practice throughout the IT industry - look at iOS, Android, Ubuntu, Intel chips, and similar: it provides a useful and friendly way to refer to a release without getting tied up in numbers and decimal points. Anyway, over the past 13 years or so we've chewed through Atlantis, Babylon, Camelot, Dharma, Eden, Frodo, Gotham, Helix, Isengard, Jarvis, Krypton, Leia and Matrix ... and, as we branch the code for the next release, it's time to bestow…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, no matter how much testing you do before a major release, you'll never find and squash anything like all the bugs until you get a proper, large-scale, mass test of the code. In other words, it's time for a bugfix release on the Kodi 19 "Matrix" series, as - thanks to your feedback - we've managed to fix a whole batch of issues over the past few weeks. In no particular order, this version includes fixes for the following: As a bug fix release, don't bother going to look for new features; while there are some, that's not the main purpose of this version. Full details are on GitHub, but here's the short form... Video Fixed: H…

Since we released 19.0 "Matrix", we've been hearing a lot of noise about how people's addons have stopped working, and why we're all Really Bad People for doing this. We thought it would be worth helping people understand what's happening here - mostly, because our fingers are getting tired from trying to explain, and it'll save an awful lot of typing in the forum, or on Facebook, or wherever. Please remember, first of all, that Kodi itself does not automatically update. We might tell you that a new version is available, sure, but we never force a new version onto you: that's entirely a product of your chosen operating system and configuration. It's probably enabled by d…

So... here we have a second Release Candidate for Kodi v20 "Nexus". While we have a fairly small number of fixes, they are fairly major. As always, thanks go out to all contributors for their work. We are nearing 4,000 commits since v19 "Matrix" was first released on February 19th 2021. For everyone that has contributed, both those in Team Kodi and all other devs that choose to roll up their sleeves and fix an issue. Everyone appreciates you for making Kodi better. We also want to thank all those users who provide endless support on the forums, we appreciate you, and all the support anyone provides to our users. Android Users A note for any users who are running Kodi o…

... yes, it's here! After several iterations of alpha, beta and RC, Team Kodi is pleased to announce that Kodi 19.0 "Matrix" has just been formally released on all supported platforms. Dare you take the red pill, and find out how deep the rabbit-hole goes? By the numbers, then, this version is the product of: Nearly 50 individual open source developers contributed code About 5,000 commits in over 1,500 pull requests since the first release of 18.x "Leia" Over 5,500 changed files, with some 600,000 lines of code added, changed or removed Countless hours of dedicated free time conceiving, designing, developing and testing (including all the infrastructure you see around …

And, off we go again. The dust settles on the festive season, so it's time for another pre-release to hit the streets... we're getting close to final release now, so we're moving out of Beta and into RC. If you want to know the main features in this release series, please refer back to previous blog posts: this is an iteration of previous Beta releases, not a feature release, remember. This is stable, reliable code, suitable for daily use. Please, then: install, test, and give us clear feedback on any remaining issues, either with the new features or perhaps with a regression in existing code. As this is a release candidate, we think it's basically ready to go, but let'…

Hey everybody, In June 2020 some suggestions on improvements to our add-on system were suggested by Matt Huisman and some minor changes were implemented. Who knew at the time but this turned into much more work both cleaning up the current add-on system and adding numerous new features. The main goal of this became to improve the add-on user experience and add security features in order to prevent add-ons and repositories from being misused by bad actors. The main problems were founded in the initial design of the add-on system, which doesn't distinguish between official and third-party repositories. This allows a mixup of installing and updating add-ons based only on t…

Heya fellow net dwellers, Right now the Remote Chaos Experience (RC3) is already running at full steam as virtual replacement for the 37th Chaos Communication Congress (37C3) that was supposed to be held in Leipzig, Germany, at exactly this time. While we did not register an official assembly, some Team Kodi members are roaming around the RC3 world and we will use the opportunity to hold a short "What's new" presentation plus Q&A session on the last day of the congress. The exact date and time is Wednesday, 30th December, 2 p.m. CET. The event is over and the recording is available on YouTube. View the full article

So, here we go again. Nothing earth-shattering, just a quick note to tell you that the second Beta of Kodi 19.x "Matrix" is now available for installation. If you want to know the main features in this release series, please refer back to previous blog posts, especially the Beta 1 announcement: this is entirely a bugfix release, so - as befits a second Beta - there are no new features over Beta 1. By this stage, there should be no show-stopping bugs, and this release should be pretty reliable - just make sure you know how to roll back, just in case. Please: install, test, and give us clear feedback on any issues you uncover, either with the new features or perhaps with …

Lights! Camera! Action! ... nearly. It's Beta time for Kodi 19.x "Matrix", so let's take another step towards the Great Unveiling. As we now move into Beta, this release is much more about fixes than features: while there will be the odd new functionality, we're concentrating very much more on getting everything working properly from this point. To recap, then, one of the main objectives of 19.x "Matrix" is to release a production version of Kodi with Python 3 addons as early in 2021 as we can. That can only happen with enthusiastic community support, lots of good humour and willingness to see the best in others - well, that and coffee/beer (delete as applicable), of c…

Last year at FOSDEM, we were approached about our usage of analytics software on our websites that gives visitor data to big companies with servers located in countries with data protection laws that are less strict than what EU citizens are accustomed to. Team Kodi has always had a firm stance against user tracking in our software, so it felt inconsistent that we did not extend the same level of prudence to our websites. At first, we considered removing analytics altogether. But it quickly became clear that this would be problematic for our Wiki maintainers: Without any insight into what pages are viewed most, it is next to impossible to prioritize the pages to update a…