Kodi Changelog

What's new in Kodi 21.0 RC 2

Mar 19, 2024
  • [BP][macOS] fall back to legacy OpenGL profile on NSOpenGLContext creation error #24822 by @kambala-decapitator in #24823
  • [BP][cmake] UWP fix escaping generate-UWP-pythonfix script by @fuzzard in #24839
  • [BP][tools/depends] LLVM15 support - reduce errors to warnings by @fuzzard in #24840
  • Install scalable svg icon by @razzeee in #24853
  • [Omega][video] Fix regression when playing deleted movie. by @ksooo in #24863
  • [Omega] RC2 by @fuzzard in #24848

New in Kodi 21.0 RC 1 (Mar 7, 2024)

  • Fix player controls by @Hitcher in #24715
  • [Settings] Fix Read Factor displayed as 0.0x in logs when setting value is "Adaptive" by @thexai in #24722
  • [Android] Fix Zip Path Traversal vulnerability by @joseluismarti in #24730
  • Add branding color to metainfo for linux by @razzeee in #24734
  • [Android] Remove unused code and improve extraction of the apk file by @joseluismarti in #24735
  • [FileSystem] Fix: not use CFileStreamBuffer in all network files by @thexai in #24733
  • [plugins] Ignore fileaction (play) if item is not playable... by @enen92 in #24743
  • macos: remove dead code by @enen92 in #24759
  • [Android] zipAlignEnabled has been deprecated for a while by @joseluismarti in #24761
  • [MUSIC] Get correct duration of stream from FFMPEG for audiobook chap… by @the-black-eagle in #24732
  • [guiinfo] Fix LISTITEM_LABEL for movies with multiple versions only … by @ksooo in #24753
  • VideoPlayer: Reset stale stream times after a flush by @popcornmix in #24748
  • MacOS: Implement hotkeycontroller to fix exclusive mediakey usage by @enen92 in #24765
  • [Android] Use compileSdk, minSdk and targetSdk by @joseluismarti in #24778
  • [Android] Adjustments in manifest file by @joseluismarti in #24781
  • AESinkPipewire: Properly identify HDMI devices by @fritsch in #24740
  • [Windows] Fix inaccurate 10-bit SDR / HDR color using Pixel Shaders by @thexai in #24739
  • Fix regression for play actions by @enen92 in #24789
  • [VideoPlayer] Fix initial interlaced stream refresh rate switch by @CrystalP in #24785
  • [video] fix selection after changing video or extra art by @CrystalP in #24792
  • [PVR] Channel Manager: Fix refresh channel icons; old icons still shown after refresh. by @ksooo in #24793
  • [video] fix selected item after removing version/extra by @CrystalP in #24791
  • [doc] Fix incorrect tag name for the disabled slider bar texture by @CrystalP in #24804
  • Bump androidx.tvprovider:tvprovider by @joseluismarti in #24805
  • [video] remove unused string by @CrystalP in #24807
  • [Docs] Fix doxygen references for cutlist deprecation by @enen92 in #24801
  • [Android] Adjust GUI SRD peak luminance when display is in HDR PQ mode by @thexai in #24756
  • Store streamed video subtitle on custom subtitles path if defined by user by @hagaygo in #24752
  • [Omega] Release RC1 by @fuzzard in #24783

New in Kodi 20.5 (Mar 5, 2024)

  • [Backport] Revert Android joystick fixes by @garbear in #24708
  • [Backport] Android: add colorMode config to .Main activity in AndroidManifest.xml by @matthuisman in #24711
  • AESinkAudioTrack: Help broken firmwares to make kodi ignore broken delay by @fritsch in #24729
  • [backport] Allow to build with taglib-2.0 by @neo1973 in #24772
  • Add branding color to metainfo for linux by @razzeee in #24774
  • [backport] EGLUtils: Fix nullptr usage in EglErrorCallback by @neo1973 in #24773
  • [Nexus] Release 20.5 by @fuzzard in #24782

New in Kodi 21.0 Beta 3 (Feb 15, 2024)

  • [GUI] [Skins] Bump skins backwards-compatibility abi to 5.17.0 by @jjd-uk in #23927
  • Network: dns lookup can return an IPv6 address by @joseluismarti in #24209
  • [UPnP] Fix crash when adding UPnP source while UPnP is disabled by @neo1973 in #24215
  • [groovy] Remove bundled groovy/apache commons binaries by @fuzzard in #24199
  • [DllLibCurl][TestXBMCTinyXML2] Fix memory leaks by @neo1973 in #24211
  • [Estuary] Fix shift view overlay by @jjd-uk in #24217
  • [VideoVersion] Improved the same video detection by @xodidox in #24157
  • [Windows] Fix chroma upsampling for software render method by @CrystalP in #24222
  • [video] Video Versions Playback: Fixes and Cleanup by @ksooo in #24224
  • [Windows] Fix chroma upsampling for pixel shaders render method by @CrystalP in #24221
  • [video] Video versions: Add context menu item "Play using..." and "Play version using..." by @ksooo in #24234
  • [Windows] fix chroma upscaling with software render method v2 by @CrystalP in #24237
  • [application] Fix a race condition on CApplicationPlayerCallback::m_itemCurrentFile by @dobo90 in #23710
  • [info] Deprecated Process and Colour picture/slideshow infos by @enen92 in #24218
  • [video][guilib][input] Change video versions and extra selection to use Kodi's stock select dialog by @ksooo in #24249
  • [video] CVideoInfoTag: Remove CVideoDataBase dependency. by @ksooo in #24253
  • [Estuary] Fix video version dialog 'add extras' and 'add version' button not always visible. by @ksooo in #24260
  • [video] Video version select: Hide extras/versions button if no extras/versions available. by @ksooo in #24261
  • [UPnP] Fix playback restore after pause by @enen92 in #24257
  • [guilib][GUIFadeLabelControl] Fix text right alignment by @CastagnaIT in #24266
  • Fix compiler warning in BlurayCallback.cpp by @garbear in #24265
  • [VideoPlayer] Call EnableStream when playback start disabled subtitles by @CastagnaIT in #24186
  • [info] Add Player.IsRemote and Player.IsExternal by @enen92 in #24268
  • [cmake] FindFFMPEG refactor target creation by @fuzzard in #24241
  • Fix potential segfault when missing "layoutList" element by @garbear in #24242
  • [Estuary] Hide next if conditions for next don't met by @enen92 in #24270
  • [UPnP] Move Player to its own thread by @enen92 in #24262
  • [UPnP] Player: Make hasvideo and hasaudio conditional on the item type by @enen92 in #24272
  • [Discs][UPnP] Don't show simplified menu if playing to remote players by @enen92 in #24273
  • [RSS] Fix parsing logic by @neo1973 in #24231
  • [Windows] Fix chroma upsampling for AMD dxva processor and 10 bit output of SDR sources by @CrystalP in #24227
  • [VideoDB] fix movie title index creation and version bump by @CrystalP in #24226
  • Fix edge case when downloading subtitles for http(s) streams by @Pedrock in #24252
  • [Estuary] Fix selected colours by @Hitcher in #24256
  • [Estuary] Make all views consistent with PR#24168 by @Hitcher in #24258
  • [UPnP] Player: Add option to avoid volume synchronization to target by @enen92 in #24263
  • [tvOS] Fix binary addons (PVR) multi instance settings reset by @sy6sy2 in #24259
  • [UPnP] Fix playlist playback on remote players by @enen92 in #24274
  • [UPnP] Remove unuseful code block plus strong dependency on CApp by @enen92 in #24275
  • [Settings] Disable video version scan by @jjd-uk in #24279
  • [Estuary] Fix collection info layout by @Hitcher in #24254
  • [UPnP] Assorted include cleanups by @enen92 in #24281
  • [Estuary][GUI] Do not activate fullscreen window if rendering video to remote targets (UPnP) by @enen92 in #24280
  • [video] Video version dialog: Fix artwork refresh. by @ksooo in #24282
  • [video] Video Version Dialog Cleanup by @ksooo in #24290
  • [video] Video version dialog: Fix wrong item played. by @ksooo in #24292
  • [ContextMenus] Don't show move up/down if single favourite by @enen92 in #24298
  • [dialogs] Fix CGUIDialogSubtitleSettings::BrowseForSubtitle to use it… by @ksooo in #24303
  • [Pictures] Implement Slideshow delegator design pattern by @enen92 in #24291
  • [ContextMenus][PVR] Do not show play using for live tv by @enen92 in #24297
  • [UPnP] Access to g_UserData must be protected by @enen92 in #24296
  • [video][Estuary] Separate video versions from video extras at GUI level by @ksooo in #24302
  • [video] Versions/Extras Manage Dialogs: Selection improvements by @ksooo in #24316
  • [video] Fix crash on strm file playback. by @ksooo in #24318
  • [video] Fix playback of multi-version movies. Do not prompt for versi… by @ksooo in #24327
  • Update some video versions messages by @CrystalP in #24326
  • [video] Cleanup translation of versions/extras dialog messages by @CrystalP in #24332
  • [Estuary] Fix button visibility in video versions manager by @Hitcher in #24325
  • [cmake] FindTagLib Add version test for internal build by @fuzzard in #24313
  • [video] Video versions select dialog: Highlight default version in list of versions by @ksooo in #24336
  • [video] Fix no video information available when playing strm files, … by @ksooo in #24333
  • [video][dialogs] Video versions: Fix delay before "Convert to version" video select dialog opens by @ksooo in #24331
  • [depends][Windows] msys2 fixes and update to 20231026 by @CrystalP in #24133
  • [tools/depends][target] Bump Harfbuzz + Android NDK26+ build fixes by @fuzzard in #24312
  • [guilib][GUITextBox] Use vecText to determine text width by @CastagnaIT in #24315
  • [InputStreamAddon] Fix memory leak by @neo1973 in #24214
  • [GUI] Fix focus behaviour when scrolling to the bottom of the panel by @joseluismarti in #24232
  • [Pictures] Fix exif parsing regression from v19 by @enen92 in #24344
  • [video] Separate video versions and extras items by @ksooo in #24340
  • Translations update from Kodi Weblate by @weblate in #24230
  • Sync of addon metadata translations by @github-actions in #24357
  • [video] Video Versions/Extras: More smaller cleanup and fixes by @ksooo in #24356
  • [Estuary] Update versions icon for views by @Hitcher in #24317
  • [CACerts] Update to 2023-12-12 by @fuzzard in #24361
  • Support build with taglib-2.0 by @heitbaum in #24339
  • [Video] Improve default folder for "Add Extra" file picker by @CrystalP in #24362
  • [video] Remove context menu item 'Add as version to...' by @ksooo in #24365
  • [Videodb] Fix of previous data migration and refactors by @CrystalP in #24370
  • [video] Video Versions: Fix empty context menu item label. by @ksooo in #24373
  • [Estuary] Better visual indicator of focused item by @Hitcher in #24323
  • [Android] Fix audio engine initialisation after sleep by @hugbug in #24369
  • langinfo.xml: Change Canadian shortdate format to YYYY-MM-DD by @neo1973 in #24328
  • [Pictures addons] support Date Taken sort for pics decoded via addons by @rubpa in #24307
  • [Video] Redesign of the "Add version" dialog of Manage versions by @CrystalP in #24364
  • [UPnP] Renderer: use app messenger instead of calling into g_App by @enen92 in #24376
  • [video] Fix/cleanup: We never want to obtain all video versions and all extras at the same time. by @ksooo in #24387
  • [video] Movies window: Movies/Versions node: Context menu fixes by @ksooo in #24389
  • [MUSIC] Only drop music db triggers on clean if they exist by @the-black-eagle in #24388
  • [VIDEO] Prefer nfo streamdetails over file details where possible by @the-black-eagle in #24386
  • [Video] Add a shortcut to the video dir in the Add version/extra file browsers by @CrystalP in #24394
  • [Games] Filter out "virtual" Android joysticks by @garbear in #24382
  • [fix build on linux] forward declare CMediaSource in GUIDialogVideoMa… by @howie-f in #24405
  • Format my CODEOWNERS code with clang-format-14 by @garbear in #24381
  • [Playlists] Rename song methods to generic item index by @enen92 in #24400
  • [upnp] Renderer: playlist changed is an event that should e emitted b… by @enen92 in #24396
  • [UPnP] Remove dependency on AppVolumeHandling by @enen92 in #24397
  • [Estuary] Video Versions Dialog Redesign by @jjd-uk in #24286
  • remove inclusion of MediaSource.h in GUIDialogVideoInfo.h by @howie-f in #24408
  • [GUIWindowVideoBase] Library thumbnail not updated by @78andyp in #24176
  • [Pictures] Better control of play/stop annoucements by @enen92 in #24412
  • [video] Fix disappearing artwork on end of multi-version movie playback. by @ksooo in #24415
  • [Estuary] Update DefaultVideoVersions.png by @Hitcher in #24423
  • [Estuary] Fix duplicate music flags by @jjd-uk in #24416
  • [UPnP] Fix OnSetAVTransportURI by @enen92 in #24413
  • [UPnP] Renderer: Avoid calling into the main thread for playlist play… by @enen92 in #24414
  • [UPnP] Renderer: Remove dependency on ApplicationPlayer by @enen92 in #24418
  • [videodb] Move the extras of a movie converted to a version by @CrystalP in #24434
  • [video] Refresh library list after changes in Info > Manage versions by @CrystalP in #24419
  • [Peripherals] Fix missing controller icons in Peripheral Dialog by @garbear in #24384
  • [Android] Enable logging of debug messages even if disabled system-wide (e.g. Fire TV) by @hugbug in #24432
  • Peripheral API v3.0.2: Stable peripheral locations by @garbear in #24392
  • [video][Estuary] Video Versions: Improvements and Fixes by @ksooo in #24430
  • [Posix][Filesystem] Fixed SMB logging by @hugbug in #24417
  • [CImageFile] Fix texture cache handling by @neo1973 in #24433
  • [tools/depends][target] Bump freetyppe 2.13.2 by @fuzzard in #24407
  • [UPnP] Translate object id when marked as watched by @enen92 in #24438
  • [video] CVideoDatabase::GetVideoVersionsNav cleanup after c84fdfa… by @ksooo in #24443
  • [video] Remove item 'New version...' from node 'Movies/Versions'. … by @ksooo in #24444
  • [video] Video Versions: Remove more dead code by @ksooo in #24445
  • [UPnP] Fix broadcast of item updates by @enen92 in #24450
  • [UPnP] Clang-format main files by @enen92 in #24452
  • [video] Video versions: Fix certain default select action handling scenarios by @ksooo in #24451
  • [guilib] Kill CGUIListItemLayoutPtr typedef by @enen92 in #24454
  • Update Kodi Icon for Linux packaging by @razzeee in #24310
  • Players: Always reset CDataCacheCore on close file by @enen92 in #24402
  • [guilib][utils] Set IsPlayable false on add items by @enen92 in #24461
  • [gui] Move listproviders to guilib by @enen92 in #24463
  • [FileItem][video] Remove dead code (we no longer have any videoversion items… by @ksooo in #24464
  • [video] Detect similar movies when scanning movies with nfo files by @CrystalP in #24457
  • [guillib][estuary] Make the existence of extras visible in the library by @CrystalP in #24456
  • [video] Fix video versions folder navigation. by @ksooo in #24462
  • [video] CVideoInfoTag::Reset(): Set m_isDefaultVideoVersion to false,… by @ksooo in #24473
  • [videodb] fix miss in field renaming of PR#24370 by @CrystalP in #24469
  • [video] Video versions/extras chooser: Fix button labels. by @ksooo in #24474
  • [Estuary][video] Refactor video versions select dialog to use movie items by @ksooo in #24475
  • DVDVideoCodecAndroidMediaCodec: Remove logspam when debug logging by @fritsch in #24479
  • [video] Adjust the validations and messages in add version/extra by @CrystalP in #24477
  • [clang-tidy] fix modernize-* and performance-* warnings by @Rechi in #24436
  • [video] Refresh library list after the addition of extras in Info > Manage extras by @CrystalP in #24487
  • [cppcheck] fix performance checks by @Rechi in #24411
  • [Android] Fix audio engine initialisation on startup by @hugbug in #24484
  • AndroidMediaCodec: Retry VC1 as mime type is confusing vendors by @fritsch in #24491
  • [video] correct description of 'Adjust display HDR mode' by @chewitt in #24497
  • [video] Change the name of the Manage Versions/Extras dialog by @CrystalP in #24499
  • [Estuary] Fix hasvideextras overlay for views by @CrystalP in #24482
  • [Android] ABI check removal by @joseluismarti in #24515
  • [video] Fix watched overlay image of parent movie item by @CrystalP in #24509
  • [FileSystem] Refactored and improved logic to use CFileStreamBuffer by @thexai in #24504
  • added: enable .avif image support in ffmpeg image by @notspiff in #24520
  • AndroidMediaCodec: Retry VC1 fix by @dbarkar in #24516
  • [Player Viewer] Three improvements by @garbear in #24406
  • [Android] ABI check removal: xbmc.properties file by @joseluismarti in #24519
  • [Datacachecore] Initiallize SStateInfo with sane values by @enen92 in #24522
  • [Input] Refactor to improve code organization by @garbear in #24501
  • [Windows] AESinkWASAPI: improve fallback when is not supported exact output channel layout by @thexai in #24534
  • [PVR] "Play EPG Tags as Movies" by @ksooo in #24528
  • [ContextMenus] Don't populate python context items if browsing sub-menus by @enen92 in #24543
  • AESinkPipewire: Set Samplerate for the node by @fritsch in #24363
  • [tvOS] fix assigning bundle ID to the generated frameworks by @kambala-decapitator in #24541
  • [video] rework dimensions by @DaVukovic in #24527
  • [VideoDB] restore compatibility with MariaDB < 10.5.2 by @andred in #24505
  • AESinkAudioTrack: Allow multi-channel float for new devices by @fritsch in #24553
  • AudioTrack: Simplify Channel selection by @fritsch in #24554
  • MacOS: add missing key mappings by @enen92 in #24556
  • [video] Change Versions Art Handling by @CrystalP in #24538
  • [Input] Default buttonmaps for keyboard and mouse by @garbear in #24512
  • Fix the scourge of game add-on build failures by @garbear in #24531
  • Revert "[guilib][utils] Set IsPlayable false on add items" by @enen92 in #24563
  • [Joysticks] Fix broken focus on emulated analog stick by @garbear in #24513
  • Game API v3.0.2: Mouse/keyboard addressing by @garbear in #24518
  • [tools/depends] Fix android pycryptodome package, Bump rustup 1.75.0 by @fuzzard in #24551
  • EGLUtils: Fix nullptr usage in EglErrorCallback by @neo1973 in #24523
  • [Android] Remove special versioning for Android arch types by @fuzzard in #24494
  • [video] Remove non-working context menu manage / info dialog buttons for versions by @CrystalP in #24569
  • [Keyboard] Optimize keyboard symbol translation by @garbear in #24525
  • [Estuary] Refactor of poster/widget overlay icons by @jjd-uk in #24521
  • Add another msys2 binary to fix game add-on build failures by @garbear in #24567
  • [Android][windowing] Initialize m_bWindowCreated by @joseluismarti in #24572
  • Player Viewer: Add keyboard and mouse input by @garbear in #24524
  • [video] Fix multi version movie playback by @ksooo in #24575
  • [video] Restore selection of extras in "Choose" dialog by @CrystalP in #24558
  • add renderbuffer index to RenderCapture() (like for RenderUpdate()), fixes sporadic black captures under Linux by @fightforlife in #24439
  • Fix Input method on X11 by @wengxt in #24393
  • Support build with taglib-2.0 with the removed integer type definitions in the release by @heitbaum in #24577
  • [guilib] VideoThumbLoader don't look for basic local artwork when library items are displayed by @rmrector in #24483
  • Bump VERSION_CODE one unit to fix Android install over current by @thexai in #24581
  • [cmake] Don't append target sysroot in native toolchainfile by @sundermann in #24590
  • [Android][windowing] Revert 'Initialize m_bWindowCreated' and remove … by @joseluismarti in #24587
  • [Video] Always respect video versions/extras ignore setting by @CrystalP in #24391
  • [Android] Add HDR allowed dynamic metadata formats setting by @quietvoid in #24584
  • [tools/depends] Bump swig 4.2.0 by @fuzzard in #24552
  • [Scraper] Check for filename identifers during refresh job by @sundermann in #24571
  • changed: log to error (thanks @dmittiga) issue #24506 by @malard in #24596
  • [FileCache] adjust Read Factor algorithm by @thexai in #24582
  • [video] Fix playback of .rm files by @CrystalP in #24607
  • [webOS] Add setting to select allowed HDR dynamic metadata formats by @quietvoid in #24600
  • [VIDEO] fix tv show episodes not probed for streamdetails when refres… by @the-black-eagle in #24532
  • [Estuary] Fix player controls dialog by @Hitcher in #24606
  • [Estuary] Extras - change layout by @jjd-uk in #24609
  • Android joystick fixes by @garbear in #24604
  • webOS: Remove leftover libcec depend by @garbear in #24621
  • [video] Remove fallback to movie art for undefined extra art types by @CrystalP in #24619
  • tools/depends: Update waylandpp patch to fix build again with gcc 13 by @garbear in #24626
  • Fix WebVTT compiler warning by @garbear in #24620
  • [video] Fix playlist window select and play actions by @ksooo in #24617
  • [docs] Use gh markdown highlights of warnings, tips and notes by @enen92 in #24613
  • [darwin] fix retain cycle in Gamecontroller by @kambala-decapitator in #24634
  • AESinkAudioTrack: Help broken firmwares to make kodi ignore broken delay by @fritsch in #24597
  • [video] Only consider matches of same media type when looking for similar movies by @CrystalP in #24598
  • [video] Modify versions/extras related texts by @CrystalP in #24591
  • [video] Fix text of the context menu Choose version button by @CrystalP in #24648
  • [favourites][listproviders] Fix select action not to show the choose … by @ksooo in #24638
  • [Android] Exec wake-up routine only after hdmi handshake by @hugbug in #24632
  • [video] fill GUIListItem properties with streamdetails for the hybrid… by @CrystalP in #24645
  • [video] Fix video info dialog play button to always play the version … by @ksooo in #24652
  • [skin] Remove estouchy from core by @fuzzard in #24655
  • [video] Fix 'play version using' version select dialog having 'extras' button. by @ksooo in #24661
  • [Keyboard] Fix special handling of Num Lock states for XKB common library by @garbear in #24639
  • [Omega] Update controller add-ons for new keyboard layout and translations by @garbear in #24635
  • Optimize keyboard/mouse input on first action by @garbear in #24651
  • Minor game improvements by @garbear in #24650
  • [strings] Reword remove movie from library by @DaVukovic in #24476
  • [video] Fix the refresh of movies with additional versions or extras by @CrystalP in #24647
  • [CPACK] Adjust dependencies to build packages compatible with focal to noble by @Gujal00 in #24662
  • [iOS/tvOS] disable VTB for real-time interlaced videos by @kambala-decapitator in #24671
  • [video] Hide 'Choose version' and 'Play version using' context menu i… by @ksooo in #24670
  • Teletext: Fix crash due to invalid FTC_Node by @enen92 in #24673
  • Screensaver: Do not force dim if another modal is being shown by @enen92 in #24664
  • [VideoPlayer] Adjust lastseekpts on FlushBuffers by @enen92 in #24674
  • Kill CGUIListItemPtr typedef by @enen92 in #24676
  • [posix] PosixMountProvider excludes +efivarfs +systemd-1 by @sky42src in #24642
  • [webOS][Power management] Implement shutdown/reboot by @sundermann in #24244
  • [VideoDatabase] Do not overwrite Set Overview if no field in NFO by @78andyp in #24533
  • [VideoInfoScanner] Fix processing of in TV show's NFO. by @78andyp in #24565
  • [MUSIC] Only set libraryartfilled property if we actually found art by @the-black-eagle in #24675
  • [FileCache] Implements adaptative read factor based on cache level by @thexai in #24640
  • [JSON-RPC] Add GUI.ActivateScreenSaver by @DaVukovic in #24181
  • [Android] Adjust copying of resource files to cache folder by @joseluismarti in #24666
  • added: non standard language codes used by some DVDs (thanks @jsgh) by @malard in #24599
  • [JSON-RPC] add command to change playback speed (tempo) by @kambala-decapitator in #24633
  • [webOS] Disable core dumps by @sundermann in #24441
  • [tools/depends] Bump gettext 0.22.4 by @fuzzard in #24630
  • CXbtManager: Synchronize access to internal data structures by @neo1973 in #24685
  • [webOS] Map info key by @sundermann in #24684
  • [GUIEditControl] Use left truncate (and relative ellipses) for edit controls only by @CastagnaIT in #24624
  • [video] Fix 'Play using...' context menu item not visible for version… by @ksooo in #24677
  • VideoInfoScanner: Support .nomedia files in TV show subdirectories by @neo1973 in #24330
  • [VideoInfoScanner] Fix scraping of episodes in Blu-ray folders (BDMV). by @78andyp in #24314
  • [MUSIC] Allow navigating from artist directly to songs via AS.xml setting by @the-black-eagle in #24649
  • [Estuary] Add video version name to playlist + Add 3D info + Cleanup by @jjd-uk in #24681
  • [Android] Include missing binary addon libs in the apk package by @joseluismarti in #24688
  • [CGUIPassword] Media served through plugins is not shown when there is a master lock. by @78andyp in #24446
  • [keymaps] change show shutdownmenu to poweroff action by @DaVukovic in #24536
  • [Estuary] Video Version Choose Dialog Fix by @jjd-uk in #24693
  • [apple][xcode] use literal make command instead of variable in Xcode by @kambala-decapitator in #24691
  • [guilib] Add Infolabels for versions by @CrystalP in #24695
  • Videodb versions by @CrystalP in #24683
  • Translations update from Kodi Weblate by @weblate in #24698
  • Sync of addon metadata translations by @github-actions in #24699
  • VideoPlayer: Fix error window for tempo/fractional play speeds by @enen92 in #24692
  • VideoPlayer: Fix stalls when seeking with tempo enabled by @enen92 in #24701
  • DXVA: Use at least 8 surfaces for H.264 decoding by @thexai in #24704
  • Revert Android joystick fixes by @garbear in #24707
  • Android: add colorMode config to .Main activity in AndroidManifest.xml by @spdfrk in #24710
  • TagLoaderTagLib: Avoid potential crash when exception is thrown by @philipturnbull in #24706
  • [Omega] Beta 3 by @fuzzard in #24690

New in Kodi 20.4 (Feb 11, 2024)

  • [Nexus] Fix Playstore obb failure + bump 20.3.2 by @fuzzard in #24480
  • [backport][tvOS] fix assigning bundle ID to the generated frameworks by @kambala-decapitator in #24540
  • [Backport] Fix the scourge of game add-on build failures by @garbear in #24562
  • [backport][Android] ABI check removal by @joseluismarti in #24561
  • [Backport] Add another msys2 binary to fix game add-on build failures by @garbear in #24568
  • AESinkWASAPI: improve fallback when is not supported exact output channel layout by @thexai in #24583
  • [Backport] Android joystick fixes by @garbear in #24625
  • [Nexus] Update controller add-ons for new keyboard layout and translations by @garbear in #24636
  • [BP][iOS/tvOS] disable VTB for real-time interlaced videos by @kambala-decapitator in #24672
  • [BP][darwin] fix retain cycle in Gamecontroller by @kambala-decapitator in #24637
  • [Nexus] Bump 20.4 by @fuzzard in #24679

New in Kodi 20.3 (Jan 10, 2024)

  • Estuary:
  • An assortment of fixes for Estuary, including home categories' focus position, alignment of counter labels and Shift view for collections.
  • Fixes to the weather layout when busy.
  • Game/Retroplayer:
  • Fixed controllers not assigned to game ports correctly on Android.
  • Fixed blue/pink washed out colours on Windows with 10-bit displays.
  • Fixed possible crash in Port dialogue box.
  • Fixed typo for the mouse middle button in Controller dialogue box.
  • General:
  • A DVD playback fix that resolves unmounted drives not being playable.
  • A fix for infinite loops in CPluginFile that occurred when using scrapers.
  • A fix for a crash that occurred due to Addon settings being destructed in an incorrect order.
  • Redact some information from Toast notifications (user/passwords incorrectly being shown).
  • A memory leak in context menus was resolved.
  • Image cache handling was fixed to correctly regenerate when cached files for JSON API consumers.
  • Music:
  • Music Library: now able to automatically recover if library cleaning was interrupted previously for some reason.
  • Platform Specific:
  • Android:
  • Fixed (workaround implemented) possible audio out-of-sync in recent AMLogic BSP devices: FireTV Cube 3rd Gen, Homatics Box R 4K Plus, …
  • Linux:
  • VP9 Profile 2 playback failure was fixed.
  • A fix for a leak of EGLFences in the DRM Prime renderer.
  • macOS/iOS:
  • Fix a crash on Apple Silicon based Macs when pressing the Caps Lock key.
  • tvOS:
  • Fixed: Not persistent binary addons (PVR) settings.
  • Windows:
  • Fixed: 24 Hz refresh rate related to HDR in specific use cases only (when Windows HDR auto-switch is not used).
  • Fixed: audio device "WASAPI:default" was listed multiple times in audio device list.
  • Fixed: fractional refresh rates 119.88 Hz and higher they were not displayed correctly.
  • Pictures:
  • An exif parsing regression from v19 was resolved.
  • PVR:
  • Fix TV channel subtitles not displayed on playback start, even when activated in subtitle settings.
  • Fix recordings with a path containing a colon (':') not being displayed in recordings window.
  • UPNP:
  • A fix for a crash that occurred when a user added a UPNP source without having UPNP enabled.
  • Playback from remote sources (ftp, http, etc.) has been fixed.
  • Video:
  • A fix to the default Select action on certain movie-related windows.

New in Kodi 21.0 Beta 2 (Dec 11, 2023)

  • [webOS] Platform: Fix HOME variable append by @sundermann in #23954
  • [cores] Fix CDVDInputStreamBluray::Open check for item being resumable. by @ksooo in #23967
  • [playlistplayer] Fix PVR items not handled correctly. Those need to b… by @ksooo in #23961
  • [video] CGUIWindowVideoBase::OnItemInfo: Skip check whether a video i… by @ksooo in #23969
  • [GUI][Skins] Bump to xbmc.gui 5.17.0 by @jjd-uk in #23926
  • [PVR] Fix playing channel not always highlighted in dialogs/windows. by @ksooo in #23971
  • [interfaces] Fix PVR channel playback from remote app 'favourites' by @ksooo in #23972
  • [video] Fix 'Play using' offering RetroPlayer for playback of iso bd/dvd disc images. by @ksooo in #23983
  • [video] Fix CVideoDatabase::GetMusicVideosByWhere to set dyn path … by @ksooo in #23980
  • [tools/depends] Bump wayland related dependencies by @fuzzard in #23982
  • Fix Visual Studio warnings by @thexai in #23976
  • [PVR] Fix/Improve recently played channels widget (e.g. respect hidden groups and channels). by @ksooo in #23985
  • [Windows] Disable video settings not supported by the DXVA processor. by @CrystalP in #23988
  • [tvos] Resolve some build issues with Xcode 15 by @fuzzard in #23949
  • [cmake] Create FindPythonInterpreter for host information by @fuzzard in #23877
  • [docs] Coding guidelines changes by @ksooo in #23998
  • [cmake] add ${CORE_PLATFORM_NAME_LC}_SEARCH_CONFIG NO_DEFAULT_PATH for windows by @fuzzard in #23997
  • Switch remote poweroff button behaviour to show shutdown menu, like on keyboards by @HiassofT in #23806
  • [tools/depends] Bump Python 3.11.6 by @fuzzard in #23995
  • VDPAU: fix hq scalers by @smp79 in #23973
  • Format GUIControlFactory.cpp/h by @garbear in #23979
  • [python][window] Delete pcontrol after SendGUIMessage by @CastagnaIT in #24002
  • [upnp] Alternative fix for serving smartplaylists via upnp by @enen92 in #24008
  • [docs] Coding guideline: Add, that we are using prefix operators in t… by @ksooo in #24004
  • [depends][Python] Set setuptools library suffix by @sundermann in #23994
  • Don't flush ffmpeg buffers if it holds any refs on close by @smp79 in #23996
  • [Estuary] OSD showing wrong value for ‘Next’ programme when playing radio. by @FergusGeorge in #24017
  • [Estuary] Fix home categories focus position by @HitcherUK in #24000
  • [wayland][input] Add xkb compose and dead-keys support by @enen92 in #23943
  • Fix 'Shift' view for Collections by @HitcherUK in #24024
  • [video][music][interfaces][fileitem] STRM file fixes by @ksooo in #24025
  • [FileSystem] Add GUI settings for NFS and SMB chunk size by @thexai in #24019
  • Fix controller not rendering for copied gamecontroller controls by @garbear in #23987
  • [PVR] const correctness improvements. by @ksooo in #24029
  • [GUI] [Skins] Add locale InfoLabels for Skins by @DeltaMikeCharlie in #24028
  • [video][PVR] Info dialogs: Add support for default play action by @ksooo in #24031
  • [contextmenumanager] Fix 'More...' context menu item displayed for favourites… by @ksooo in #24037
  • [Estuary] Fix alignment of counter labels in File Manager by @HitcherUK in #24041
  • [python] Fix xmbc.getRegion("time") by @mglae in #24009
  • [xkbcommon] Unify xkbLogger by @enen92 in #24045
  • [builtins] PlayerBuiltins: PlayOrQueueMedia: Fixes by @ksooo in #24048
  • [fileitem] Fix 'action play' not working for favourites for strm files. by @ksooo in #24047
  • VAAPI: increase maxReferences for AV1 by @smp79 in #24042
  • [PVR] Fix recordings with a path containing a ':' not displayed in recordings window. by @ksooo in #24053
  • [CApp] Kill XBMC to Kodi migration by @enen92 in #24052
  • [python] Add songVideoURL to InfoTagMusic by @the-black-eagle in #24061
  • [PVR][Estuary] PVR core should not set label2 for PVR recording folde… by @ksooo in #24059
  • [cmake] copy_file_to_buildtree make sure we create ExportFiles.cmake by @fuzzard in #24056
  • [tools/depends] Bump openssl 1.1.1w by @fuzzard in #24003
  • Use std::make_(shared|unique) by @notspiff in #23757
  • [Cmake] enable_internal_cec by @fuzzard in #21585
  • [imagecache] CVideoGeneratedImageFileLoader check setting to extract thumb by @rmrector in #24006
  • [imagecache] clarify logic around image revalidation, fixing some images returning 404 via HTTP by @rmrector in #23956
  • [input] Use smartpointers to wrap raw xkb pointers in libinput by @enen92 in #24036
  • [libinput] Add dead-key xkbcommon-compose support by @enen92 in #24044
  • [Documentation] Update doxygen for v20 and v21 game-related changes by @garbear in #24055
  • [Discs] Fix ISOs are opened using File Cache in some cases and bad read size (sector size) by @thexai in #24060
  • [Estuary] Player Viewer: Give example static content for skin devs by @garbear in #24073
  • Picture: Switch internal functions to use smart pointers by @neo1973 in #24022
  • Fix crash due nullptr surface using DXVA2 by @fritsch in #24085
  • [Estuary] Fix weather layout when busy by @HitcherUK in #24090
  • Backport weather fix by @HitcherUK in #24091
  • Revert "Backport weather fix" by @HitcherUK in #24092
  • [FileSystem] Move File Cache settings to GUI settings by @thexai in #24049
  • [video] GUIWindowVideoNav.cpp: Remove unused include. by @ksooo in #24094
  • [Rendering] Share the heuristics guessing SD/HD primaries across platforms by @CrystalP in #23953
  • [macOS][Jenkins] migrate from altool to notarytool by @kambala-decapitator in #24032
  • [Doxy] Improve documentation of game windows by @garbear in #24079
  • [cmake] FindEGL set CMAKE_REQUIRED_INCLUDES for check_include_files by @lrusak in #24099
  • [Xbox] Add support for HDR10 passthrough by @thexai in #24083
  • tools/depends: curl adjust configure options by @lrusak in #24089
  • [Xbox] Fix crash on close App by @thexai in #24104
  • [Doxy] Fix formatting of Window IDs table by @garbear in #24106
  • Fix/update strings.po with translations for game window IDs by @garbear in #24071
  • Add tranlation for Peripherals dialog with ID 10149 by @garbear in #24105
  • windowing/gbm: add EGL fencing for atomic drm by @lrusak in #23921
  • [builtins] PlayerBuiltins::PlayOrQueueMedia: Fix logging and slightly optimize by @ksooo in #24114
  • [Android] Unused variable m_colorFormat in MediaCodec by @joseluismarti in #24103
  • [videoplayer] Go to Chapter Start for "Previous Chapter" Past Grace Period by @CrystalP in #24066
  • [guilib][vfs][imagecache][pvr] Load PVR group images into texture cache when viewed, like standard images by @rmrector in #24087
  • ffmpeg: Bump to version 6.0.1 by @fritsch in #24080
  • [PVR] CGUIWindowPVRBase: Prevent concurrent updates caused by GUI_MSG_UPDATE by @ksooo in #24118
  • [fileitem] CFileItem::LoadDetails: Add support for strm files containing an audio item. by @ksooo in #24119
  • [PVR] Fix racing problems due to ACTION_CHANNEL_SWITCH message being … by @ksooo in #24116
  • [video] CAsyncItemsForPlaylist: If we shall resume but can't, default… by @ksooo in #24120
  • [Settings] Adjust the "Use display HDR capabilities" setting by @CrystalP in #24100
  • [Settings][Windows] Update the description of the DXVA VSR setting by @CrystalP in #24123
  • [VideoPlayer] Fix cache level calculation and add to Debug Info OSD by @thexai in #24117
  • [clang-tidy] modernize-use-emplace by @Rechi in #23960
  • Correctly handle 'Disc n' subdirectories in scraping and set creation. by @78andyp in #24076
  • [Estuary] Modify settings decription field to avoid unnecessary autoscroll by @CrystalP in #24124
  • [VideoPlayer] Remove unused code by @thexai in #24126
  • [Feature][video]Added Video Versions feature by @xodidox in #14972
  • [VideoVersion] Added VideoVersionPlay dialog by @xodidox in #24132
  • [Android] Check if dovi profile is supported by the codec by @joseluismarti in #23577
  • Remove article from summary by @razzeee in #24084
  • [video] Fix auto play next item not working if 'uncategorized' is not… by @ksooo in #24134
  • Fix Visual Studio warnings by @thexai in #24139
  • [Android] Set codec profile 8 in DOVI compatibility mode by @quietvoid in #24143
  • [cleanup][Windows] Remove a few compiler warnings and unnecessary global by @CrystalP in #24138
  • XBMCTinyXML2: Strip trailing '' when writing to file by @neo1973 in #24141
  • [Windows] address recommendations of VS code analysis tools for WinMain by @CrystalP in #24149
  • [Estuary] Add Theora video codec flag image by @joseluismarti in #24154
  • [VideoVersion] Fixed unexpected VideoVersion dialog in VideoInfo dial… by @xodidox in #24156
  • [Games] Remove hard-coded button combos by @garbear in #24147
  • [media] Consistency across platforms splash screens (avoid versions) by @enen92 in #24137
  • [Estuary] Cleanup noise from DefaultVideoVersions icon by @the-black-eagle in #24127
  • Add LoongArch support to system info by @212dandan in #23989
  • [metadata.generic.artists] 1.0.18 by @ronie in #24163
  • [Estuary] Add media flags for music by @jjd-uk in #24162
  • [swig] Fix misleading indentation warnings by @fuzzard in #24140
  • [linux][docs] add note about libdisplay-info when building kodi with gbm windowing by @lrusak in #24018
  • [Addons] Remove GLES3/gl3ext.h include by @sundermann in #23855
  • [Android] Ignore obsolete DOVI profiles from codec selection by @quietvoid in #24172
  • Fix websocket pong by @a1rwulf in #23875
  • [Android] Change the directory used to verify the SDK path by @joseluismarti in #23977
  • [Estuary] Video Version skin redesign + cleanup by @jjd-uk in #24146
  • [Estuary] Adjust plot height in video fullscreen info by @CrystalP in #24174
  • [cmake] FindRapidJSON fix capitalisation by @fuzzard in #24179
  • Translations update from Kodi Weblate by @weblate in #23963
  • Sync of addon metadata translations by @github-actions in #24190
  • [EDL] Migrate to tinyxml2 by @enen92 in #24185
  • [VideoDatabase] Fix unnecessary query is always made to obtain cast by @thexai in #24177
  • Remove use of pcrecpp from Kodi by @rschupp in #24128
  • [tools/depends][target] Bump curl 8.4.0 by @fuzzard in #24011
  • [LanguageCodes] Narrow mode for finding language code by @CastagnaIT in #23780
  • [video] Video Versions: Refactor play/select logic by @ksooo in #24180
  • [Scraper] Support for filename identifiers by @sundermann in #23840
  • DNSNameCache: check hostname can be an IPv6 address by @joseluismarti in #24200
  • [video] Refactor Video Action Processors by @ksooo in #24204
  • Add OEM 102 key (OEM key on 102-key keyboards) by @garbear in #24202
  • [tools/depends] Bump Python 3.11.7 by @fuzzard in #24194
  • Sync game controller add-ons by @garbear in #24191
  • [UPnP] Make m_delegate a unique_ptr by @enen92 in #24205
  • AddonSettings: Correct order of destructor calls by @neo1973 in #24197
  • [Estuary] Fix Shift view overlays by @jjd-uk in #24168
  • [VideoVersions] Optimize retrieval of video versions existence by @CrystalP in #24183
  • CGBMUtils: return references to objects in getters by @lrusak in #23869
  • [UPnP] Player: Make transport state thread safe by @enen92 in #24201
  • [VideoPlayer] Double the initial refresh rate for interlaced streams by @CrystalP in #24121
  • [Omega] Beta2 by @fuzzard in #24207

New in Kodi 21.0 Beta 1 (Dec 11, 2023)

  • [doxygen] System.HasNetwork is not implemented. Document this by @fuzzard in #23736
  • [cmake][buildtools] use flatbuffers::flatc target for executable by @fuzzard in #23714
  • [cmake] convert some find modules to full TARGET usage by @fuzzard in #23727
  • [webOS] Support relaunch by @sundermann in #23684
  • Some small simplifications by @notspiff in #23740
  • [cmake][win] Generate complete build dir layout for Multiconfig gen (VS) by @fuzzard in #22112
  • [macos][network] Avoid executing shell commands to get the DefaultGateway and nameserver list by @enen92 in #23724
  • [XBMCTinyXML2] Resolve warnings by @enen92 in #23744
  • [video] Refactor artwork selection (last step) by @ksooo in #23734
  • [PVR] Fix CPVRRecordingsPath path directory/params parsing. by @ksooo in #23751
  • [Cmake] fix dav1d ENABLE_INTERNAL build by @fuzzard in #23746
  • [cmake] Add FindDetours for windows by @fuzzard in #23747
  • [info] Platform code for GPUInfo by @enen92 in #23741
  • Fixup warnings macos by @enen92 in #23756
  • [cmake] Remove XBT_FILES as a dependency of generate-packaging TARGET by @fuzzard in #23761
  • [cmake] Migrate more modules to TARGET usage by @fuzzard in #23748
  • [MUSIC] Scrape, store and process yt links from TADB for songs in a users local library by @the-black-eagle in #22654
  • [Video] Fix crash when scan to library on a directory containing new movies by @joseluismarti in #23767
  • [Windows] Fix 24Hz refresh rate when HDR is ON on AMD systems by @thexai in #23766
  • [video] CVideoTagExtractionHelper::ExtractEmbeddedArtFor: Use item's dyn path by @ksooo in #23774
  • [VideoPlayer] Fixed: Infinite video halt when cache is full & valid by @honest-mule in #23760
  • [pipewire] Fix heap-use-after-free in AE::SINK::CAESinkPipewire::EnumerateDevicesEx by @dobo90 in #23716
  • tools/depends: Fix rustup by delegating shell choice to shebang by @garbear in #23755
  • [cmake] Fix linux Install.cmake after PR 22112 by @fuzzard in #23754
  • [cmake] Add platform specific cmake search configurations by @fuzzard in #23776
  • [android] Allow packaging other themes for bundled skins by @fuzzard in #23782
  • [cmake] gen_skin_pack move to add_custom_command by @fuzzard in #23779
  • [guilib][vfs][imagecache] Load video chapter images into texture cache when viewed, like standard images by @rmrector in #23639
  • [video] 'Choose art' improvements by @ksooo in #23775
  • [PVR][Estuary] Add ParentalRatingCode availability for Skins by @DeltaMikeCharlie in #23586
  • [depends][native] Bump meson 1.2.1 by @fuzzard in #23790
  • [darwin] Fix header inclusion for Xcode 15 by @fuzzard in #23791
  • [cmake] Add build targets always for multi config generators by @fuzzard in #23750
  • [cmake] gen_skin_pack remove BYPRODUCT to fix ninja build by @fuzzard in #23795
  • [webOS] Signal Dolby Vision with AV1 codec by @quietvoid in #23771
  • [depends] Bump zlib to 1.3 by @joseluismarti in #23794
  • [FileCache] code improvements, no functional changes by @thexai in #23802
  • [Estuary] Update aspect ratio of InfoWallMovieLayout by @gemedet in #23745
  • [video] Video info dialog: Reinit cast list on re-open of dialog afte… by @ksooo in #23810
  • [webOS] RendererStarfish: Derive from CBaseRenderer by @sundermann in #23815
  • Fix build of native/waylandpp-scanner with GCC 13 by @throwaway96 in #23825
  • [cmake] add_custom_command only use OUTPUT genex for multi config generators by @fuzzard in #23823
  • [Cmake] Create build_internal_depends for MultiConfig Generators by @fuzzard in #23807
  • [Cmake] assorted updates to search paths and fixes to *_LIBRARIES usage by @fuzzard in #23809
  • [Cmake] FindASS migrate to TARGET usage by @fuzzard in #23824
  • [tools/depends][native] gettext force am_cv_func_iconv_works for apple host by @fuzzard in #23829
  • [webOS] Don't assume libraries in RUNPATH to be available by @sundermann in #23826
  • [webOS] Tune for Cortex-A53 by @throwaway96 in #23822
  • [cmake] More TARGET usage (opengl/opengles/iconv/Pulseaudio) by @fuzzard in #23749
  • [Android] Replace enum HDRTypes with Display.HdrCapabilities constants by @joseluismarti in #23769
  • [upnp] Fix smart playlist folder definitions by @enen92 in #23831
  • Fix detect strm file for resume. by @Acidzero2020 in #23841
  • [video] use ffmpeg av_display_rotation_get for rotation from metadata by @enen92 in #23832
  • [cmake] add EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL when adding to build_internal_depends by @fuzzard in #23842
  • [listproviders] CDirectoryProvider: Add attribute 'browse' … by @ksooo in #23814
  • [edl] Allow EDL files on private subnets for network shares rather than the one the Kodi host in on by @enen92 in #23836
  • [db][streamdetails] Reintroduce external subtitles into streamdetails by @enen92 in #23835
  • [guilib] let oninfo propagate from the item to the container if the c… by @enen92 in #23843
  • [docs] minors for streamdetails by @enen92 in #23849
  • [windows] Fix CGUIMediaWindow::WaitGetDirectoryItems to leave 'wait f… by @ksooo in #23844
  • [listproviders][video][PVR][utils][builtins] Fix and Refactor Video Select Actions by @ksooo in #23848
  • Revert "[docs] Fix for-the-badge badges" by @enen92 in #23852
  • Add infolabels for video width and height by @graham8 in #23850
  • [cmake] windows remove superfluous installdata by @fuzzard in #23853
  • [macos][depends] Add Smctemp to depends by @enen92 in #23770
  • [macos][input] Support NSEnterCharacter for XBMCK_RETURN by @enen92 in #23860
  • [favourites][listproviders] Add support for Video Select Actions for Favourites by @ksooo in #23857
  • [webOS] Acb (webOS 4.x) support by @mariotaku in #23834
  • [webOS] Fix timezone reading by @sundermann in #23847
  • [cmake] FindRapidJSON update to newer module standards by @fuzzard in #23851
  • Build curl without libpsl dependency by @throwaway96 in #23837
  • [Android] Neon is being enabled by default by @joseluismarti in #23830
  • [settings][video][PVR][listproviders][favourites] Add default play action setting. by @ksooo in #23863
  • [Estuary][Estouchy] Retire Favourites dialog, use Favourites window instead. by @ksooo in #23861
  • [favourites] Remove CGUIDialogFavourites. by @ksooo in #23862
  • [macOS] Drop SDL windowing implementation by @enen92 in #22990
  • [cmake] Refactor and simplify FindFmt.cmake by @fuzzard in #23876
  • [fileitem] Fix playlist favourites not working as expected by @ksooo in #23881
  • CAddonSettings: Prevent reference cycle with CAddon by @neo1973 in #23864
  • [macos][cocoainterface] Address deprecations by @enen92 in #23880
  • [VideoPlayer] Updates audio/video queues for nowadays maximum bitrates by @thexai in #23883
  • [cmake][linux] remove unused variables by @fuzzard in #23891
  • [favourites] Fix CFavouritesService::IsFavourited to only compare man… by @ksooo in #23885
  • [video] Fix 'Play using' and external default player not working. by @ksooo in #23894
  • [Teletext] Only override the language code from header if it is actua… by @enen92 in #23890
  • [DRMPRIME] Remove pitch check by @jernejsk in #23889
  • [GUIDialogTeletext] Mark dirty if data has changed in the decoder by @enen92 in #23896
  • [favourites] Add selected items of the target to favourite's context menu by @ksooo in #23895
  • [video] CGUIWindowVideoBase: Fix CVideoSelectActionProcessor::OnResumeSelected by @ksooo in #23902
  • Translations update from Kodi Weblate by @weblate in #23666
  • [video] Fix play/resume of DB and DVD disc images not working from Homescreen widgets by @ksooo in #23905
  • [Android][docs] Install NDK using Android SDK Manager by @joseluismarti in #23888
  • [windows] CGUIMediaWindow::OnContextButton: Fix 'Browse into' … by @ksooo in #23909
  • [video][music] Migrate 'Play using...' to "new" context menu system. by @ksooo in #23901
  • [webOS] Acb: Install empty dummy library by @sundermann in #23906
  • [upnp] Fix upnp thumbs when using Kodi as a renderer by @enen92 in #23910
  • [webOS] Revert "webos: Disable getauxval" by @sundermann in #23911
  • [video][music] Migrate last pieces of 'Browse into' to new context menu system. by @ksooo in #23915
  • [upnp] clang-format UPnPInternal.cpp by @enen92 in #23916
  • [cmake] FindIconv dont add target if libc is the detected provider for iconv by @fuzzard in #23912
  • [cmake] FindOpenGLES add IMPORTED_NO_SONAME property by @fuzzard in #23913
  • [clang-tidy] modernize-make-(shared|unique) by @Rechi in #23904
  • [video][music] Hide play-related context menu items for party mode pl… by @ksooo in #23919
  • [cores] Fix external player not recognized as default player. by @ksooo in #23923
  • [webOS] Set required memory by @sundermann in #23805
  • [favourites] Fix context menu item 'play' and 'resume' not working. by @ksooo in #23925
  • add missing c++ headers by @mlauss2 in #23920
  • changed: Redact paths in audio/video error toasts by @arnova in #23918
  • [favourites][listproviders] Favourites: Add support for action 'info'. by @ksooo in #23924
  • fix python XBMCAddon::xbmcgui::Window::onAction() action.getButtonCode() by @icr8ions in #23789
  • [fileitem][pvr] Fix context menu item "information" not working... by @ksooo in #23930
  • [application] Fix bd selection menu shown when external player is used. by @ksooo in #23931
  • [webOS] Pause video on minimize by @sundermann in #23854
  • [Windows][UWP] VSync Detection Fixes and Improvements by @CrystalP in #23893
  • [PVR] Fix 'switch to previous channel' not working if it is in anothe… by @ksooo in #23932
  • [fileitem] Fix mimetype not set/updated properly on loading details. by @ksooo in #23939
  • [wayland][input] Remove dead code by @enen92 in #23938
  • [webOS] Renderer: Fix render region by @sundermann in #23917
  • [favourites] Fix crash on moving items in favourites widget and favourites window. by @ksooo in #23946
  • [Android] Clang -march flag is not needed by @joseluismarti in #23872
  • [clang-tidy] fix performance-* warnings by @Rechi in #23941
  • [linux] add --gl-interface= switch by @lrusak in #23907
  • CPlatformFreebsd: use app params to set audio backend by @lrusak in #23886
  • CNetworkPosix: implement ping using sockets instead of system call to ping by @lrusak in #23870
  • [uPnP] Fix playback of files accessed with curl (ftp, http, ...) by @CrystalP in #23711
  • [Android][FFmpeg] flag --enable-neon has no actual effects on Android targets by @joseluismarti in #23839
  • [keymaps] Remove leftovers from favourites dialog. by @ksooo in #23951
  • [rendering] use default luminance for tone mapping of streams with bad metadata by @CrystalP in #23078
  • [Eventlog] fix eventlog messages by @DaVukovic in #23827
  • [cmake] FindPulseAudio fix compile definition by @fuzzard in #23955
  • [Omega] Beta1 by @fuzzard in #23948

New in Kodi 20.2 (Jun 29, 2023)

  • [Estuary][MusicViz] Fix label height by @enen92 in #22977
  • [Backport][Settings] Remove IsFullScreen complex condition by @enen92 in #22980
  • [backport][windowing] fix uninitialised weight by @joseluismarti in #22986
  • [video] Fix playlist window data by @ksooo in #23013
  • [UPnP] Add extensions to libplatinum mimetypes by @enen92 in #22997
  • [Xbox] RendererShaders: Concurrency::event is broken on UWP/Xbox, remove parallelism by @thexai in #23014
  • [subtitles] Fix mkv subtitles without duration by @enen92 in #23102
  • [Backport] Python API: Fix setting picture/game info via InfoTags by @garbear in #23094
  • [Backport] Python API: Add missing gameinfo to Player class by @garbear in #23095
  • [backport][Subtitles][WebVTT] Fix reversed pts offset correction by @CastagnaIT in #23128
  • [Nexus][PVR] Fix last opened group not always restored on Kodi startup. by @ksooo in #23165
  • [Backport] RetroPlayer: Fix memory exhaustion with zero-copy emulators by @garbear in #23142
  • [backport][Android] Avoid crash when create recommendation channels a… by @joseluismarti in #23166
  • [Nexus][PVR] Prevent crash on saved search by @emveepee in #23195
  • [Nexus] ViderPlayerAudio: fix setting of resample mode on stream change by @mglae in #23167
  • [BP][Windows] restore window position and size up to virtual screen min-max width & height by @CrystalP in #23218
  • [Backport][Windows] fix thread names in debugger / crash dumps by @CrystalP in #23243
  • [Windows][build ffmpeg] more robust build scripts by @thexai in #23219
  • [backport] Revert "[cmake] glx: find glx library instead of gl" by @lrusak in #23275
  • [backport] CPythonInvoker: fix python path by inserting custom path before default path by @lrusak in #23274
  • [Backport][Windows] fix playback of HDR material when Windows is already in HDR mode (AMD) by @CrystalP in #23270
  • [backport][Nexus]Fix build with GCC>=13 by @bkuhls in #23314
  • [Nexus][platform] macOS,iOS: Add speech recognition and microphone usage des… by @ksooo in #23341
  • [backport] SavestateFlatBuffer: Remove forward declararion of FlatBufferBuilder by @neo1973 in #23334
  • [backport] Fix build with GCC>=13 by @neo1973 in #23333
  • [Estuary] Reset 1110_seekbar timer on seeks by @enen92 in #23382
  • [Nexus][PVR] Timer settings dialog: Set certain settings to default on change of timer type. by @ksooo in #23385
  • [Nexus][video] Fix watched/unwatched filter not working when creating playli… by @ksooo in #23398
  • [BP][CMake][FlatC] Don't use local flatc with ENABLE_INTERNAL_FLATBUFFERS if versions don't match by @fuzzard in #23386
  • [Estuary] Also start timer (with reset) on seeks by @enen92 in #23400
  • [BP] SysfsPath: Have CSysfsPath::Get() return a std::optional because reads can fail by @neo1973 in #23390
  • [BP] CRenderManager: Add missing member initialization by @neo1973 in #23391
  • Fix Thumbnails of Rotated Pictures by @CrystalP in #23319
  • [backport][Addons][Filesystem] No cache, not treat compressed files as directory by @CastagnaIT in #22929
  • [Nexus] Backport E-AC3 fixes from master by @HiassofT in #23411
  • [backport][Android] Prefer Google raw decoder over MediaTek on old An… by @joseluismarti in #23452
  • [FontUtils] Give priority to MS font family name in english by @CastagnaIT in #23444
  • [Nexus] Bump version 20.2 by @fuzzard in #23454

New in Kodi 20.0 (Feb 17, 2023)

  • Major Features:
  • Multiple Instances of Binary Add-ons:
  • This allows Kodi to load multiple instances of a binary add-on. For example: TVHeadend users can now run more than one instance of the add-on to connect to multiple back-end TVHeadend servers, with individual settings like channel groups and hidden channels maintained per add-on instance. @AlwinEsch was the developer behind a lot of this, with support from @ksooo. Your favourite binary add-on may not support this capability yet, but we hope add-on developers introduce this into their projects soon.
  • AV1 Video Support:
  • Several Kodi platforms now allow hardware decoding of AV1 media. The Inputstream API has been updated to support AV1 and this allows add-ons using inputstream.adaptive to play AV1 streams.
  • Subtitles Rework:
  • Massive rework of the subtitle system was undertaken by @CastagnaIT making subtitle formats more consistent for development and maintenance, and enabling features that were previously not possible. Kodi now supports dynamic positioning of fonts, changing of border and background colours, subtitle positioning, improved multi-language support, and more. If you are a regular user of subtitles, jump on in and check it all out.
  • Game (libretro) Savestate Support:
  • The GSOC 2020 project of @NikosSiak received some polishing touches before finally (!) being merged. With mentoring from @VelocityRa and @gusandrianos, and the assistance of @garbear, this has been a long time coming. This feature allows you to save game state at any time, even if games do not provide native savestate features themselves. Great for gamers, and times when you aren't watching Videos with Kodi ;)
  • Windows HDR Support:
  • Full HDR support for the Windows Desktop platform has been implemented by @thexai along with many improvements throughout the Windows (DXVA/2) video pipeline. HDR is not available on non-Desktop, i.e. UWP Store (Xbox) versions. Improvements to allow more accurate ACES Filmic and HABLE tonemapping make even SDR video look better, and these capabilities are implemented for both UWP and Desktop versions of Kodi.
  • NFSv4 Support:
  • Changes to allow NFSv4 support were implemented by @lrusak as previously we only supported NFSv3. There are some caveats with this (you must explicitly select either NFSv4 or NFSv3 for a source). Give it a try!
  • Context Menu Consistency:
  • Improvements to right-click/long-press context menu handling were made by @ksooo in numerous areas. This makes the function of the context menu much more consistent over different windows, and enabled some new capabilities like the playback of albums directly from widgets, series resume, etc. to be added.

New in Kodi 20.0 RC 2 (Jan 15, 2023)

  • Database:
  • A couple of fixes have gone in to resolve database migration issues from v19.
  • The first of these is the EPG database migration. This fixes the problem with the EPG loading and then disappearing. Thanks @ksooo for the prompt fix.
  • A second DB migration issue that only occurred on the Microsoft UWP platform (Xbox and UWP desktop) has been fixed by @thexai . This was an odd one, as the code that dealt with the failure was old code (6+ years). It was traced to an odd race condition that only manifested on the UWP platforms, however the root cause potentially could happen on any other platform.
  • General:
  • A fix for playlist detection for both Audio and Video was made by @ksooo - https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/22270
  • Platform Specific:
  • Linux:
  • @popcornmix has fixed an issue for DRMPrime on Linux. This allows hardware formats like Broadcom 8-bit (SAND128) and 10-bit (P030) can now be correctly rendered with the latest Mesa.
  • macOS:
  • A fix to allow Kodi to execute on macOS 10.13 has been made. We would still strongly suggest users use a newer version (10.14+), however this allows users still on 10.13 to run Kodi.
  • A regression for macOS reading actual disks was resolved by @enen92 . As part of this, the libcdio driver was also fixed to enable disk usage on Apple Silicon native builds.
  • Windows:
  • A fix to a crash that only occurred on Windows Debug builds has been resolved. This didn't affect users of the actual RC1 release, but Windows devs who would attempt to execute Kodi as a Debug build were quickly halted.
  • PVR:
  • An issue around multiple resume dialogs has been fixed by @emveepee - https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/22247
  • Teletext:
  • Another Teletext issue has been resolved by @repojohnray. @repojohnray has contributed a number of fixes for v20 to help increase the reliability and safety of Kodi.

New in Kodi 19.5 (Dec 27, 2022)

  • Happy Holidays, everyone! To celebrate, here we have release 19.5. This release caps off the v19 Matrix development cycle - we are not intending anything further now until 20.0 "Nexus".
  • Without further fanfare, then I give you Kodi "Matrix" 19.5: more bug fixes, some backports, no real new features. Full changelog since 19.4 on Github, as usual.
  • Thanks, as always, to everyone who has helped us track down and fix any issues.
  • As this is a point release, there are no major changes since the previous version, and you should be fine to install this straight over the top of any existing Kodi 19.x installation - indeed, this will happen automatically on many platforms. However, as for all software installations, back up your userdata beforehand if you've any doubts or have anything you can't afford to lose (and definitely do this if you're going for a major version upgrade).

New in Kodi 19.3 (Oct 25, 2021)

  • We've had some challenges getting the Xbox version released because of some specific platform requirements needed for 4k/HEVC playback. With the help of @CelesAtXbox (thanks so much!) we think we've now genuinely got those covered to Microsoft's satisfaction, and can finally get this into the Windows Store.
  • There's also an issue with an expired certificate for 18.9 on Xbox, which effectively takes that version off that platform for new installations, so timing is opportune to fix that.
  • There's been a long-standing Atmos audio issue on all platforms that support TrueHD passthrough - we know that this this has been irritating people for some time, and we've now been able to fix this.
  • We unintentionally introduced a bug in 19.2 that broke Airplay, so we've fixed that one.
  • A couple of gaming-related fixes, notably a controller fix and some shader issues on Retroplayer.
  • We've fixed a bug that affected thumbnails for watched episodes when hiding episode spoilers.
  • We've much improved the metadata shown in Linux app stores.

New in Kodi 19.2 (Oct 18, 2021)

  • 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
  • Other, more minor bug fixes
  • Video Library:
  • Fixed a bug that deleted UniqueID's when scraping the library, which caused unexpected behaviour for addons relying on those ID's
  • Games:
  • Added translations for emulators and game controller add-ons
  • JSON-RPC:
  • Expose icon path of EPG tags as 'thumbnail' property
  • Expose series number of EPG tags as 'seasonnum' property.
  • Network:
  • Websocket: handles partial messages
  • Add-ons:
  • Fixed: display logic for official and third-party modules
  • Windows specifics:
  • Fixed: possible crash when switching monitors due to adding/removing hardware.
  • Fixed: audio passthrough not working (randomly) on some systems when display refresh rate match is enabled.
  • Improved: flip discard swap chain is used on all Windows 10 systems even if graphics driver does not support latest DirectX feature levels.
  • Improved: 10-bit swap chain is used by default on Windows 10 systems when HDR display is detected (for 8-bit SDR video sources too).
  • Fixed: possible crash related to WS-Discovery when non-computer devices (e.g. IP cameras) are attached to the same network.
  • Fixed: possible crash when HDR is toggled on/off externally from Windows 10 display settings.
  • Fixed: no picture or wrong black level with some video drivers when limited range output is enabled in conjunction with hardware acceleration DXVA2 and HDR passthrough.
  • Android specifics:
  • Fixed: external storage volumes not visible on devices running old Android versions
  • Xbox specifics:
  • The big news here is that we can finally make 19.x "Matrix" available on the Xbox - thanks for putting up with the delay while we fixed the blockers!
  • Fixed: crash on playback of 4K HEVC videos due to out-of-memory condition.
  • Fixed: GUI rendered at 1080 and upscaled to 4K instead of native 4K.
  • Fixed: 4K resolution is incorrectly reported in logs as 1920x1080.
  • Fixed: crash when "Switch display refresh rate at Start/Stop" is enabled with 4K resolution.
  • Fixed: tone mapping not used by default at playback HDR videos.
  • Fixed: missing display refresh rate info on Video Debug Info OSD (Alt+O).
  • Fixed: Internet SSL connectivity not working due not usable path to built-in CA certs bundle.
  • Improved: swap chain performance using DXGI_SWAP_EFFECT_FLIP_DISCARD.
  • Improved: 10-bit swap chain surfaces are used if an HDR-capable TV is detected (even for 8-bit SDR videos).
  • Improved: HEVC DXVA2 decoder performance using 128 byte aligned decoder surfaces.

New in Kodi 19.1 (May 10, 2021)

  • Video:
  • Fixed: HDR metadata is now detected in VP9 profile 2 streams and can be used on platforms that support HDR passthrough or tone mapped when playing this kind of videos.
  • Discs:
  • Fixed: playback of optical DVDs in Linux
  • Fixed: BD-J Blu-ray chapter skipping via remotes/keyboard
  • PVR:
  • Fixed: context menu not accessible in PVR Guide window when using very basic remote to control Kodi
  • Fixed: client channel name and number not persisted when changed
  • Fixed: play count and resume position of recordings lost after Kodi restart
  • Fixed: crash while browsing the EPG when MySQL is used as EPG database
  • Fixed: next recording on ... label time is not localized in Estuary Timer/Timer rules window
  • Fixed: channel manager does not rename backend channel
  • Fixed: playing archived programme not selected when opening the Guide window
  • Fixed: GUI not updated on removal/insert/hide/unhide of channel groups
  • Updated: improved look of PVR windows in Estuary
  • Music Library:
  • Fixed: issue with music from cuesheets where only the first track was being added to the library on rescanning, with the rest being deleted
  • JSON-RPC:
  • Fixed: PVR - Reintroduced broadcast properties 'hastimer', 'hastimerrule', 'hasrecording', 'recording'
  • Fixed: PVR - Reintroduced channel property 'isrecording'
  • Subtitles:
  • Fixed: detection of system fonts (directwrite) on windows for ASS subtitles
  • Fixed: detection of user fonts (in userdata/fonts) for ASS subtitles
  • Fixed: rendering of semi-transparent ASS subtitles on Wayland
  • GUI/Interface:
  • Fixed: media flagging for DVD/BluRay
  • Web Interface:
  • Updated: Chorus2 based on community contributions
  • Filesystem:
  • Updated: enable filecaching by default for network filesystems
  • Updated: improve filecache error handling
  • Network:
  • Updated: improved reliability for HTTP and NFS network filesystems
  • Windows specifics:
  • Added: support for WS-Discovery protocol that enables locating SMB servers and browsing shared folders using SMBv3.
  • Added: debug Info OSD Video. Extends current Debug Info Player (Ctrl+Shift+O) with new video-only info (Alt+O)
  • Fixed: with some unusual streams, incorrect HDR metadata could be passed (HDR10 passthrough).
  • Fixed: green screen on systems with old HW (DX feature level 9.1) playing 10-bit videos.
  • Fixed: black screen with Software render method and with DXVA2 hardware acceleration disabled.
  • Fixed: green screen when playing the menu of some DVDs (MPEG2 SD only).
  • Fixed: credentials being requested for anonymous SMB shares
  • Updated: VC runtimes included in the installer to add compatibility with VS2019 and VS2017 at the same time.
  • Android specifics:
  • Fixed: SMB shares mounted on system level not visible in Kodi
  • Fixed: SMB shares labelled with cryptic numbers (UUID) instead of actual disk name
  • Xbox specifics:
  • This version also brings 19.1 to the Xbox - while 19.0 has been in the Microsoft Store since launch, this was Windows-only while we found a way to adequately test the new release on Xbox. We've fixed that now, so Xbox users will automatically upgrade from 18.9 to 19.1 if you've got auto-update enabled. It's worth mentioning that there's a known memory limitation - present in 18.x as well - that causes Xbox application crashes with 4k content, so please be aware.

New in Kodi 19.0 (Feb 21, 2021)

  • Playback:
  • For audio and music lovers, there are significant improvements across the board to metadata handling: library improvements, new tags, new displays, improvements to how Kodi handles release dates, album durations, multi-disc sets, and more. There's a new, Matrix-inspired visualisation, there are improvements to display when fetching files from a web server, and several changes to how audio decoder addons can pass information through to the Kodi player.
  • For video, most of the changes are more technical, and may depend on your hardware: AV1 software decoding, HLG HDR and static HDR10 playback on Windows 10, static HDR10 and dynamic Dolby Vision HDR support on Android, and more OpenGL bicubic scalers.
  • For those who combine the two, and have libraries of music videos, you get some goodies as well: database and metadata display improvements mean that Kodi will now fetch and display related album and artist information from the music library, where appropriate. There are also new features around grouping videos by artist (not just album), support for .NFO files that list all performers instead of just the main artist, plus better search links to return related albums and videos by the same director director.
  • And, finally, if your definition of "play" is more game-related, we've implemented integer scaling to improve the viewing quality of Pixel Art games across the board, while iOS get support for Xbox, PlayStation and other supported Bluetooth game controllers.
  • Skin/Look-and-Feel:
  • For many people, the interface is Kodi - it's how you find your way around, it's how you interact with the application and your media. As such, it's always getting some attention, and this release is no different: screen redesign, especially for music; new metadata displays; changes to playlist views; a new "now playing" view; artwork and image file improvements; both new and updated GUI controls. Some changes may be subtle, but all are designed to improve your experience.
  • Subtitles:
  • An often-overlooked feature, but immensely useful to so many people, subtitles get some attention in this release: timestamp overlays get fixed, plus you can now select a dark grey colour and set an opacity for the captions (particularly useful in HDR - protect your eyes, kids, you'll miss them when they're gone).
  • Addons and Scrapers:
  • Python comes in for some major changes in Kodi 19. Because the old Python 2.7 has gone out of support, we've finally made the wholesale move to Python 3 and ported our addons across. Much of the community has come with us, so, hopefully, your favourite addons will still function, but we're at the mercy of third-party contributors to update their work.
  • Kodi 19 replaces the old XML metadata scrapers with new default Python for movies and TV shows; there are also new Python scrapers for music, Generic Album Scraper and Generic Artist Scraper. Binary addons in general get improvements to system documentation, cleaned up settings dialogs, and better help text.
  • PVR and Live Television:
  • Another significant part of Kodi that's had a lot of attention in this release. Most new features here revolve around usability: PVR reminders, home screen widgets, group/channel manager enhancements, navigation and dialog controls, context menus, New/Live/Finale/Premiere tags, channel numbering and sorting, performance improvements, API improvements.
  • Security:
  • There are a few new security features implemented now in Kodi, to help keep you safe from intentional or unintentional problems. Kodi will now enforce the origin of installed addons and their dependencies, which prevents third-party repositories from overwriting code of unrelated add-ons; broken or deprecated add-ons are now highlighted in the add-on list, so you have to actively agree to activate one; the binary addon system now has higher security around data exchange between Kodi and an addons. In addition, we've added a default requirement to password-protect Kodi's web interface, plus give better information around the security implications of enabling external interfaces if you do choose to enable them.
  • Platform Specifics:
  • As a cross-platform application, we try our very best to keep all platforms feature equivalent where we can. However, there are inevitably platform differences, and we also have to make room by dropping old platforms as technology moves on.
  • The big platform change with this release is new support for tvOS, but this means waving goodbye to iOS 32-bit. Beyond that, there are specific tweaks such as specific TopShelf support and fixes on AppleTV, better logging and notch support on iOS, and a move to a single Linux binary for multiple windowing systems (X11, Wayland, and GBM) versus the previous three. That last one will make a big difference to both users and package maintainers, since you'll no longer have to select a different binary based on the target environment.
  • Behind the Scenes:
  • Probably too hidden for many users, but there are inevitably changes and improvements that you can't see, but might give more scope for new features later on: API changes to feed subtitle URIs to the player; multiple updates to various core modules; improvements to API calls and actions, and many more. They may not be important to you, but they took real work and I mention them for completeness.

New in Kodi 18.9 (Oct 26, 2020)

  • Okay, one more roll of the "Leia" die, although this one is really driven by circumstances beyond our control. Technical changes by Cloudflare caused significant issues with HTTP access to any site using them - metadata sources, for example - and we need to put in a quick workaround before everyone gets too upset; while 19.x "Matrix" is close, it's not close enough to leave these issues unaddressed. So, as we're building that new code, we thought that we might as well fix a couple of other regressions while we're here.
  • With no further fanfare, then, here's what you've got in this release:
  • Work around third-party changes to HTTP2 and SSL/encryption that impacted internet access from Kodi by scrapers, streaming addons, etc.
  • Fix memory leaks in TexturePacker
  • Fix event server unable to send raw key strikes
  • Fix issues around directory navigation and incorrectly-set start directories
  • Fix MediaCodec OES/EGL rendering

New in Kodi 18.8 (Sep 29, 2020)

  • Fixes a severe security issue in gnutls
  • Other significant library/compatibility updates
  • Gets client/server on MariaDB 10.5.4 working for Android
  • Fixes video database access for Ubuntu 20.4 and other distros using earlier libfmt versions (search and other filtering failed)
  • Fixes subtitle handling from archives
  • Fixes CDDB access
  • Makes minor improvements to logging and memory reporting/display
  • Fixes EDLs where skip points are at the very start of a file
  • Contains code improvements to fix specific events, e.g. race conditions in the EPG or "pause" on end of streams on Android
  • Enables alpha blending for the video player (Windows)
  • Better handles specific exceptions (Android, mostly)

New in Kodi 18.7 (May 21, 2020)

  • Audio:
  • Fix to not reset user-set volume (Android)
  • Fixes around multi-channel audio track support
  • Playback/Display:
  • Fixes to Bluray subtitle language recognition
  • Fix playback of bus-encrypted bluray discs
  • Improved library handing for plugins if media source is removed
  • Use JNI instead of NDK for MediaCodec (Android)
  • Further work on maximum width and height/vertical-shift (Android)
  • Fixes around realtime handling of TS streams
  • Interface/Look-and-feel:
  • Fix for watch icons not showing when content type is not set (Estouchy)
  • Fix navigation in skinsettings (Estuary)
  • Fix crash in favourites dialog
  • Apply safe area insets to Kodi GUI (iOS)
  • Fixes around focus after touch action
  • Improvements around dialog/toast handling
  • Fixed behaviour when accessing locked media sources
  • Music:
  • Fixes around library handling of "isalbumartist" field
  • Fixes around expansion of .ISO images to avoid GUI freezes
  • Ensure album artist isn't blanked out when scraping
  • Build System:
  • Fix downloading dependencies from mirrors (Windows)
  • Library updates - bump gnutls (3.6.11.1) and nettle(3.5.1)
  • PVR:
  • Fix EPG corruption when new channels are added during startup
  • Network:
  • Improvements around handling of proxy credentials
  • Fix for proxy empty fields (proxy, username, password)
  • Addons:
  • Fix crash if an incompatible VFS addon is present
  • Fix display of title for compressed package directories
  • Fixes around addon settings folder naming
  • Subtitles:
  • Fixes around decoding of HTML escape characters
  • Fix around SMI (SAMI) subtitles and quoted start tags
  • Profiles:
  • Fixes for issues related to switching profile
  • Fixes to saving of lock preferences (master lock, lock video windows, etc.)
  • Other/General:
  • Add "Swiss German" and "Portuguese (Brazil)" to language codes
  • Fix to guard against assert in tinyxml
  • Fix stack overflow when trying to find NFO files in a RAR file
  • Implement range checking in URIUtils::resolvePath
  • Implement support for extended local headers in ZIP files used by some scrapers

New in Kodi 18.6 (May 21, 2020)

  • Audio:
  • Fixes around visualisations
  • Fixes around pause/resume
  • Fixes around TrueHD crashes
  • Workaround firmware bug (AMLogic v23) (sidenote: there are many more Android audio fixes that can't be merged into 18.x "Leia" because of old AMLogic workarounds)
  • Fix to correctly resume audio-only MPEG-TS streams
  • Correct headphone enumeration (Android)
  • Build System:
  • Updates for missing includes
  • Updates for Cmake (Windows)
  • Updates for device handling and packaging (macOS)
  • Games:
  • Fixes for launching disc images and .zip files
  • Fixes for black screen for RGB emulators (Rpi)
  • Interface/Look-and-feel:
  • Fixes around TextureCache
  • Fixes for windowing, refresh rate, mode change and others (Android)
  • Fixes for floating/split keyboard (iOS)
  • Fix for artist slideshow (Estuary)
  • Fix media view from addon given content
  • Playback/Display:
  • Fixed race condition for OnPlaybackStarted
  • Fixes for MIME type (Android)
  • Support for DolbyVision streams via addons
  • Fixes for maximum width and height/vertical-shift (Android)
  • Fix for scanning in sub-directories
  • Fix size of EAGL layer on external screen (iOS)
  • Fix for glTexImage3D (Linux)
  • Fix for seeking issues
  • Reset playlist on new file playback
  • PVR:
  • Fix for multiline episode names
  • Other/General:
  • Fixed incorrectly formatted region time
  • Pass JSON serialised path settings to python scrapers
  • Fix file access on auto-mounted sources
  • Fix seeking with FileCache lockup
  • Fix passthrough on USB devices (Android)
  • Fix crash if profile.xml gets broken
  • Fix cache forward size on EOF

New in Kodi 18.5 (Nov 24, 2019)

  • Interface/Look-and-Feel:
  • Estuary and GUI info fixes, including scrollbar behaviour, icon names, label changes
  • Add dual support for Artist Slideshow 2.x and 3.x
  • Fix to always allow 'Black' screen saver
  • Fix wrong sort order list for music playlists node
  • Playback/Display:
  • Fixes to external subtitle playback
  • Fixes to support for archives over UPnP
  • Fixes to "queue item" and "play next" for STRM files with Plugin URL
  • Fixes to "hide watched" status for videos
  • Fixes to resume handling when marking a file as unwatched
  • PVR:
  • Fixes to EPG database storage, start/stop of PVR service
  • Fix handling of open modal dialogs
  • Fixes to commercial skip (EDL) processing
  • Other/General Fixes:
  • Multiple Android changes around windowing, secure decoder and SDK versions
  • Multiple iOS changes, including support for iPhone 11 and 7th generation iPad, plus fixes for touch input, overlapping drawing surfaces, sandbox checks, notch support.
  • MacOS fixes around windowing, where only a portion of the screen was correctly rendered
  • Log files improvements around verbosity and security
  • Shoutcast improvements
  • Various fixes and improvements to add-on settings, package build documentation, build system, advancedsettings.xml, skin/profile changes and many other subsystems

New in Kodi 18.4 (Sep 5, 2019)

  • Interface:
  • Fix Missing text when sorting from inside addon
  • Clear/save focus-history when leaving window with focus on parent folder item
  • Picture slideshow fixes (Estuary)
  • Subscribe to controller install events (games)
  • Fix radio button text length (Estuary)
  • Fix season/episode formatting for video addons (video)
  • Don't consider display mode ids constant (Android)
  • Playback/Display:
  • Fix PlayMedia builtin for playlists (.strm) and "artists" smart playlists (music)
  • Fix PlayMedia builtin for smart playlists and playlists (music)
  • FFmpeg: Bump to 4.0.4-Leia-18.4
  • Load program from stream property without using streaminfo (video)
  • Fix initialization of AVD3D11VAContext structure (video, Windows)
  • Fix TS resume point, related to PR16314 (video)
  • Fixed memory leak, fixed segfault (video, Linux)
  • Fix PAPlayer to handle passthrough for TrueHD (audio)
  • PVR:
  • Fix component dependencies
  • PVRRecordings: Prevent concurrent calls to video database
  • Other/General fixes:
  • Use first protocol from add-on in add network dialog
  • Use exact matching for protocol in file+dir factories
  • Use of absolute paths in combination with hosts in URLs
  • Fix file times for vfs addons
  • Fix + sign HTTP folder
  • Corrections to filesystem CircularCache initialization and termination
  • Controller fixes
  • Delete stream details when video info is refreshed
  • Do not attempt to further resolve plugin paths for failing entries
  • Revert "fixed: We should always update stream details from player..."

New in Kodi 18.3 (Jul 1, 2019)

  • Two months have passed since our last bugfix release and already we have a new one ready for consumption. Fancy a few more features? There aren't any, with one teeny-tiny exception. Apparently DTS-HD audio only tracks are a thing and Kodi can now play them like any other music format. That's it. No more features. Seriously.
  • However, since Kodi 18.3 is a bugfix release, we have a boatload of erm... fixes. In fact, too many to mention. Below is a non-exhaustive list of (mostly) usability fixes.
  • Estuary:
  • Fixed favourites widget not scrolling properly on 16:10 displays
  • Fixed API button was not reachable with a mouse on Settings window
  • Fixed Skin Settings window scrollbar focus
  • Fixed order of TV Show title and Episode title in Video Info dialog
  • Added Search button to the side menu in the Video and Music windows
  • Fixed Wall and Infowall views scroll to bottom on certain aspect-ratios
  • Fixed broken side menu navigation in the Addon Browser window
  • PVR:
  • Fixed a Group Manager crash when adding a new group
  • Fixed EPG UI corruption and/or EPG data not showing with newly added channels
  • Fixed PVR guide window channel data being overwritten
  • Music:
  • Added support for DTS-HD audio tracks
  • Fixed wrong album or artist thumb art being picked from scraper results

New in Kodi 18.1 (Feb 18, 2019)

  • Speed up Player and Playlists operations with JSON-RPC
  • Define a senseful default value for advanced settings "updateemptytagsinterval"
  • Revert edge case crash fix that caused DVDs to be not recognised on Mac OS
  • Remove "dxvaallowhqscaling" advanced setting to prepare for DXVA improvements in v18.2 for Windows
  • Linux X11: fix usage of required configuration values
  • Add date to the log records
  • Don't react on DPI change event on Win10 >= FCU
  • Fix Android MediaCodec freeze on early disposal of a stream
  • Flush streamplayers if abort is requested which solves waiting too long (on skipping DVD intros, for example)
  • Fix ListitemAbsolute and ListItemPosition in GUI engine
  • Ignore very first "server not reachable" notification for PVR servers
  • Use extended result codes for SQLite
  • Fix invalid PTS decoder value which should inprove MPEG2 playback on Android devices
  • update SSL CA trust store
  • Handle empty vertex buffers in GUIFontTTFGL which caused a hard crash
  • Reintroduce setting "Close channel OSD after switching channels" for PVR
  • Fix thread logging on Android which causes e.g. frozen DVD/Bluray playback
  • Avoid attempt to load music info for smartplaylists
  • Fix Top 100 Albums regression
  • RenderCapture: Only query Occlusion if GL lower 1.5
  • Check current mode if whitelist doesn't match and take correct action
  • Check if app intent is valid on Android. This fixes a hard crash when trying to open Kodi again
  • Fix PVR input stream creation for pvr file items only containing a path and no recording/channel tag.
  • Fix playing VP9 streams using inputstream addon. It failed because codec extradata is non-existent for this stream codec.
  • Catch an exception while reading or writing a file
  • Fix logical "or" operation in GUI engine
  • Check the system capabilities to support sleep states S1/S2/S3/S4 before reporting them as available
  • Fix crash in PCSX ReARMed with BIOS
  • Several Estuary cosmetic fixes

New in Kodi 18.0 Beta 5 (Nov 5, 2018)

  • Fix repository connection issues on Windows which affected certain CPU types
  • Some improvements to Android video playback
  • Some improvements to OSX resolution switching
  • Support for Radio Data RDS (RDS) if the PVR backend supports this
  • Try to find the best matching resolution automatically for refreshrate switching if the user has not made a selection in resosution whitelist setting
  • Update Chorus2 webinterface which contains security and general fixes
  • General code improvements and cleanup

New in Kodi 18.0 Alpha 3 (Aug 1, 2018)

  • OS X specific:
  • Added support for compiling Kodi with Xcode 8 IDE for OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) and macOS 10.12 (Sierra)
  • Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for (Mac) OS X
  • Further information on this release is available at:
  • https://kodi.wiki/view/Kodi_v18_(Leia)_changelog

New in Kodi 18.0 Alpha 1 (Mar 5, 2018)

  • Stability and usability is key:
  • In general the whole stability has been improved quite a lot. The times you still get glitches or occasional crashes haven been reduced due to just ripping out not so well coded parts and replaced with a more structured design and standard. Not that the old code was bad however over time new insights were gained and having newer code standards just make it better. Untangling all parts or components and make them behave better next to each other has been one of the biggest efforts done so far.
  • Retroplayer and input manager:
  • Retroplayer together with input manager makes controlling Kodi using various remotes or controllers much better and a plug and play experience. Not having to thinker finding the correct configurations is something that we all would like and hopefully this achieves this.
  • Video Player:
  • Now comes on of the biggest changes over past year. The video playback which is of course where Kodi shines. Once designed for the old XBOX and old video standards there wasn’t really taken lot in account with future standards and the massive increasement of video resolution and new codecs. With future in mind work started to redesign this section and to split it from into its own component to not be hindered with whatever happens in the user interface or other parts. Making the sure video gets the highest CPU/GPU priority over anything else happening makes sure you don’t get stuttering video or audio when navigating. This sounds so obvious to do however this wasn’t done or even possible in the past. Parallel to that, parts are reworked to be a lot more efficient and need way less CPU while gaining quality. Higher resolutions like 4K and 8K are also kept in mind next to HDR and new video codecs once they become available.
  • DRM (Digital Rights Management):
  • With the work above being done in the video player a possibility came up to also allow something that opens Kodi up for using it in combination with DRM protected content. These days it’s quite common for content owners and providers to protect their content with encryption. With v18 we added the ability to also play this content as it was actually intended by the DRM system. Depending on the used hardware and included license you can now playback this content which usually also comes with a subscription service. Instead of the sometimes clunky apps a possibility would be to just use the trusted Kodi environment to watch what they have to offer. There are already several add-ons available from our repository that already use this capability and we certainly hope more will follow and that content providers will make their service available as official add-on.
  • Gaming (Games interface and Game Clients):
  • Added a RetroPlayer player core supporting game clients as well as emulator cores via libretro API[1][2]
  • Added extentions to Kodi's Addons AP to support Game Client Addons, supporting Kodi's VFS (Virtual File System), etc.[1]
  • Added support for Game Client Addons as new type of addons with just-in-time emulator installation[1]
  • Added a Games window and Game OSD (On-Screen-Display) entries to the GUI[1][3]
  • Added a gaming and game configuration interface for Game settings to the GUI[1]
  • Added support for Game Info Tags (game info tag) and exposed properties to Python list items[1]
  • Added a savestate (savestate) manager to Kodi for games[4]
  • Added initial support for basic gameplay persistence (auto-save & auto-load)[5]
  • Added support for in-game (save RAM) saves[6]
  • Added support for Keyboard players via Joystick Emulation[1]
  • Added support for libretro API and game cores (emulators and games) that support it
  • Added game clients addons for many popular third-party game console emulators and native open source games
  • Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder):
  • Major GUI actions refactoring to eliminate duplicate and dead code. Add context menu support for Estuary PVR home screen widgets [7]
  • Guide window: Get rid of obsolete views "channel", "now" and "next" [8]
  • Core: Refactor and fix "play minimized" settings handling [9]
  • Guide, channel, video fullscreen, music visualisation window: Direct channel number input. [10]
  • Settings: Remove setting 'hide connection lost warning' [11]
  • Search dialog: Refactor and complete implementation of EPG search filter [12]
  • Timer settings dialog: Prefill recordings folder with timer title [13]
  • Recordings window: Content view filter [14]
  • Settings: Remove non-working recording settings defaults [15]
  • Guide window: 'Smart selection' of epg events. [16]
  • Channelgroup manager: Add support for radio channel groups [17]
  • Guide window: Add possibility to switch between horizontal and vertical epg grid view [18]
  • Search window: improvements and fixes [19]
  • Estuary home screen: Add Info support to recently played channel widget [20]
  • Estuary: Add episodename to live tv and recordings osd sub label, cleanup seek bar for live tv [21]
  • Estuary: PVR info dialog, recordings window: cleanup and extend [22]
  • Drop 'channel guide' button from epg event info dialog, add 'channel guide' to context menu [23]
  • Settings: Introduce new setting 'Startup action' and add 'Play TV/Radio [24]
  • Settings: Make 'epg.lingertime' an official setting, remove the respective advanced setting [25]
  • Setting: Remove obsolete and unused setting 'pvrplayback.scantime' [26]
  • Core: Fixes/Improvements for multiple enable PVR client addons [27]
  • Core: Fixes/Improvements for subchannel numbers support (ATSC) [28]
  • Core: Global direct channel number input & global unique channel numbers [29]
  • Database: Fix error "Abort due to constraint violation. Query: INSERT INTO channels..." [30]
  • Estuary: Rework PVR seekbar + Fix PVR info dialog [31]
  • Core: Make next/previous chapter work for PVR recordings [32]
  • Direct channel number input: No delay on switch to previous channel with key 0 [33]
  • Settings: Make shared channel selection optional [34]
  • Estuary: PVR info panel cleanup [35]
  • Guide window: 'Go to date' context menu item [36]
  • Estuary: Season/Episode info in Guide window and dialog [37]
  • Estuary: Add percent played progress bar to PVR info panel (for recordings) [38]
  • Guide window: Channel groups selector [39]
  • Guide window: Tweaks for more consistency and readability [40]
  • PVR-Addon API changes [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]
  • Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for all popular third-party external PVR backend platforms
  • Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager:
  • Major refactoring of Kodi's core handling and GUI management of binary addons[49]
  • Added framework to support VFS (Virtual File System) as binary addons[50]
  • Added framework support for binary addons for video decoder codecs[51]
  • Added framework support for binary addons for image (picture) decoder codecs
  • Added extentions to Kodi's Addons API to support binary addons for video decoder codecs[51]
  • Added extentions to Kodi's Addons API to support binary addons for image decoder codecs
  • Added support for Python addons to use PyCryptoDome crypto module for decryption[52]
  • Added option to pass HTTP cookies with AVOption to Kodi's Video Player[53]
  • Added support to allow addons to edit all used controls on their processed window[54]
  • Added support to allow Python addons to set the videoinfotag path[55]
  • Added support to allow Python addons to get/set the dbid of a (music) listitem[56]
  • Added support for mediatype to musicinfotag tag retrieving via Python API[57]
  • Added support "int/float slider" to Kodi's Python API[58]
  • Added support "setContent for mediawindows" to Kodi's Python API[59]
  • Added help for load of shared library and allow the use of their own addon temp folder[60]
  • Added support to inspect add-on dependencies prior to installation[61]
  • Added ability to remove add-on settings upon uninstall[62]
  • Changed to new addon gui interface for list items to use on addon window[63]
  • Changed service addons to use event handlers instead of synchronous addon hooks[64]
  • Updated "Peripheral Addons" for game controllers, gamepads, joysticks, and input peripherals profiles (in Kodi-game repo[65])
  • GUI Engine (Skinning Engine):
  • Added windows to support Games and Game OSD in the new default skins (Estuary and Estouchy)
  • Added player process info dialog to Kodi's default skin (Estuary)[66]
  • Added support for addons to use banner and ClearLogo[67]
  • Added support for skins/gui to allow implicit container referencing for non-media windows[68]
  • Added support for addons to add "Enable/Disable" to context menu[69]
  • Added support for remember last used keyboard layout in GUI[70]
  • Added support for ISO 639-2/T language code retrieval (required by libbluray)[71]
  • Added window that display Kodi privacy policy in GUI settings under system info[72]
  • Added support to map a key to browse for subtitle in video fullscreen window[73]
  • Improved Kodi's GUI engine with optimizations for message handling and SmartRedraw[74]
  • Improved Kodi's GUI engine support for scaling container layouts[75]
  • Improved Kodi's GUI engine by allowing %-values for origin, camera and animation attribs[76]
  • Changed so that context menu reloading loads async to aviod GUI lockup on wait[77]
  • Updated guilib ABI (for libgui) to version 5.13.0[78]
  • Updated keyboard layout for some languages and added support Croatian, Slovenian, and Thai (Kedmanee)
  • Updated image resource addons (as example weather icons, weather fanart, studio logos, and genre icons)
  • Platform Independent Playback:
  • Added support for "InputStream" (input stream) addons to pass CryptoSession flags field[79]
  • Added support for BD-J / Blu-ray Disc Java menu support (requires system Java runtime enviroment)[80][81]
  • Added support for Blu-ray Disc detection and use provided meta data for Blu-ray Disc names[82]
  • Added support for video buffers to be used by decoders and renderers[83]
  • Added support for platforms to register custom buffers, like example dma[83]
  • Added a VC1-Packet bitstream parser implementation for improved VC-1 playback[84]
  • Added and updated many (binary) audio decoder and encoder addons for Kodi
  • Added a few (binary) video decoder addons for Kodi[51]
  • Added a "RAW" (libraw based) image decoder addon to Kodi[85]
  • Improved MMAL playback of H.264 MVC (Blu-ray 3D) stereoscopic video with framepacking decoding on Raspberry Pi
  • Improved Stereoscopic 3D playback of 3D videos (as well as better 2D playback of 3D videos)
  • Improved and enhanced Blu-ray support (including updated libbluray dependecies from the VideoLAN project[86][87]
  • Improved support for "InputStream" (input stream) addons as system addons
  • Updated "InputStream" (input stream) client addons for common network streaming protocols and popular services
  • Updated FFmpeg multimedia codec and demux libraries to stable branch release version FFmpeg 3.3 (3.3.2)[88][89]
  • Removed certain audio codecs from core and made them into audio decoder and audio encoder add-ons
  • Removed certain video codecs from core and made them into video decoder add-ons[51]
  • Removed certain image codecs from core and made them into image decoder add-ons
  • Library:
  • Addded support to use the Favourites function in context menus[90]
  • Added support for context menus to favourites home screen widget[91]
  • Added support for processing of WRITER tag for ID3 v2, Vorbis and APE formats[92]
  • Added support for sorting using artist sort name tags in music[93]
  • Added support to "Sort By Date Added" in Music Video title node[94]
  • Changed to never cache listing of PVR directories on library scans[95]
  • Web Scrapers:
  • Added support for Python (script) based web scrapers for Kodi[96]
  • Refactored and updated many XML based scrapers in Kodi for music, movies, tv shows, and music videos
  • Updated music, movies, tv shows, and music video scrapers for Kodi
  • AudioEngine:
  • Added a new Sndio sink for ActiveAE for BSD, other BSD Unix based systems, and Linux[97]
  • Improved the default cross-platform event driven active state machine pattern ActiveAE (Kodi's AudioEngine)
  • Improved ALSA sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop and generic Linux based Embedded Systems
  • Improved PulseAudio sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop
  • Improved OSS (Open Sound System) sink for ActiveAE for BSD, like FreeBSD and similar BSD Unix based systems
  • Improved AUDIOTRACK sink for ActiveAE for Amlogic
  • Improved Pi Audio sink for ActiveAE for Raspberry Pi
  • Improved DirectSound sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved WASAPI sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved CoreAudio sink for ActiveAE for (Mac) OS X and iOS
  • Improved Darwin sink for ActiveAE for (Mac) OS X and iOS
  • Other:
  • Added a new unified setting for "Startup action" and added "Play TV/Radio"[98]
  • Added support to build Kodi with support for Bluetooth[99]
  • Added possibility for CMake build system to add additional libraries on install[100]
  • Updated and improved mappings for new and existing remote controls
  • Improved Kodi's JSON-RPC API
  • Improved compiling/building and code documentation (following doxygen coding guidelines)
  • Changed to use spdlog for Kodi logging as well as improved and further optimized logging (including debug logs)[101]
  • Changed XML format of setting values for Kodi's settings configuration[102]
  • Updated default web interface (webinterface is called "Chorus2" and is currently at version 2.4.4)[103]
  • Updated critical dependency libraries such as openssl, gnutls, and CMake (used to compile Kodi and its binary addons)
  • Removed last dependencies of SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) which was hardware abstraction for input devices[104][105]
  • Removed all glew (libglew library) dependencies in Kodi's code[106]
  • OS X Specific:
  • Added support for compiling Kodi with Xcode 8 IDE for OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) and macOS 10.12 (Sierra)
  • Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for (Mac) OS X

New in Kodi 17.6 (Nov 15, 2017)

  • Fix possible crash in controller dialog
  • Update standard scrapers to latest version available on release
  • Fix possible connection issues with internal webserver
  • Fix crash when peripheral joystick add-on is disabled

New in Kodi 17.5 (Oct 24, 2017)

  • Fixes:
  • Joysticks: Fix accelerometers preventing screensaver
  • More robust way of handling audio output on variety of Android devices
  • Fix playback of DVD file over network on Linux
  • Update to FFmpeg 3.1.11
  • Fix up and down buttons on ir remotes with macOS High Sierra
  • Added latest apple devices to allow retina support
  • Fix not being able to add content manually to videolibrary
  • Fix power message handling for CEC
  • Fix jumping timeline while switching channel groups in Guide window

New in Kodi 17.4 (Aug 29, 2017)

  • Fix issue for users with reverse proxies attempting to forward websockets.
  • Properly throttle scraping music information online to prevent overloading the provider
  • Update FFmpeg to 3.1.9
  • Set hard requirement to use FFmpeg 3.1.x only
  • Fix for Hangup when viewing recording and pressing next/previous
  • Fix merged scraped album type and label correctly with that derived from tags from music files
  • Save skin settings immediately after they have changed instead of only on shutdown

New in Kodi 17.3 (May 25, 2017)

  • Due to packaging issue after release some add-ons like PVR, visualization and Inputstream are missing. The 17.3 release solves this problem.

New in Kodi 17.2 (May 24, 2017)

  • Fixes:
  • Fix selection after channelgroup switching in PVR guide window
  • Fix handling of gaps that caused eradic behaviour in EPG grid
  • Allow backing out of fullscreen pictures by mapping longpress guesture
  • Quick fix for wake up command not being called in PVR power management
  • Use alternative method to check if platform updates have been installed on Windows
  • Set the minimum version in the code which is currently OSX 10.8
  • Fix possible security flaw which could abused .zip files which try to traverse to a parent directory
  • Use the correct ttc font from the video file for subtitles on Windows
  • Detect and delete zero-byte database files which causes crashes
  • Security:
  • You may have read in the news that malicious subtitle zip files could potentionally infect and harm your media player including Kodi. When Check Point researchers uncovered this flaw they contact us up front to less us know about this flaw. Our developers fixed this secuity gap and have added the fix to this v17.2 release. As such we highly encourage all users to install this latest version! Any previous Kodi version will not get any security patch. We have began the roll out of this version and Android Play Store as well as Windows Store have this update pending and will roll out as soon as possible. Please be patient if you are using these store versions. Our official download page of course has the regular install files available for the supported platforms.

New in Kodi 17.1 (Mar 22, 2017)

  • Fixes:
  • Update Estuary and Estouchy with some bugfixes and improvements
  • Fix EDL skipping
  • Fix slow song smartplaylist
  • Several PVR fixes
  • Update Chorus webinterface
  • Fix addons not being marked broken when they are updated with broken flag
  • Add limiter on random songs which should prevent large memory usage on big libraries
  • Improve keyboard mapping during button mapping
  • Improve analog stick handling
  • Improve plugin performance when building the content list
  • Include RTMP inputstream add-on for Windows
  • Don’t close subtitle stream when switching audio
  • Fix replaygain for music files
  • Fix controllers buttons on Android
  • Fix music cleanup hanging on large MySQL music database
  • Fix use of SMB on Android on new installs
  • Fix possible Kodi upgrade migration hang during add-on update process
  • Add check in Windows installer for Service Packs and updates that Kodi needs to operate
  • Don’t try to read tags from internet audio streams
  • Add setting to disable controller rumble on notifications

New in Kodi 17.1 RC 1 (Feb 23, 2017)

  • Fixes:
  • Update Estuary and Estouchy with some bug fixes and improvements
  • Fix EDL skipping
  • Fix slow song smartplaylist
  • Several PVR fixes
  • Update Chorus webinterface
  • Fix add-ons not being marked broken when they are updated with broken flag
  • Add limiter on random songs which should prevent large memory usage on big libraries
  • Improve keyboard mapping during button mapping
  • Improve analog stick handling
  • Improve plugin performance when building the content list
  • Include RTMP inputstream add-on for Windows

New in Kodi 17.0 (Feb 6, 2017)

  • LIVE TV AND PVR (PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDER):
  • Added enhancement/improvements to PVR addon API (connection state change handling, asynchronous updates & more)[1] [2][3]
  • Added support for navigation controls between EDL (commercial skipping) during PVR recodings playback[4]
  • Added support for sorting channels by 'last played' in the Channels window[5]
  • Added support to changing of timer type for existing timers to ex. change a episode timer to a series timer[6]
  • Added support to echo up important Status info to Timer Rules in the Timer rules window[7]
  • Added option to hide disabled timers in the Timer window[8]
  • Added support for 'Edit timer' & 'Delete timer' rules to context menu in the EPG & Search windows[9][10]
  • Added support to allow timer creation for EPG in recent past in the EPG window[11]
  • Added support to use timer logos depending on its state in the EPG window[12][13][14]
  • Added "ShowTimerRule" builtin to allow key mapping for "add timer" dialog pre-filled for epg-based timer rule[15]
  • Added 'recent recordings' widget (core support and Estuary PVR home screen)[16]
  • Added vertical scrollbar to Guide window to allow channel navigation using the mouse (core support and Estuary change)[17]
  • Added support for JSON-RPC API sync PVR types fields with current implementation[18]
  • Improveed playback of live streams as PVR Live TV streams can now be identified as "live"
  • Improved Kodi's Eventlog with extentions to PVR events for 'create/delete timers, timer rules', 'start/stop recordings'[19]
  • Improved PVR Guide window performance, especially on first open[20][21]
  • Changes to have separate windows for 'Timer Rules' from 'Timers'[22]
  • Changes to separate TV and Radio recordings in the Recordings window[23]
  • Changes to make 'group items' setting be persistent in the Recordings window[24]
  • Changes to recordings window which now respects "default select action" settings value[25]
  • Changes to instant recording behavior to make it configurable (fixed-time vs. current show vs. interactive)[26]
  • Refactoring of the PVR Manager (PVRManager) so addons are now owned by Kodi's addon system[27]
  • Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for all popular third-party external PVR backend platforms:
  • New: Digital Devices Octopus NET Client PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Digital Devices
  • VDR VNSI Client PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Team Kodi
  • Tvheadend HTSP Client PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Team Kodi
  • FilmOn PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • Stalker Middleware PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • HDHomeRun PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • Enigma2 (Dreambox / Vu+ / DBox2) PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • VBox TV Gateway PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • PCTV Systems (Broadway) PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by PCTV Systems
  • MythTV PVR Client Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • Argus TV (former ForTheRecord) PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • DVBLink PVR Client Addon backend client maintained and made available by DVBLogic
  • DVBViewer Client PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • MediaPortal PVR Client Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • WMC (Windows Media Center) PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • IPTV Simple Client PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • RTL-SDR FM Radio Client PVR Addon backend client maintained and made available by Kodi's community
  • PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake (method stub) PVR backend for PVR skinning and regression testing
  • ADD-ONS FRAMEWORK, API, AND MANAGER:
  • Added a new API level system to binary addons, refactoring the binary addon library interface for Kodi[28]
  • Added a new input system with an API for keyboard and game controllers as "Peripheral Addons"[29]
  • Added API support for "Peripheral Addons" for updatable configuration of input devices[29]
  • Added support for game controller peripheral addons to system addons[30]
  • Added a user-mappable Joystick (Peripheral) Addon for joysticks and gamepad abstraction APIs[31][29][32]
  • Added support for method to get our useragent string[34]
  • Added support for Addons to include screenshots to be visible in Kodi's Addons Manager
  • Added support for skins to display 'recently installed' or 'recently updated' addon list in Addon Manager[35]
  • Added setting for enabling/disabling ZIP installation of addons from unknown sources (disbaled by default)[36][37]
  • Added a lot of Doxygen related Addons documentation regarding builtin commands to Documentation[38]
  • Added "Peripheral Addons" for game controllers, gamepads, joysticks, and input peripherals (in repo[33]):
  • Joystick Controller Addon
  • X-Arcade (XGaming Tankstick) support for Kodi Addon
  • Steam Controller (gamepad) Addon
  • Default Game Controller Addon (reference game controller addon based on Xbox 360 gamepad)
  • GUI ENGINE (SKINNING ENGINE):
  • Added a new default skin called Estuary, with themes & colors, (moving Confluence to addon repo)[39][40]
  • Added a new default touch-screen enabled skin called Estouchy (moving Re-Touched to addon repo)[39][41]
  • Added a new Color Manager to handle loading of madVR 3D LUT ICC profiles for color correction[42]
  • Added a new FFmpeg based image loader to guilib for loading pictures[43]
  • Added a new FFmpeg based image thumbnails implementation[44]
  • Added experimental limited support to guilib for animated APNG images in skin textures and backgrounds/posters[45]
  • Added experimental limited support to guilib for animated GIF images in skin textures and backgrounds/posters[46]
  • Added support for commercial skipping notifications and toggle action[47]
  • Added support for defaultcontrol to grouplists to allow skins to define defaults[48]
  • Added support for 'InstallAddon' builtin to allow skins to install addons on demand[49]
  • Added Skin.SelectBool builtin support for skinning[50]
  • Added support for multi-touch to display adjustment for touch panel calibration[51]
  • Improved skinning PVR section by unifying and/or seperating different PVR related windows
  • Update guilib ABI (for libgui) to version 5.11.0[52]
  • Updated keyboard layout for some languages and added new keyboard layout for French AZERTY & Italian QWERTY
  • Changed context menus by refactoring to a global item based system to unify them[53]
  • Changed GetThumbSize() to m_imageResso so bookmark/chapter images are same resolution as posters
  • Changed background loading of thumbnails so that it is enabled by default
  • Changed default icons with updated versions
  • PLATFORM INDEPENDENT PLAYBACK:
  • Major refactoring of Kodi's built-in video player core (which also been renamed from "DVDPlayer" to "VideoPlayer")[54][55][56]
  • Added support for "InputStream" binary addon extension point that can serve as input stream for VideoPlayer[57][58]
  • Added support for "InputStream" (input stream) addons to system addons[59]
  • Added support for 3D LUT (3D Lookup Table) & simple ICC profile linking support for color correction[60]
  • Added video stream selection to audio/subtitle dialogue to choose between multiple videos[55][56]
  • Added support for dithering for OpenGL rendering (part of VideoPlayer refactoring)[55][56]
  • Added support for gapless playback on stream change (with the new VideoPlayer)[61]
  • Added two new view modes that zoom depending on aspect ratio to match the screen heigh[62]
  • Added method for requesting desired video resolution to demuxer to new VideoPlayer[63]
  • Added multi-stream input demuxer to support a video stream with external audio tracks/streams[54][64]
  • Added support to change playback speed with audio enabled between 0.8 to 1.5 of normal speed with 'tempo' controls[65][66]
  • Added support for external PGS/.sup (Blu-ray Disc) subtitles[67]
  • Added support for hardware video acceleration of DVD-Video (with the new VideoPlayer)[54]
  • Added and improved several Audio DSP (Digital Signal Processing) plugins and ADSP addons for Kodi's AudioEngine[68]
  • Added and updated many audio decoder and encoder addons for Kodi[69]
  • Changed video renderers to separate graphics rendering from main thread (part of VideoPlayer refactoring)[55]
  • Improved A/V sync during video playback which reduce time required for audio sync (part of VideoPlayer refactoring)[55][56]
  • Improved switching refresh rates during video playback (part of VideoPlayer refactoring)[54][55][56]
  • Improved audio pass-through support during video playback (part of VideoPlayer refactoring)[55][56]
  • Improved MMAL playback of H.264 MVC (Blu-ray 3D) stereoscopic video with framepacking decoding on Raspberry Pi
  • Improved Stereoscopic 3D playback of 3D videos (as well as better 2D playback of 3D videos)
  • Improved and enhanced Blu-ray support (including updated libbluray dependecies from the VideoLAN project[70])[71]
  • Upgraded FFmpeg multimedia codec and demux libraries to stable branch release version FFmpeg 3.1 (3.1.6)[72][73]
  • Removed certain audio codecs from core and made them into audio decoder and audio encoder add-ons
  • Added "InputStream" (input stream) client addons for common network streaming protocols and popular services:
  • InputStream Addon (default reference InputStream Addon by Team Kodi
  • Test InputStream Addon (Test InputStream Addon for Kodi's new inputstream interface
  • Adaptive InputStream Addon (InputStream Client addon for several manifest types)
  • RTMP InputStream Addon (InputStream Client for RTMP streams using librtmp)
  • MPD (MPEG-DASH) InputStream Addon
  • SmoothStream InputStream Addon for MS-SSTR (SmoothStreamingMedia) Smooth Streaming Protocol
  • NXMSL InputStream Addon for Netflix style manifests over MSL
  • LIBRARY:
  • Added support for scraping, storing, and displaying multiple ratings from different sources[74]
  • Added support for user rating to the OSD (On Screen Display) for music playback[75]
  • Added support for rating and votes label for specific rating[76]
  • Added support to filtering by userrating in the mediafilter dialog[77]
  • Added support to include watched status for movies in actor search dialog[78]
  • Added artist roles tag to the music library to handle tags for ex. Composer, Conductor, DJMixer, etc.[79]
  • Added support for MOOD tag scanning for FLAC, Ogg, Xiph, Vorbis, ASF and MP4 audio files to music library[80]
  • Added option to exclude singles in recently played albums (set to enabled by default)
  • Added support for showning "in progress tv shows" in the filesystem-tree[81]
  • Added support Audio and Subtitle Track Count to Smart Playlist selections filtering[82]
  • Added support to sort actors by number of movies they are in[83]
  • Added support to sort discography ascending by years
  • Added support for a method to retrieve video tags[84]
  • Added ability to JSON-RPC API to return user ratings
  • Improved performance for tag scanning and browsing speed in the Music library
  • Improved database performance for addons accessing library
  • WEB SCRAPERS:
  • Refactoring and updated scrapers in Kodi for music, movies, tv shows, and music videos
  • Added possibility to get information from both .nfo and scraper
  • AUDIOENGINE:
  • Added initial support for Audio DSP (Digital Signal Processing) plugins and addons for Kodi's AudioEngine[1]
  • Improved the default cross-platform event driven active state machine pattern ActiveAE (Kodi's AudioEngine)
  • Improved ALSA sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop and generic Linux based Embedded Systems
  • Improved PulseAudio sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop
  • Improved OSS (Open Sound System) sink for ActiveAE for BSD, like FreeBSD and similar BSD Unix based systems
  • Improved AudioTrack sink for ActiveAE for Android
  • Improved Pi Audio sink for ActiveAE for Raspberry Pi
  • Improved DirectSound sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved WASAPI sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved CoreAudio sink for ActiveAE for (Mac) OS X and iOS
  • Improved Darwin sink for ActiveAE for (Mac) OS X and iOS
  • OTHER:
  • Added a new default web interface (this new ew webinterface is called "Chorus2" and is currently at version 2.4.1)[85][86][87]
  • Added support for AppVeyor CI (CI for Windows) build server for regression testing of Kodi and binary addons[88]
  • Added support building binary addons to Travis build server for regression testing of Kodi[89]
  • Added support for auto creating code documentation with Doxygen including To-Do list (http://codedocs.xyz/xbmc/xbmc/ )
  • Added documentation for skinning API to Doxygen, and moved PyDocs of Kodi API to Doxygen
  • Added support for IPv6 via cURL
  • Added default for the WeTek Play USB remote to peripherals as input device[90]
  • Added support for game controller haptics (rumble motors) when the user receives a notification[91]
  • Added and updated many audio visualization and screensaver addons for Kodi[92]
  • Improved code stability, performance. and security, as well as general code clean-up in many core areas
  • Improved render capture which is used by Ambilight implementations (such as example Boblight)
  • Improved the the integrated UPnP / DNLA Media Server and Client[93][94]
  • Improved AirPlay compatibility support for iOS 8 (via updated libshairplay)[95]
  • Improved Kodi's JSON-RPC API
  • Improved the the integrated web server (used for remote control web interface and more)
  • Improved HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support by updating to LibCEC 4.01 from Pulse-Eight[96]
  • Improved "long-press" support functionality of a single button on a remote control
  • Updated community maintained translations to over 60+ languages to date for Kodi via Transifex Translation System
  • Updated critical dependency libraries such as sqlite, openssl, gnutls, and CMake (used to compile binary addons)
  • Updated artwork containing logos with symbol to reflect that Kodi is a registered trademark
  • Removed support for RAW image decoding (with removal of CxImage as FFmpeg do not support RAW[97][98])
  • Removed CxImage, Libgif, and JpegIO (C/C++ libraries) as dependencies in favor of FFmpeg image decoding[99][100][101]
  • Removed all Boost (C++ libraries) and libsquish as dependencies[102][103]
  • OS X SPECIFIC:
  • Added new CMake based build system of Kodi and binary addons for OSX (as well as for Linux, BSD, and Windows)[120]
  • Added “Copy to Kodi” functionality on iOS (for “Open In” Kodi feature in iOS)
  • Added support for compiling Kodi with Xcode 8 IDE for OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) and macOS 10.12 (Sierra)[121]
  • Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for (Mac) OS X

New in Kodi 17.0 RC 4 (Jan 27, 2017)

  • Update Estuary and Estouchy with some bug fixes and improvements
  • Fix Kodi not starting on some phones running Android 7
  • Revert changes that disabled plugin listing cache that which caused reduced browsing speed
  • Fix the cause of favorites not refreshing
  • Fix add-ons not being added to favorites if done through add-on manager
  • Update our default web interface Chorus2 with several fixes and features
  • Fix possible deadlock when installing/uninstalling PVR add-ons
  • Fix possible failed add-on installs on Windows with a retry
  • Fix changing song ratings
  • Make sure to stop playback before uninstalling a PVR add-on
  • Try to handle graphics failures due to bad graphics driver on Windows
  • Fix long timeout for certain audio streams

New in Kodi 17.0 RC 3 (Jan 13, 2017)

  • Update Estuary with some bug fixes and improvements
  • Revert change that cause video playback problems on some files
  • Fix mouse not reaching right side of the screen on OS X
  • Several fixes regarding general video playback
  • Several fixes regarding EPG/PVR
  • Several fixes and improvements regarding cmake build system
  • Update to CEC 4.0.1

New in Kodi 17.0 RC 1 (Dec 30, 2016)

  • Estuary and Estouchy: next generation:
  • Past March we announced that we had replaced the aging Confluence skin which did it’s job since 2009 as default skin. V17 will mark the new arrival of Estuary and Estouchy (touch enabled) skin as the new default skins. Many months have been put in getting these skins build from the ground up by phil65 and utilise all of the new features Kodi has to offer. During this period we also rethought on what was actually needed for skins and with this we also added features we only came up with by rebuilding this skin as we wondered why it never was able to do it in the first place. The home screen has been revamped and now utilises a smartplaylists implementation to automatically show you what probably interests you the most. We suggest you just give it a try and see for yourself. If you still prefer Confluence skin then you don’t need to worry as it’s still available from the official Kodi repository. With some help from ryanmah for the mockups, ichabod-fletchman for helping out this final version of Estuary.
  • At same time the touch skin Estouchy also got matched by our senior skin developer ronie to match the Estuary look.
  • For some more screenshots you can visit the release announcement here: Default skin: Next Gen. Regardless you’ll see when you install this new update.
  • Setting section has been more clear:
  • One of the things probably most of us hate the most is going through settings and see what they do. Often are not clear what they do or just not obvious. We felt the same and we have now made a big shuffle of certain settings to group them in a better way and improve the text and help description. I’m sure it’s not perfect and things still need changing however it’s already a big step forward. Additionally we’ve put a central button in settings screen for adding new media sources that you can add to your library. To make a long story short here are some screenshots to give you an idea on how it looks. Other than that I guess you’ll just have to try for yourself. Remember to look at the bottom of the screen as that often contains hints on what a settings actually does.
  • PVR made easier and better:
  • With v17 the way we handle PVR add-ons has been given a makeover as well. With these changes we hope that the threshold of getting PVR running inside Kodi has been greatly reduced. Once you configured and enabled the PVR add-on you are ready. No more additional options to enable to get going. Of course you will still need to set up a PVR backend/server first however that is outside of our scope of work. Additionally a lof work has been done to improve stability and usability to this section. Switching channels, EPG (electronic program guide) as well as setting and changing recording timers have all been greatly improved. From the user interface little has changed besides the new default skin and some settings that are moved or are now a bit more clear what they do.
  • Privacy policy:
  • Your privacy is an important factor that the XBMC Foundation and Team Kodi considers in the development of all of our software and services. We are committed to being transparent and open. This Privacy Policy explains generally how we receive information about you, and what we do with that information once we have it. As such we have added this privacy policy to our website and also made it available from within Kodi itself to read.
  • WARNING: This of course does not mean your privacy is totally protected. In the end you are still responsible yourself for whatever you install or share. For the official Kodi repository we have a set of strict rules in place for any add-on that is added or updated and strive towards protecting the users from any harm that might come from using them. However once you decide to install any other repository or add-ons from outside our official repository you must make sure you are informed of any consequences. Do not blindly install any add-on but make sure to read up on what it does and what it might share with others. If you are not sure then take the safe route and don’t install it.
  • Add-on manager changes and features:
  • Since v10 the add-on repository has been an integral part of Kodi and has made it a breeze for expanding the capabilities and receiving updates for these add-ons and skins. Together with the skin changes we did in Estuary we certainly hope to make the experience a bit better.
  • Unknown sources:
  • First of all we added an option to warn new users that installing add-ons outside of Kodi repository could potentially bring harmful add-ons to their system. A more extensive write up (read here) explains these hazards they might get their selves into. Of course this doesn’t mean all are bad however we do feel that users should at least be warned. From now on if a user wants to install any add-on from .zip they need to acknowledge they understood the risk and enable the option to allow installation. This is a one time warning so you do not need to do this each time.
  • Recently installed or update:
  • From now on you are able to see which add-ons recently updated. It might come in handy should some problems arise as you not always noticed the popup telling you an update was installed. At least now you are able to track down which one(s).
  • Music library:
  • Over the years our music library handling wasn’t always the best and luckily a while ago some developers stepped up and started improving the lacking functionality and added new features. Some improvements are better tag reading and scraping. Handling of albums and artist has also been improved with the addition of adding artist role handling for music (composer, conductor, djmixer). Certain files or websites also support mood and this has now also been added so you can now select music based on certain type of mood instead of genre. With all these changes in regards to the music library and part and better tag scanning and usage a mandatory music files re-scan has to be done to extract all this information. After you upgrade and enter the music library a choice will be giving to re-scan now or later. As this re-scan can take up quite some time and resources you can answer NO and continue browsing your library. Once you exit library and re-enter you will be prompted again asking to re-scan. Once you answer YES Kodi will start scanning all your music files and extract the tag data they contain to a certain degree. As mentioned this process takes quite some time depending on the size. During this time Kodi might be somewhat slower than normal. Do note that this will not reset your library to a new state or that you will loose data. It will simply update what is available and will leave all play counts and the rest as they were.
  • Video Player:
  • Since the beginning of XBMC back in the days while it was running on the XBOX there was something like DVDPlayer. As the name probably implies it was used to playback DVD discs/files. During the years this DVDPlayer was improved and patched up to stay within modern day standards of video playback expectancy. However it became clear that for the future a major overhaul and rewrite was needed to keep up and be future proof. As such the developers who did the AudioEngine in v12 picked up this job and have now transformed it into VideoPlayer. Together with some platform developers they ripped out the old DVDPlayer code, chopped it in pieces, put it in the blender, picked the needed pieces and put it back in without breaking the rest of Kodi (hopefully). This certainly wasn’t an easy job as DVDPlayer was like the bottom block of Jenga tower that needed to be replaced while still being entangled throughout the whole tower. It had it’s tentacles in parts of the code where it shouldn’t have been in the first place. Probably over a year ago work started on getting this untangled and made ready to be replaced by the new implementation.
  • Well now you might wonder what does this all mean? Well a whole lot and it will probably not be as clear when using Kodi as a normal user. From a developers side it means a lot as the code is now more contained in it’s own section which makes maintenance a whole lot easier. As for the users here are some things they will notice already or in the future.
  • Video stream selection:
  • You might already know of the possibility where you can select the audio track of a movie like different languages or quality. With video stream selection you are now able to select a different video stream should that be available. Although not widely used concert DVDs are certainly a good example where you are able to select a different camera angle for watching the concert. Although this sounds like a niche feature it’s certainly important for the next feature we will bring up.
  • Input stream add-ons:
  • The work done with VideoPlayer has already gained one of the most exciting new features we can think of which is Input Stream add-ons. This enables possibility of native written add-ons can now handle part of the video playback selection and just hand over the video stream to Kodi. A perfect example of this is DASH (Dynamic Adaptive STreaming over HTTP) which is something YouTube uses to give you the different video qualities depending on network speed. With Input Stream add-ons we can now have this capability as separate add-on instead of having this in the Kodi core. Here comes the video stream selection into play as you might want to select a different quality or language if made available. We’re happy to say that by default we ship the MPD add-on that handles the DASH audio/video stream selection standard and hands over the results to Kodi. The available YouTube add-on in Kodi repository doesn’t handle this feature as of yet however I’m sure it will be updated somewhere in the future.
  • More features will come from this complete VideoPlayer rework and we will be sure to inform you once they have been added. For now we will try to make current features work to their fullest potential.
  • Game controller add-on:
  • In the past it has always been a pain to configure game controllers within Kodi. There were some XML files people could download and copy to a certain location. This has now been solved by making them add-ons (like almost everything else) which you can install with a click of a button. This rework of the controllers was needed for retro gaming feature which may land somewhere in the future. No sadly that doesn’t mean retro gaming will be available in v17 but we keep our hopes up for the future.
  • 3dlut and simple ICC linking support for color correction:
  • Developer laurimyllari added a ColorManager class that supports loading madVR 3DLUT files, and loading ICC display profiles, creating source profiles and linking them. Users can use this to correct their display response with a 3DLUT file, or emulate other displays (with whitepoint, primaries and gamma selectable at runtime) with an ICC profile of their own display. The ICC profile linking is still work in progress, but is functional and shows what can be done with it.
  • A new default web interface called Chorus2:
  • Kodi has many hidden secrets and even team members don’t know the full potential it packs. One of those features you might not know is that Kodi also has a web-interface from which you can browse your library and start playback directly on your Kodi device. It’s something we’ve never really promoted that it was available and I’m not really sure why. However the past few years not much was changed to to it and it kinda fell into decay with only minor fixes done to keep it kind of functional. For Kodi v17 this has been radically changed as we have packaged up a brand new default web-interface called Chorus2.

New in Kodi 17.0 Beta 7 (Dec 19, 2016)

  • Update Estuary and Estouchy skin with some bugfixes
  • Enable IEC61937 audio passthrough support on Android for DTS-HD, TrueHD, DTS:X and ATMOS in case the Android version supports this
  • Fix PVR channel OSD display conditions
  • Fix possible crash in PVR EPG
  • Fix multiple selection in file browser
  • Fix duplicate context menu for PVR recordings
  • Fix wrong window size on OSX
  • Fix problem on Windows that currently in use skins couldn’t be updated
  • Further improvement of cmake build system
  • Various other improvements and fixes

New in Kodi 17.0 Beta 6 (Dec 1, 2016)

  • Fixes:
  • Show select dialog for director button in the information panel if there’s more than one director
  • Fix video stall on Android during skipping of video or when opening the player controls
  • Fix potential memory leak in image handling
  • Fix several problems in the cmake build system
  • Redact username and password from the log if user has advancedsettings.xml
  • Fix creating temp folder when handling add-on updates on Windows which fixes the problem from Beta 4
  • Fix possible crash on handling certain fonts
  • Fix possible EPG lock up
  • Fix ASS subtitles on Windows
  • Fix memory leak with ASS and certain regular subtitles on all platforms
  • Revert change that broke RTL (right to left) language subtitles
  • Force re scan of music file tags to makes use of the newest available library structure
  • Fix not updating the favourites menu item after changes had been made
  • Add privacy policy screen in system information
  • Remember last used subtitle service when searching again
  • Fix hash checking in add-on installer which caused certain add-on not downloading when multiple repositories were installed
  • Fix conversion of POPM music tag values to the new 0 to 10 rating
  • Fix several issues to further improve controller support
  • Update CEC library with additional fixes
  • Fix some tag reading issues from music files

New in Kodi 17.0 Beta 4 (Oct 25, 2016)

  • Fixes:
  • Fix certain types of 16bit encoded passthrough streams on OSX
  • Fix activate/deactivate on read only timers
  • Fix reading interlaced modes from defaultsettings when set to none
  • Fix compilation albums, last played rules and fix missing sort order rules in smartplaylists
  • Fix relative seeks on video playback
  • Fix info dialog for recordings on home screen
  • Don’t load inputstreams on startup if they are disabled
  • Fix subsequent seeks with video playback
  • Explicitly check for DTS capability for making settings visible
  • Add ARMv8A 64bit builds for Android
  • Add GetLastModifiedDate to the webserver
  • Fix playback of DVD ISO files
  • Fix focus of list items in media windows (like plugins)
  • Change spinners options in smartplaylist editors to a select menu
  • Add workaround for AMD/ATI cards regarding interlaced content
  • Fix gapless playback for music
  • Fix controller on NVIDIA Shield TV not working after it when to sleep
  • Fix video playback when skipping beyond end of file on mp4 videos
  • Improve crashlog reporting for UWP app in Windows Store
  • Export max ratings to NFO files by default
  • Fix hardware decoding on some mpeg2 files and DVDs for AMD/ATI cards as their drivers aren’t that good
  • Fix aspect ratio calculation for 3D modes
  • Fix video playback in image slideshows
  • Fix channel group change in PVR
  • Fix several memory leaks

New in Kodi 17.0 Beta 3 (Oct 5, 2016)

  • Features a huge amount of work in areas like video playback, live TV and PVR/DVR, the music library, skinning and more. It features a new default skin, as well as a new default touchscreen skin, named Estuary and Estouchy, respectively.
  • also added some features we thought would certainly help along the usability of Kodi. With this beta a long awaited feature was added since the early days of Eden (v11) or even earlier. As most of you know on each new Kodi version there are certain database changes which happen on the first start of Kodi after you upgraded. On some devices this might be over quite fast however for some slower devices this might seem like Kodi has frozen while it was actually finishing the database upgrade. We did acknowledge this problem and have always wanted to add a some message on the Kodi splash screen telling users what is actually happening. We with this v17 beta version we finally had the ability to add this feature given the fact enough pre-work had been done making this possible. Additionally what now happens is that on the first upgrade our add-on manager will fetch the latest available add-ons for that specific versions and will process these before going to Kodi home screen itself. One of the most noticeable problems before was when you had a non default skin installed, after upgrade the screen went black and it started installing the new skin version. Now all this happens during the first start and you’ll see a nice message saying it’s processing the upgrade. Depending on the amount of installed skins, add-ons and internet connection speed this could take a while. So please, don’t turn of your device during this initial startup period.
  • Next notable change is the way the settings sliders work. I’m sure we all came across them one way or another in the Kodi setting screen or in some add-ons and struggled navigating around them. You tried to go to the left or right but then you accidentally changed the slider setting and had to set it back again. From now on you don’t have this problem any more because you will first need to highlight the slider, click on it and then you can adjust it’s settings. Once satisfied just click again and you can navigate freely to the next control on the window. If the slider has two nibbles on it that control the setting then the process is the same but you first move to the next nibble and then you accept it. Although this a small change it was one of those annoyances that made navigation in Kodi not always easy.
  • Fixes:
  • Fix album rating which should show as 0-10 compared to 0-5 before
  • Add ability to JSON-RPC to return user ratings
  • Fix mouse focus offset on buttons in EPG window
  • Check on selected fanart pack in Estuary
  • Fix WAV playback on Windows
  • Add proper screen scale for latest iOS devices
  • Add time button on PVR information dialog
  • Fix certain bugs and improve RenderCpature which is use for Boblight
  • Fix unloading of EPG data on exiting the application
  • Fix on handling CUE sheet
  • Add some additional music roles in the Music sections
  • Fix possible deadlock on using PVR as startup window
  • Don’t use hyphens in front of temperature as they might make it seem as negative temperature
  • Exclude singles in recently played albums
  • Show text during migrations tasks like database and add-ons upgrade
  • Fix PVR not working after using the login screen
  • Improve handling of event where displayed changed on Windows which could cause a crash
  • Add possibility to get information from both .nfo and scraper
  • Fix packaging of binary add-ons on Android builds
  • Fix video playback on older Mac Mini devices
  • Workaround amlogic passthrough on devices running Android 5
  • Fix fontsetting on switching skins
  • Fix ghost timers on certain PVR clients
  • Fix DVD menu playback and audio
  • Fix crashing on OSX with playing DVDs
  • Require a click on slider before you can change it. Click again to accept the change and continue navigation
  • Variety of fixes to video playback
  • Various skin fixes and changes

New in Kodi 17.0 Beta 1 (Aug 22, 2016)

  • Minor fixes and under the hood improvements
  • Estuary and Estouchy:
  • Without question, the biggest visual change from Kodi 16 to 17 is the new default skin Estuary. This skin pulls a dramatic amount of content to the homescreen, including much from your music and video libraries, commonly used add-ons, and links to adding new video/music sources and installing new add-ons. It also enables color and theme changes within the skin, and overall pulls Kodi into the present day of UI design. For a full review of Estuary (and its touchscreen counterpart Estouchy), see the Estuary blogpost. Or for just a quick look, check out the Estuary trailer.
  • It should be noted that this is only the default skin. You are, of course, welcome to continue using whatever skin you might prefer, including the previous default skin Confluence.
  • A Cleaner, Clearer Settings Section:
  • The Kodi settings area has always seemed to require some sort of advanced degree (or a similar amount of related experience) to navigate effectively. With that in mind, we have spent the better part of a year cleaning up and reorganizing Settings with the ultimate goal of making the section, if not friendly, then at least clearer for new and journeymen Kodi users. We’ve also made it possible to point Kodi to new media sources from the settings menu, a requested feature for many years.
  • An Improved Music Library:
  • Many would argue that the Kodi music library has not seen the same degree of development and support as the video library over the past few years. With Kodi 17, that has changed. The improved music library now supports better tag reading and scraping, better handling of albums and artists with the addition of adding artist role (such as composer, conductor, DJ, etc.). Additionally, certain files and websites support musical “mood,” which means you can now select your music based on mood, rather than artist or genre.
  • Live TV and PVR/DVR Improvements:
  • For a full list, see the Kodi Alpha 3 write-up, but the Live TV and PVR/DVR component of Kodi has seen just as much improvement with Krypton as the music library. Channels can now be organized by last played, so if you really only watch 5 or 6 of your 300 channels, those can always be at the top of the list. Timers and Timer Rules are now clearer and better organized and timers are much smarter now. For example, if you set a Timer to record one episode of a show, you can transform it so that it records an entire series. And that’s really only the cream on top. Check the alpha 3 blogpost for more.
  • VideoPlayer:
  • While the average user might not notice this massive under-the-hood improvement, we feel remiss in not mentioning it. The switch from Kodi’s old DVDPlayer to the new, modern VideoPlayer may be one of the most massive re-writes in Kodi’s long history. A longer, and more detailed discussion of the changes in VideoPlayer may be found in the Alpha 2 write-up, but the important take-away is that this rewrite likely won’t affect users much right now, but should vastly improve the Kodi experience over the next few years.
  • With that said, there are some improvements you may see right away. In particular, DVD playback finally has hardware acceleration. A/V syncing has improved. Video streams can now be selected, just like different language audio streams or subtitles, useful for things like concert DVDs, where you can now select the various different camera angles, but perhaps more importantly useful for switching between different bitrates in Youtube and other online streaming sources using the DASH protocol. At present, the Youtube add-on in the Kodi repo has not yet been updated to handle this new support, but we hope to see that update in the near future.

New in Kodi 17.0 Alpha 3 (Aug 1, 2016)

  • Skin features:
  • As you have noticed we included two new default skins. Estuary for regular use and Estouchy for touchscreen devices. At the same time we made sure some limitations we had to deal with in the past are now solved or at least improved. One of those was that the context menu (right click) didn’t work on any media items that were displayed on the home screen. Well now you can call up the menu like in library view.
  • Add-ons can now include screenshots which will be visible within Kodi itself to give you an idea how they will look.
  • More more changes were done in different areas however we’ll let discover those yourself.
  • Music library:
  • This section received a lot of love during the past year to get it up to speed again and it’s certainly catching up to the video section. Some of the improvements include better tag scanning, browsing speed ups and a lot more tag fields to be used and shown. You music enthousiast will certainly be happy with these changes so we encourage you to try it out and leave you feedback on our Kodi forum.
  • Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder):
  • Extend Kodi eventlog with PVR events, namely ‘create/delete timers and timer rules’ and ‘start/stop recordings’.
  • Guide window: Allow timer creation for EPG in recent past.
  • Timer window: Add option to hide disabled timers.
  • Separate windows for “Timer Rules” and “Timers”.
  • Guide & Search window: Add ‘Edit timer’/'Edit timer rule’ to context menu.
  • Timer rules window: Echo up important Status info to Timer Rules.
  • Guide window: Use timer logos depending on its state (needs skin support).
  • Added enhancement and improvements to the PVR add-on API (connection state change handling, asynchronous EPG updates, and more – needs support from the different PVR add-ons!).
  • Channels window: Add support for sorting channels by ‘last played’.
  • Recordings window: Separate TV and Radio recordings.
  • Guide window: performance improvements, especially on first open.
  • Guide & Search window: Add ‘Delete timer rule’ to context menu.
  • Add “ShowTimerRule” builtin, so one for instance can map a key to open the “add timer” dialog which is pre-filled to create a epg-based timer rule.
  • Rework PVRManager: add-ons are now owned by add-on system.
  • Make instant recording behavior configurable (fixed-time vs. current show vs. interactive).
  • Timers: Allow to change timer type for existing timers. Makes it possible to for example ‘transform’ a timer for one episode of a show to a series recording (timer rule) for that show.
  • Recordings window: make ‘group items’ setting persistent.
  • JSON-RPC api: Sync pvr types fields with current implementation.
  • Lots of bug fixes in all Don’t forget Game controller add-ons this timeareas.
  • Game controller add-on:
  • In the past it has always been a pain to configure game controllers within Kodi. There were some XML files people could download and copy to a certain location. This has now been solved by making them add-ons (like almost everything else) which you can install with a click of a button. This rework of the controllers was needed for retro gaming feature which may land somewhere in the future. No sadly that doesn’t mean retro gaming will be available in v17 but we keep our hopes up for the future. Adventurous users can grab a build from our forum though here.
  • 3dlut and simple ICC linking support for color correction:
  • Developer laurimyllari added a ColorManager class that supports loading madVR 3DLUT files, and loading ICC display profiles, creating source profiles and linking them. Users can use this to correct their display response with a 3DLUT file, or emulate other displays (with whitepoint, primaries and gamma selectable at runtime) with an ICC profile of their own display. The ICC profile linking is still work in progress, but is functional and shows what can be done with it.
  • Other improvements:
  • Added “Copy to Kodi” functionality on iOS which adds the option to the iOS share sheet of apps to “Open In” Kodi
  • Bump a variety of external libraries which Kodi uses to function which includes ffmpeg 3.1
  • On Windows all the external libraries were rebuild with Visual Studio 2015 and received some DLL loading cleanup which hopefully solve some startup problems on some installations
  • Video playback got further improvements in the wake of the big change from DVDplayer to VideoPlayer

New in Kodi 17.0 Alpha 2 (Jul 2, 2016)

  • Highglights:
  • 10bit/HEVC hardware enabled playback on INtel or NVIDIA GPU that have the capabilities (see hardware specs)
  • Refactor of scrapers
  • Fix possible high CPU usage with GUI rendering
  • Playback improvement on all platforms
  • Support for multiple external ratings and userrating from GUI and smartplaylists
  • Audio and subtitle filter added to smartplaylists
  • Use ffmpeg for loading certain types of images and drop external libraries
  • Added PVR to eventlog feature
  • Various database optimisations
  • Unify behaviour of context menu
  • Improvements on binary add-on handling
  • Rework of rendercapture which is used by boblight or ambilight implementations
  • Removes SAP streams support
  • Added MVC, framepack and 3D switching support on Raspberri-Pi
  • Change certain settings from spinners to a list
  • Further improvements on DirectX implementation
  • Further unify certain skin windows to make it easier to make new skins without duplicating same code
  • Music mood scanning
  • Game controller add-ons
  • Improved tag reading from music files
  • Improvement on Kodi rendering system which should reduce CPU load and pave the way to headless some day
  • Add InProgress node for TV Shows
  • Fix CPU count on Android
  • Various changes to Kodi python API. Please check documentation
  • Save skin settings on early exit which should fix problems with loosing settings after restart
  • Improved binary add-on API
  • Improvements to internal webserver
  • Use number separators from the selected GUI language (example 1.000,4 / 1,000.4) and also apply this to ratings
  • Update to FFmpeg 3.0 which brings improved playback, stability and security fixes
  • Security and stability improvement by updating to: Python 2.7.12 / mDNSResponder to 625.41.2 / libxslt 1.1.29 / libmicrohttpd to 0.9.50 / gettext 0.19.8 / libzip 1.1.2 / libjpeg-turbo 1.4.2 / libpng 1.6.21 / lzo 2.09 / sqlite 3120200 / openssl 1.0.2h / taglib 1.11
  • Enable IPv6 for CURL
  • Added CMake building on all platforms. Still work in progress
  • Switch to Visual Studio 2015 building
  • Remove boost, CXimage, jpgIO, libsquish dependencies as they are obsolete
  • Auto create code documentation with Doxygen including a to-do list (link: https://codedocs.xyz/xbmc/xbmc/)
  • Moved old PyDocs of the Kodi API to Doxygen
  • Added skinning API to Doxygen
  • Removed dead and obsolete core code
  • Fixed memory leaks
  • Fixed possible code deadlocks
  • Fixed possible security flaws
  • Fixed possible crashes
  • Fixed code flaws found by various analyses tools

New in Kodi 16.1 (Apr 24, 2016)

  • Never cache addons directories
  • Fix typo when calculating forced ratio size
  • AndroidStorageProvider: Ignore /mnt/runtime and don’t call Exists all the way every some 500 ms as this will affect performance
  • Set of fixes for DirectX rendering
  • Fixed crash under JSON-RPC on iOS/OSX
  • 20% performance gain on opening EPG guide window
  • Add missing libgif.so to the Android package
  • Fix Kodi freezing if no ADSP add-on is present
  • EventServer security fix by only allowing localhost
  • Fix possible lockup when entering EPG grid
  • Fix possible non working key presses after a key long press
  • Don’t do a video chapter skip if there’s only one chapter
  • Fix possible lock up by increasing timeout to let screensavers properly exit
  • Fix problem in ZeroConfBrowser that could cause problems on exit
  • Fix crash one OSX 10.7 when trying to resolve HDD names
  • Fix possible crashes when using VAAPI and DXVA video rendering
  • Fix song reported on playback of songs from cuesheet

New in Kodi 16.1 RC 1 (Mar 7, 2016)

  • Fix possible lockup when entering EPG grid
  • Fix possible problems with rendering on Windows
  • Fix possible non working key presses after a key long press
  • Don’t do a video chapter skip if there’s only one chapter
  • Fix possible lock up by increasing timeout to let screensavers properly exit
  • Fix render capture (bookmark images) on certain hardware with DXVA on Windows
  • Fix problem in ZeroConfBrowser that could cause problems on exit
  • Fix crash one OSX 10.7 when trying to resolve HDD names
  • Fix possible crashes when using VAAPI and DXVA video rendering

New in Kodi 16.0 (Feb 21, 2016)

  • Event Logging:
  • The first big step in making Kodi better at communicating with you, the user, is the addition of event logging. With this feature you always have a constantly updating list of all the most important things Kodi has done recently, along with little issues you can fix. For example, when you scan in a library for the first time, the Even Logger will provide you with a list of videos that didn’t quite make it into the library, each one of which is clickable, so you can go straight to the offending video and fix it personally.
  • You’ll also get a constant list of all recently updated add-ons, so if a recent update breaks, you’ll know the update happened and can then easily rollback.
  • Long Press:
  • More and more hardware companies are coming out with remote controls with a very limited button set. In particular, all current Android TVs are lacking a dedicated context menu button altogether. To deal with this, we’ve taken a page from the touchscreen UX and added a long press feature to remote controls. Now, if you press and hold the OK/Enter button for a few seconds, you will pull up the context menu. In the future, long press may be extended for additional functionality. For a better view of what this means, see the following video.
  • 4:3 Non-linear Stretch:
  • It’s perhaps a bit late in coming, but Kodi finally supports stretching 4:3 content to 16:9 in a way that doesn’t warp the content that’s occurring in the center of the screen. Finally, you’ll be able to watch Friends, Seinfeld, Cheers, and Duck Tales in full screen without the awkward screen stretching from the past.
  • Add-on Manager Changes:
  • In the ongoing quest to improve our our add-on manager several changes were done in the overall handling of each add-on. These changes include the following:
  • The roll-back button on add-on info panel has been replaced by Update
  • The Update button now opens a list of available versions of the add-on. Should you have several repositories installed that offer different version of this add-on you can now choose which to install.
  • You can now disable auto-update per add-on through the info panel individual from others.
  • The add-on info panel can either be reached through the add-on manager or selecting the add-on in any section by either right click, use context menu (“C” key or long-press OK) and choose info or use the “I” key to directly open the panel.
  • Music Library Improvements:
  • The music library has rarely received the same support as Kodi’s video library, and this release begins to change that. In the past, adding music to Kodi’s library required extra steps after simply pointing Kodi to the music folders. Now Kodi will attempt to automatically scan the music files into the Kodi music library. For music files to be scanned correctly, they will need to be properly tagged. To read more, visit the Kodi Beta3 blogpost.
  • DirectX 11 upgrade:
  • DX11Developer afedchin has gone through the long and arduous process of updating Kodi to DirectX 11, which brings with it support for modern tools and modern graphics cards, while maintaining backwards compatibility with old DirectX 9 cards. This major shift will help Kodi for Windows stay up to date for a long time to come.
  • Other Important Changes:
  • Start of integration of ADSP (Audio Digital Signal Processing) handling (no add-ons shipped yet)
  • Improve image resizing and caching algorithm to improve image quality of images
  • Added support for the musicbrainz “ARTISTS” tag in id3v2, ape, xiph.
  • Add date added to music library and use it for sorting
  • Support saving skin settings as add-on data instead of in guisettings.xml
  • Image resource add-ons which provides common image libraries than can be used by several skins and add-ons.
  • Don’t mess with the long and short date formats defined in the language files
  • Win32: Proper 24.0/60.0 Hz refresh rate in fake fullscreen mode
  • Add sort method for albums “artist / year”. This will sort the albums chronological per artist.
  • Moved some add-on categories to “look and feel” in add-on manager
  • Series recording added for PVR
  • Add a “none” option for preferred subtitles
  • Properly handle wired or bluetooth headsets on Android and only use PCM output
  • Fix playback of VP9 and VC1 video codecs on Android
  • Use best possible icons from other Android apps while browsing these in Kodi
  • Enable true 1920×1080 output on AMLogic device without up-scaling
  • Add Korean, Chinese and Czech keyboards
  • Add multi-touch support for Linux platform
  • Improve touch-screen keymapping
  • The item that you had previously chosen will now be selected in the selection list instead of just starting at the top of the list
  • Decouple Kodi and system volume on Android which removes the double audio volume slider
  • Karaoke support has been completely removed as it wasn’t functional
  • Further improve DX11 implementation in Windows
  • iOS9 support
  • Various PVR fixes and improvements
  • Various improvements to the music section
  • Three finger touchpad mapping in iOS to make room for new tablet gestures which will be available in Alpha 4 to complement existing tablet gestures.
  • Kodi now supports being compiled with Xcode 7
  • The Kodi GUI now supports a new stereoscopic depth effect for users of Kodi on 3D TVs or VR headsets
  • Add stereoscopic depth for Confluence skin
  • Extended support for browsing movies by country and through UPnP as well as user-ratings which we be added in future versions.
  • An enormous list of improvements:
  • Besides the list above there has been a lot of work done in all areas in our source code. Removing old code, splitting up parts in more logical chunks and making it all more resilient to future changes. All these changes are part of a massive change list that only makes sense to developers actually knowing what the source code does. In short we will no bother you all with summing up the list. It’s just something that is worth mentioning that not all improvements have to be actual features and are visible to users. We prefer that the program actually works than adding bells and whistles.

New in Kodi 16.0 RC 3 (Feb 5, 2016)

  • Fix some possible DVD menu problems
  • Fix selection of stacked multiple ISO files (movie.disc1.iso, movie.disc2.iso, movie.disc3.iso etc)
  • Fix navigation in EPG grid when there’s channels have no EPG data available
  • Add missing MOOD tag scanning for FLAC/Ogg/Xiph/Vorbis, ASF and MP4/iTunes like other file format
  • Use local icon stored icon instead of downloading a new one when for the add-on update notification
  • Fix CPU feature check on Android for newer kernels
  • Fix not correctly selecting items in a list when list is updated or going to next page
  • Fix “renderloop” crashes on Windows
  • Fix accidental repeated button presses with long-press feature
  • Added French AZERTY keyboard

New in Kodi 16.0 RC 2 (Jan 29, 2016)

  • Additional fixes done on saving setting when switching between different profiles
  • Increase time-out when searching for audio devices on Windows which solves some cases of Kodi not starting
  • Fix crash when unplugging USB devices
  • Fix crash when choosing Add Timer in EPG window

New in Kodi 16.0 RC 1 (Jan 21, 2016)

  • Implement the more future proof DirectX11 for Windows which still works for DirectX9 video cards;
  • Event logging which among others shows which video files didn’t got added to your library;
  • Skin settings are now stored as separate files like any other add-on which makes migrating settings a lot easier;
  • Image resource add-ons which provide a single point of entry for skins to share common used images like movie studio icons and record labels which saves quite a lot of space and bandwidth;
  • Audio DSP (Digital Signal Processing) add-on integration and are already included which could make things possible like equalizers, sound processing, fake surround and more
  • PVR/DVR section has been extended and improved massively which now also handles series recording
  • Music library improvements which includes asking to scan to library when adding locations and also better tag scanning
  • Button long-press which extends the functionality of a single button to handle two functions which is great for button deprived remotes
  • User interface now supports a new stereoscopic depth effect for 3D TVs or VR headsets
  • Extend the UPnP server/client integration between Kodi installations
  • Android now support a Surface Rendering which keeps the interface at normal HD resolution while allows playback of 4K on supported devices
  • Removal of the infamous libstagefright on Android which served us for the past year while the Android platform matured to a fully fetaured MediaCodec
  • Add-on manager underwent heavy changes which includes slightly different structure, per add-on auto-update on/off switch, better update/rollback support to choose from repos,
  • Extend the included keyboard layouts which includes Korean and Chinese
  • Improved multi-touch support which now also works on Linux
  • Gives skin developers a more reliable platform to work from and reduce amount of work for adapting to new Kodi versions
  • Greatly improved audio and video playback in general

New in Kodi 16.0 Beta 5 (Jan 11, 2016)

  • Improved: better remote keymap for longpress functionality
  • Fixed: correctly save skin setting when changing profiles
  • Fixed: prefer forced subtitle in settings was not working
  • Fixed: prevent crash on scanning certain mp3 files
  • Fixed: correct numeric input in some PVR windows
  • Fixed: better handling of some rotated recorded video files
  • Fixed: fixed non working deinterlacer for DXVA on Windows
  • Fixed: certain animated GIF files wouldn’t display correctly
  • Fixed: a variety of code fixes that are too technical to mention

New in Kodi 16.0 Beta 4 (Dec 14, 2015)

  • Fixed: several credentials leaking in the debuglog
  • Fixed: fix enabled status for audio DSP add-ons
  • Fixed: stop scraping album overriding tags when override tags Disabled
  • Fixed: Custom Music Node/Playlist Rule Based Queries
  • Fixed: Input.Select for PVR fullscreen windows with JSON-RPC
  • Fixed: ghost timers in EPG window
  • Fixed: sidemenu now playing buttons in Confluence
  • Fixed: mouse handling regression on Android
  • Fixed: don’t use cached results for dir checks in our Python API
  • Fixed: missing header label on clean EPG progress dialog
  • Fixed: [configure] make sure the top kodi src dir is always in INCLUDES

New in Kodi 16.0 Beta 3 (Dec 7, 2015)

  • Fixed: non-working touch input in file manager
  • Fixed: workaround for MySQL 5.7.x query optimizer changes
  • Fixed: remove broken musicvideo scraper
  • Fixed: don’t show “sync playback to display” option on Android as it’s not supported
  • Fixed: fix codepage for Korean language input
  • Fixed: added workaround for triggering repository updates during playback
  • Fixed: fix crash in PVR calling the context menu
  • Fixed: show OK dialog instead of empty list clicking on the update button in add-on information panel
  • Fixed: several coverity and cppcheck code analysis problems
  • Fixed: time sometimes jumped backwards on playing bluray m2ts files and fixes stutter on switching files
  • Fixed: several issues regarding music library
  • Fixed: timer and EPG handling in PVR
  • Fixed: crashing on cleaning up events
  • Fixed: don’t show brightness/contrast controls when using Android MediaCodec (Surface)
  • Fixed: dont invalidate art for addons that are new or not updated since last fetch
  • Fixed: Android stylus devices don’t respond on input
  • Fixed: segfault when ADSP is enabled in settings
  • Fixed: missing art when playing something from a music add-on
  • Fixed: variety of cleanups and problems for AMLogic chips
  • Fixed: fixed possible directory traversal bug due to insufficient url checking
  • Fixed: handling of media key on Android
  • Changed: add support for pre-gzipped addons.xml in repositories which should considerably reduce repository traffic
  • Changed: remove “add source”from Programs section

New in Kodi 16.0 Beta 2 (Nov 23, 2015)

  • New in this beta:
  • Well not exactly new but certainly something that got overlooked a lot is getting your music scanned to library. For videos it’s quite obvious there’s a library where you can scan in all your movies and tv show from your local or remote storage. Setting this up is relatively straight forward because when you add a source it immediately asks if you want to add it to the library. For music this was anything but obvious. You add a new music source which contain all your music files and that was it. Although that was how it seemed. Somewhere hidden in the context menu (which you pull up with right or using “C” key) there was an option scan to library. This magically started scanning your music files and reading all the tag data which contain artist, title, year and whatever more in a nicely organised library. Time to make it more obvious. After you added a new music file source it will now ask you if you want to scan all the files in that folder using the tag data in those files and organise it for you.
  • Fixes in this beta 2:
  • Fixed: Library export now shows the correct dialogs
  • Fixed: Don’t include broken add-ons in the update panel which is accessed through add-on information
  • Fixed: Next recording widget for PVR
  • Fixed: Timer dialog fixes for PVR
  • Fixed: Ignore volume changes on corked sink for Pulse
  • Fixed: Don’t show repeating timers on PVR recording list
  • Fixed: Redact file name in log output for smb://

New in Kodi 16.0 Beta 1 (Nov 16, 2015)

  • Add-on manager changes
  • Roll-back button on add-on info panel has been replaced by Update
  • The Update button now opens a list of available versions of the add-on. Should you have several repositories installed that offer different version of this add-on you can now choose which to install.
  • You can now disable auto-update per add-on through the info panel individual from others.
  • Other Important Changes:
  • Start of integration of ADSP (Audio Digital Signal Processing) handling (no add-ons shipped yet)
  • Improve image resizing and caching algorithm to improve image quality of images
  • Added support for the musicbrainz “ARTISTS” tag in id3v2, ape, xiph.
  • Add date added to music library and use it for sorting
  • Support saving skin settings as add-on data instead of in guisettings.xml
  • Image resource add-ons which provides common image libraries than can be used by several skins and add-ons.
  • Don’t mess with the long and short date formats defined in the language files
  • Add sort method for albums “artist / year”. This will sort the albums chronological per artist.
  • Moved some add-on categories to “look and feel” in add-on manager
  • Series recording added for PVR
  • Add a “none” option for preferred subtitles
  • Properly handle wired or bluetooth headsets on Android and only use PCM output
  • Fix playback of VP9 and VC1 video codecs on Android
  • Use best possible icons from other Android apps while browsing these in Kodi
  • Enable true 1920×1080 output on AMLogic device without up-scaling
  • Add Korean, Chinese and Chech keyboards
  • Add multi-touch support for Linux platform
  • Improve touch-screen keymapping
  • Add stereoscopic depth for Confluence skin
  • The item that you had previously chosen will now be selected in the selection list instead of just starting at the top of the list
  • Decouple Kodi and system volume on Android which removes the double audio volume slider
  • Karaoke support has been completely removed as it wasn’t functional
  • iOS9 support
  • Various PVR fixes and improvements
  • Various improvements to the music section
  • Three finger touchpad mapping in iOS to make room for new tablet gestures which will be available in Alpha 4 to complement existing tablet gestures.
  • Kodi now supports being compiled with Xcode 7
  • The Kodi GUI now supports a new stereoscopic depth effect for users of Kodi on 3D TVs or VR headsets
  • The Music Library and Files View for music have now been unified, similar to how video files and library are unified
  • Extended support for browsing movies by country and through UPnP as well as user-ratings which we be added in future versions.

New in Kodi 16.0 Alpha 4 (Nov 2, 2015)

  • Add-on manager changes:
  • In the ongoing quest to improve our our add-on manager several changes where done in the overall handling of each add-on. These changes include the following:
  • Roll-back button on add-on info panel has been replaced by Update
  • The Update button now opens a list of available versions of the add-on. Should you have several repositories installed that offer different version of this add-on you can now choose which to install.
  • You can now disable auto-update per add-on through the info panel individual from others.
  • The add-on info panel can either be reached through the add-on manger or selecting the add-on in any section by either right click, use context menu (“C” key) and choose info or use the “I” key to directly open the panel.
  • Goodbye karaoke:
  • Sadly we had to say goodbye to the karaoke feature that was hidden in Kodi. None of the team did really know how it worked, if it still worked and how it was integrated into Kodi. Because it was still part of Kodi every skin also had to support this feature which takes quite some work. As such we decided to remove it as whole. It may reappear back in the future because there are now better ways of integrating it back as an add-on. It would only take a developer some interest in getting this done.
  • Additional Fixes/Changes:
  • Properly handle wired or bluetooth headsets on Android and only use PCM output
  • Fix playback of VP9 and VC1 video codecs on Android
  • Use best possible icons from other Android apps while browsing these in Kodi
  • Enable true 1920×1080 output on AMLogic device without up-scaling
  • Add Korean, Chinese and Chech keyboards
  • Add multi-touch support for Linux platform
  • Improve touch-screen keymapping
  • Add stereoscopic depth for Confluence skin
  • The item that you had previously chosen will now be selected in the selection list instead of just starting at the top of the list
  • Decouple Kodi and system volume on Android which removes the double audio volume slider
  • Karaoke support has been completely removed as it wasn’t functional
  • Further improve DX11 implementation in Windows
  • iOS9 support
  • Various PVR fixes and improvements
  • Various improvements to the music section

New in Kodi 15.2 (Oct 19, 2015)

  • Fix non DVB subtitles
  • Fix incompatible MySQL queries
  • Improvements on PulseAudio for Linux
  • Fix multi images in grouplists/layouts
  • Updated PVR add-ons: Tvheadend HTSP and MythTV
  • Fix refresh-rate switching on Android. This should improve on most devices like Nexus Player and NVIDIA SHIELD TV and others which use the Android API
  • Fix file time used in scanning library which may speed up scanning times on 32bit platforms
  • Fix video rewind on Windows. May still leave artifacts for some seconds.
  • Fix continues check on system partitions on Android
  • Fix MicroDVD subtitles
  • Fix subtitles positioning below video
  • Fix memory leak on opening Bluray menu for stream selection
  • Fix default sorting for songs over UPnP
  • Updated taglib that fixes a crash when playing flac files
  • Fix volume adjustment for XBOX controllers
  • Fixes side flyout appearing when using touch
  • Fixes freeze on win32 on away mode
  • Fix crash on osx 10.7 when trying to resolve hdd names
  • Fix Amlogic zoom problems on Android
  • Set default screen region for dvb subs (wrong placed subtitles)
  • Fix missing lyrics from tag when playing from musicdb url
  • Properly set the time format when setting/changing regions
  • Fix playback problems on AMLogic after ffwd or skip
  • Fix fallback for nb_no language
  • Fix empty LatestAlbum.Artist
  • Fix watched flag in Confluence media info 3 view

New in Kodi 15.2 RC 3 (Oct 4, 2015)

  • Fix non DVB subtitles
  • Fix incompatible MySQL queries
  • Improvements on PulseAudio for Linux
  • Fix multi images in grouplists/layouts
  • Updated PVR add-ons: Tvheadend HTSP and MythTV
  • Fix refresh-rate switching on Android. This should improve on most devices like Nexus Player and NVIDIA SHIELD TV and others which use the Android API

New in Kodi 15.2 RC 2 (Sep 20, 2015)

  • Fix file time used in scanning library which may speed up scanning times on 32bit platforms
  • Fix video rewind on Windows. May still leave artifacts for some seconds.
  • Fix continues check on system partitions on Android
  • Fix MicroDVD subtitles
  • Fix subtitles positioning below video
  • Fix memory leak on opening Bluray menu for stream selection
  • Fix default sorting for songs over UPnP

New in Kodi 15.2 RC 1 (Aug 28, 2015)

  • Updated taglib that fixes a crash when playing flac files
  • Fix volume adjustment for XBOX controllers
  • Fixes side flyout appearing when using touch
  • Fixes freeze on win32 on away mode
  • Fix crash on osx 10.7 when trying to resolve hdd names
  • Fix Amlogic zoom problems on Android
  • Set default screen region for dvb subs (wrong placed subtitles)
  • Fix missing lyrics from tag when playing from musicdb url
  • Properly set the time format when setting/changing regions
  • Fix playback problems on AMLogic after ffwd or skip
  • Fix fallback for nb_no language
  • Fix empty LatestAlbum.Artist

New in Kodi 15.1 (Aug 17, 2015)

  • Fixes:
  • Flush renderbuffers when flushing video player
  • Fix broken network.bandwidth setting
  • Fix stuttering in PVR windows
  • Fix holding lock while querying PVR backend
  • Unsigned apps are not working on jailbroken iOS 5.1 devices
  • Add installed languages to the list of possible stream languages
  • Ensure that file descriptor for logfile is NULL’ed
  • Fixes a crash when trying do delete a file in filemanager
  • Reimplement Cocoa_GetVolumeNameFromMountPoint for OSX
  • Update label color for sliderex controls
  • CProgressJob: fix crash in DoModal
  • Fix missing return in CGUIWindowPVRBase::OnBack
  • FFmpeg: Bump to 2.6.4
  • Handle startup splash as regular window
  • Fix linkage for VTB framework for iOS < 6 – fixes VTB on iOS
  • Fix broken native keyboard on iOS 5.1.1 devices
  • Fix wrong navigation in SmartPlaylistEditor.xml
  • Make some virtual filesystems available when no network is available yet
  • Fix formatting on mysql queries that could cause crash on update
  • Only set mouse wheel control spin and slider controls when they are actually focusses
  • Respect view mode changes of EPG when controlling number of EPG updates
  • Handle startup splash as regular window which prevent problems if PVR or masterlock is used as startup window
  • Fix watched flag not displaying if item is also resume-able
  • Remove some logging on exiting that could crash on exit in some cases
  • Fix overlapping subtitles in some cases

New in Kodi 15.1 RC 1 (Aug 11, 2015)

  • Fixes:
  • Flush renderbuffers when flushing video player
  • Fix broken network.bandwidth setting
  • [pvr] fix stuttering introduced
  • Unsigned apps are not working on jailbroken iOS5.1 devices
  • Add installed languages to the list of possible stream languages
  • Ensure that file descriptor for logfile is NULL’ed
  • [pvr] fix holding lock while querying backend
  • Fixes a crash when trying do delete a file in filemanager
  • Reimplement Cocoa_GetVolumeNameFromMountPoint
  • [guilib] update label color for sliderex controls
  • CProgressJob: fix crash in DoModal
  • [pvr] fix missing return in CGUIWindowPVRBase::OnBack
  • FFmpeg: Bump to 2.6.4
  • Handle startup splash as regular window
  • [ios] – fix linkage for VTB framework for ios < 6 – fixes vtb on ios
  • [ios] – fix broken native keyboard on ios 5.1.1 devices
  • fix wrong navigation in SmartPlaylistEditor.xml

New in Kodi 15.1 Test (Aug 3, 2015)

  • flush renderbuffers when flushing video player
  • Fix broken network.bandwidth setting
  • pvr: fix stuttering indruduced
  • unsigned apps are not working on jailbroken iOS5.1 devices
  • Add installed languages to the list of possible stream languages
  • ensure that file decriptor for logfile is NULL'ed
  • pvr: fix holding lock while querying backend
  • Fixes a crash when trying do delete a file in filemanager
  • reimplement Cocoa_GetVolumeNameFromMountPoint
  • Various fast-forward and rewind improvements

New in Kodi 15.0 (Jul 21, 2015)

  • Kodi 15.0 Features:
  • A new chapter selector window - Allows you to visually browse and select chapters from mkvs and other containers that support chapters.
  • Adaptive seeking (aka Skip Steps) - The more times you press a button to seek in a period of time, the larger the jump forward or backward will be.
  • Audio and Subtitle Lists - For content that includes multiple audio and subtitle choices, you can select from a full list of choices, rather than manually searching through a spinner.
  • Language Add-ons and Expanded International Preferences - Now language translations aren't dependent upon release, but get regularly updated to all users as the add-ons themselves update. Additionally, you now have total control over date, time, temperature and more displayed formats.
  • Improved Add-on Manager - The add-on manager has now been reworked to help make finding the add-ons you are looking for easier.
  • Other improvements include:
  • FFmpeg 2.6.3 update
  • Improved Closed Captioning support in Live TV
  • Fixed music video queuing
  • Allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched during other library operations such as "update library"
  • Windows DXVA HEVC hardware decoding support if driver and hardware support exist
  • Changes from 14.2 to 15.0 include:
  • Minimal 10.7 Lion 64-bit required on Mac OSX
  • Minimal iOS 5.1 required and ATV2 support discontinued
  • Minimum Android 4.2 Jelly Bean MR1 required on Android
  • Ubuntu 12.04 support dropped in PPA
  • On Android the system now handles the volume instead of Kodi
  • Removed the need for root/SU on Android. Some hardware/firmware might not like that. Please contact your hardware supplier
  • Removal of Tuxbox support. Users of Enigma2 boxes can use the VUPlus PVR add-on
  • Removal of AFP filesystem support
  • Remove legacy code pre-Frodo 11.0
  • Vast amount of possible memory leaks, segfaults, crashes and minor issues have been fixed
  • General improvements regarding code stability and performance in all areas
  • General code clean-up in all areas to simplify adding future features

New in Kodi 15.0 RC 2 (Jul 13, 2015)

  • Fixes:
  • Fix endless loop in PVR section which causes high CPU load
  • Fix crash on opening conext menu item
  • Fix sorting by episodes
  • Don’t try to use hardware decoding for h264/10bit video files (don’t confuse with h265/10bit)
  • Fix playback of certain HEVC files
  • Avoid freezing/deadlock in peripheralmanager
  • Fix genres in smartplaylists
  • Fix grouping by artists in smartplaylists
  • Fix video calibration for Android
  • Make sure to download the OBB file when Play Store doesn’t
  • Some other technical changes

New in Kodi 15.0 RC 1 (Jul 3, 2015)

  • Minimal 10.7 Lion 64-bit required on Mac OSX
  • Minimal iOS 5.1 required and no more ATV2
  • Minimum Android 4.2 Jelly Bean MR1 required on Android
  • Various improvements in PVR section. This includes skin support and new PVR add-ons
  • Complete video database clean-up session on stored data (no data will be lost). This may take some time on first run
  • ffmpeg 2.6.2 update which bring better codec compatibility and playback
  • Improved CC (Closed Captions) support for Live TV
  • Fix the queuing of music videos
  • Improvement of FF/RW (fast-forward / rewinding) of videos
  • Improved logic to make PVR, audio encoders and audio decoders optional
  • Fix of grouping movie sets when navigating in smartplaylists
  • External subtitles over UPnP can be enabled through the settings section
  • Allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched during other library operations such as “update library”
  • Allow different sort orders for different sort methods
  • Skip steps (step forward & backwards) improvements for videos and music
  • Add jump to first unwatched in TV section
  • Fix subtitles showing on top of each other in certain cases
  • Reworked add-on manager that should give a better overview
  • Chapter selection window that shows thumbs on where to skip to in the video
  • Easier to navigate audio and subtitle selection list
  • Show progress for add-on repository update
  • Addition of language add-ons which allow us to update the User-Interface text outside of regular Kodi releases
  • Immediately fetch updates from repository after Kodi version upgrade to prevent delay in getting better compatible add-ons or skins
  • Expansion of international options like time and date format, temperature and speed units.
  • Improvement of installing new skins selection
  • Upgrade included webserver which should fix issues with iOS or Android remotes loosing connections
  • Fix season art scraping on newly added seasons
  • On Android the system now handles the volume instead of Kodi
  • Android HEVC H.265 support for some chipsets
  • Refreshrate switching on Android 5.0 opr higher (your device must have the proper implementation of these features to support it)
  • 4K@60Hz playback on the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV
  • Reworked the storage provider on Android. This fixes several problems with mounting points for storage.
  • Remove default 250ms audio delay on Android for AMLogic chipsets. You may need to adjust the delay again
  • Remove certain codecs from our core code and made add-ons out of them. So called Audio encoders/decoders
  • Removed the need for root/SU on Android. Some hardware/firmware might not like that. Please contact your hardware supplier
  • Removal of Tuxbox support. Users of Enigma2 boxes can use the VUPlus PVR add-on
  • Removal of AFP filesystem support
  • Remove legacy code pre-Frodo 11.0
  • Vast amount of possible memory leaks, segfaults, crashes and minor issues have been fixed
  • General improvements regarding code stability and performance in all areas
  • General code clean-up in all areas to simplify adding future features

New in Kodi 15.0 Beta 2 (Jun 15, 2015)

  • Improvements:
  • Bump libCEC to 3.3.0 which fixes a variety of problems
  • Reworked the storage provider on Android. This fixes several problems with mounting points for storage.
  • Fix the queuing of music videos
  • Improvement to FF/RW of videos
  • Improvement to picons in livetv
  • Prevention of clipping of rotated text, which happened in certain skins
  • Improved logic to make PVR, audio encoders and audio decoders optional.
  • Audio decoder and PVR add-ons are now disabled by default. When you want to use these you need to enable them manually.
  • Fix launching of add-ons from the add-on information dialog
  • Show progress for add-on repository update
  • Properly fall back to the new language files location
  • Fix of grouping movie sets when navigating in smartplaylists
  • Fix wrong icon showing in popup dialogs
  • Restore volume after pass-through on Android
  • Combine previously split GUI text into a single string. This improves ability to properly translate them.
  • Included newer version of several PVR add-ons
  • Fix incorrect fall-back language after we made them into add-ons
  • Fix 8channel audio conversion on Windows
  • Try to detect supported sample rates on Android
  • Do a complete video database clean-up session to remove leading/trailing spaces and invalid characters
  • Prevent inserting leading/trailing spaces and invalid characters on new video scans
  • Add season and episode labels to PVR section
  • Fix possible font corruption
  • Remove default 250ms audio delay on Android for AMLogic chipsets
  • Fix subtitles showing on top of each other in certain cases

New in Kodi 15.0 Beta 1 (May 2, 2015)

  • Reworked add-on manger that should give a better overview
  • Chapter selection window that shows thumbs on where to skip to in the video
  • Easier to navigate audio and subtitle selection list
  • Addition of language add-ons which allow us to update the User-Interface text outside of regular releases
  • Expansion of international options like time and date format, temperature and speed units.
  • Skip steps (step forward & backwards) improvements.
  • Tuxbox removal. Users of Enigma2 boxes can use the VUPlus PVR add-on
  • Split PVR add-ons into separate projects which should allow updates through repo in the future
  • Fix season art scraping on newly added seasons
  • Immediately fetch updates from repository after Kodi version upgrade
  • Improvement of installing new skins selection
  • Remove legacy code pre-Frodo 11.0
  • Add jump to first unwatched in TV section
  • Remove certain codecs from our core code and made add-ons out of them. Audio encoders/decoders
  • Removal of AFP filesystem support
  • Windows DXVA HEVC hardware decoding support if driver and hardware support exist
  • Added adaptive seeking through audio and video playback, also know as “skip steps”
  • Android HEVC H.265 support for some chipsets
  • Improve webserver caching control
  • External subtitles over UPnP can be enabled through the settings section
  • Allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched during other library operations such as “update library”
  • Allow different sort orders for different sort methods
  • Start of integration binary add-ons and changing the build system around it
  • Improved CC (Closed Captions) support for Live TV
  • ffmpeg 2.6.2 update
  • Removal remaining SDL code which was used in some areas.
  • Changed code to C++11
  • Variety of memleaks, segfaults, crashes and minor issues fixed
  • Rescrape season art for newly added seasons
  • Upgrade included webserver which should fix issues with remotes loosing connections
  • On Android the system now handles the volume
  • General improvements regarding code stability and performance in all areas
  • General code clean-up in all areas to simplify adding future features

New in Kodi 15.0 Alpha 2 (Apr 2, 2015)

  • CHAPTER SELECTOR WINDOW:
  • It’s gone by a bunch of names in the forum, but one of the oldest requests we’ve had since porting away from the Xbox was for the ability to browse and visually select from the chapters available included in mkv and other files that support chapters. With Isengard, that is finally very possible. When you first launch a movie and navigate to the Bookmarks icon in the Video GUI, Kodi will automatically populate all the necessary bookmarks with the name and a picture of each chapter.
  • This process currently benefits from having a faster CPU, as the chapter images are generated using software, so the first time you open bookmarks on a new video using something like the Raspberry Pi 1 you may experience some severe hiccups. For this reason, this setting is disabled by default on slower devices. To enable visual chapters on slower devices, visit System -> Video -> File lists and select Extract chapter thumbnails. For speedy HTPCs, this setting is enabled by default.
  • AUDIO AND SUBTITLE LISTS:
  • Many BluRay movies include a large number of audio and subtitle streams to choose from, including numerous director’s commentaries, alternative language tracks, etc. In the past, the user was forced to to slowly scroll through them, one item at a time, using something called a software spinner. Now, these streams are listed as one big list, so the user can easily find and select exactly the stream they are looking for.
  • LANGUAGE ADD-ONS AND AN EXPANSION OF INTERNATIONAL OPTIONS:
  • Another big improvement with Isengard will be a far more precise control over most of the International settings, including the ability to individually adjust how your date and time are set, whether your temperature is listed as Fahrenheit, Celsius, or even Kelvin, and how you want the speed of your wind measured in the weather add-on.
  • Additionally, languages are now installed on a just-in-time basis. Rather than shipping with every possible language and needing to wait between releases for language updates, languages in Kodi have been add-on-ified so that changes can be fixed and updated almost instantly. This does mean that if you want to set up a new install of Kodi with anything other than the default English language, you will need to have your machine connected to the internet, so Kodi can download your preferred language.
  • ADD-ON MANAGER IMPROVEMENTS:
  • Finally, work is being done presently to improve and simplify navigating the Add-on Manager. This will be an ongoing project, so please bear with us.
  • OTHER IMPROVEMENTS:
  • There were 241 fixes, features, and improvements for Alpha2. Beyond the highlighted ones, here is a list of a few other improvements made:
  • Tuxbox removal. Users of Enigma2 boxes can use the VUPlus PVR add-on
  • Split PVR add-ons into separate projects
  • Fix season art scraping on newly added seasons
  • Immediately fetch updates from repository after major upgrade
  • Improvement of installing new skins selection
  • Remove legacy code pre-Frodo 11.0
  • Add jump to first unwatched in TV section
  • Remove certain codecs from our core code and made add-ons out of them. Audio encoders/decoders
  • Removal of AFP filesystem support
  • Windows DXVA HEVC hardware decoding support if driver and hardware support exist

New in Kodi 14.2 (Mar 28, 2015)

  • Fix: Gap-less playback on MP3
  • Fix: Playback of rtmp protocol
  • Fix: Scanning of newly added episodes
  • Fix: Fix multipath source scanning
  • Fix: Loading external subtitles in some cases
  • Fix: packaging of PIL module on Android. This fixes some script error when using weather add-on
  • Fix: Fix video playback on all platform after refresh rate change
  • Fix: Various bugs that were present in PVR add-ons.
  • Fix: Save weather location
  • Fix: Fix filtering of foreign add-ons
  • Fix: ftps handling
  • Fix: use LastWrite instead of ChangeTime for file system on Windows
  • Feature: Bump OSX SDK to 10.10

New in Kodi 14.2 RC 1 (Mar 13, 2015)

  • Fix: Gap-less playback on MP3
  • Fix: Playback of rtmp protocol
  • Fix: Scanning of newly added episodes
  • Fix: Fix multipath source scanning
  • Fix: Loading external subtitles in some cases
  • Fix: packaging of PIL module on Android. This fixes some script error when using weather add-on
  • Fix: Fix video playback on all platform after refresh rate change
  • Fix: Various bugs that were present in PVR add-ons.
  • Fix: Save weather location
  • Fix: Fix filtering of foreign add-ons
  • Fix: ftps handling
  • Fix: use LastWrite instead of ChangeTime for file system on Windows
  • Feature: Bump OS X SDK to 10.10

New in Kodi 15.0 Alpha 1 (Mar 2, 2015)

  • Added adaptive seeking through audio and video playback, also know as “skip steps”
  • Android HEVC H.265 support for some chipsets
  • Improve webserver caching control
  • External subtitles over UPnP
  • Allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched during other library operations such as “update library”
  • Allow different sort orders for different sort methods
  • Start of integration binary add-ons and changing the build system around it
  • Improved CC (Closed Captions) support for Live TV
  • ffmpeg 2.5.4 update
  • Remove remaining SDL code
  • Minimal Mac OSX 10.7 Lion required
  • Only OSX 64-bit builds provided by us, so no more 32bit builds
  • Minimal iOS 5.1 required
  • iOS 8.1 SDK & MacOSX 10.10 SDK
  • Minimum Android 4.2 Jelly Bean MR1 required
  • Android API 17 as minimum with SDK 14 and NDK 10e
  • Removed the need for root/SU on Android
  • Android PIL packaging fixed
  • Changed code to C++11
  • Variety of memleaks, segfaults, crashes and minors fixed
  • General improvements regarding code stability and performance in all areas
  • General code clean-up in all areas to simplify adding future features

New in Kodi 14.2 Beta 1 (Feb 18, 2015)

  • Fix: Gap-less playback on MP3
  • Fix: Playback of rtmp protocol
  • Fix: Scanning of newly added episodes
  • Fix: Fix multipath source scanning
  • Fix: Loading external subtitles in some cases
  • Fix: packaging of PIL module on Android. This fixes some script error when using weather add-on
  • Fix: Fix video playback on all platform after refresh rate change
  • Fix: Various bugs that were present in PVR add-ons.
  • Feature: Bump OS X SDK to 10.10

New in Kodi 14.1 (Jan 30, 2015)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Prevent crashing with some malformed MP3s.
  • Fix issue were IPTV Simple Client couldn't playback certain URLs.
  • Fix some cosmetic issues with Confluence.
  • Fix various skinning issues.

New in Kodi 14.0 (Dec 23, 2014)

  • THE NEXT GENERATION OF VIDEO CODECS:
  • To begin, Kodi has been updated to use FFmpeg 2.4.4. For users, this means Kodi will now be capable of playing back h.265 (also known as HEVC) and VP9 video codecs. The use of HEVC and VP9 could result in dramatically smaller video files sizes with exactly the same level of quality. A 40 GB file could be compressed to 20 GB. Users with particularly large libraries or interest in 4K video may be especially likely to appreciate this update. Software support for the VP9 video codec is also included.
  • The caveat to this update is that the decoding of h.265 is entirely software based. This means most low power systems, such as those operating Android or iOS, may struggle compared to the heftier HTPCs or Intel NUCs and ZOTAC ZBOXes that are running desktop and laptop processors.
  • LIBRARY IMPROVEMENTS:
  • The Kodi Library is getting improvements both coming in and going out. On the input side, library scanning is receiving a massive speed boost, which should make the initial scan on Android and iOS devices quite a bit more spritely.
  • On the output side, work continues, slowly but surely, on UPnP. Kodi is now significantly more compatible with servers like PlayOn and MediaBrowser, as client-related bugs have been dealt with. Further, communication between Kodi UPnP clients and Kodi UPnP servers continues to improve with proper or additional support for categories like date added, ratings, votes, and artwork, along with sorting for those new categories. UPnP search functions are also slowly working their way into Kodi.
  • MORE USER CONTROL OVER KODI:
  • Two new features have been introduced with Kodi that should give users even more control over how the software works. First, users can now prevent add-ons from updating without a forced update, prevent add-on update notifications, or simply continue to work with add-ons auto-updating as they do today. To change add-on update settings, visit the Add-ons folder in System Settings; then, if you are using Confluence, open the side panel by clicking the left button or arrow on your keyboard or remote. The Add-ons side panel includes a number of options in addition to update settings, such as the option to hide any add-ons that aren’t expected to work in your region.
  • Second, in the past the virtual keyboard on the screen that users of tablets and remote controls are forced to deal with has always been set to the western standard QWERTY style. It is now possible to change the layout to a variety of other language options. To do so, visit the International section of the Appearance folder in System Settings and select Keyboard layouts. (Pro-tip: If you are an English speaker living in the US, Australia, or New Zealand, you can also select a version of English that better suits your spelling style from the Language portion of the International section.)
  • WINDOWS, OS X, AND LINUX:
  • All three platforms continue to see improvements in audio playback and a reduction of many audio-related bugs that have been plaguing the platforms for a long time. Windows also sees improvement in DXVA video playback.
  • On the Linux side, we’re excited to give our thanks to the team at Intel and particularly Chris Wilson at Intel who helped solve a Linux firmware bug that was causing crashes for Kodi after a certain period of time. Additionally, users of Kodi for Linux on Intel devices such as the NUC and Chromebox will now have hardware deinterlacing of Live TV and other interlaced content thanks to Kodi’s new implementation of VAAPI video post processing for Intel graphics.
  • PVR:
  • PVR windows in Kodi have been rebuilt to be better and more efficient. Also, American PVR users, specifically, may be happy to learn that Kodi 14 finally introduces support for ATSC sub-channels.
  • A FEW WARNINGS AND NOTICES:
  • This release marks the switch to the new name Kodi. When you install this release candidate, your library and add-ons will be moved to Kodi, making reverting back to 13.2 fairly difficult. As such, it is recommended that you back up your library as well as your settings before installing Kodi.
  • If you are using a skin other than the default Confluence, it is possible that you may find the software keyboard blank as a result of the previously mentioned keyboard layout upgrade. If so, you need to either switch to a new skin, or see if your skin has a Helix update. While Kodi automatically checks for addon and skin updates, you can speed up this process by visiting the addons browser from the settings menu and selecting “Check for updates.”
  • Also, as Kodi is an unsigned application on OSX, you may need to go through a slightly different process to start it the first time. After you have copied Kodi to the Applications folder, you will need to “right click” or “two finger click” Kodi from within the Applications folder and select “Open” and then accept the warning. You should only need to do this the first time you run Kodi.

New in Kodi 14.0 RC 3 (Dec 9, 2014)

  • Bump FFmpeg to 2.4.4
  • Fix problem with setting content on new and existing video sources
  • Fix spinner in video settings for choosing hardware or software decoding
  • Fix recording history in PVR
  • Separate sort order in PVR window for each directory
  • Fix PVR preview video scaling for AMLCodec on Android
  • Fix restart option on Win 8.1
  • Fix crashes on certain Intel GPU when playing video
  • Fix crashes on certain videos on Android 5.0 devices (Nexus Player and ADT-1)
  • Fix LPCM (audio/L16) streaming via UPnP
  • Use correct art type when appending art to item lists
  • Fix python PIL package on Windows that caused crash on weather add-on
  • Updated GUI translation files

New in Kodi 14.0 RC 1 (Dec 2, 2014)

  • The Next Generation of Video Codecs:
  • To begin, Kodi has been updated to use FFmpeg 2.4.3 For users, this means Kodi will now be capable of playing back h.265 (also known as HEVC) and VP9 video codecs. This could result in dramatically smaller video files sizes with exactly the same level of quality. A 40 GB file could be compressed to 20 GB. A 1 GB file could be compressed to 500 MB without any loss in perceivable quality. Users with particularly large libraries or interest in 4K video may be especially likely to appreciate this update. Software support for the VP9 video codec is also included.
  • The caveat to this update is that it is entirely software based. This means most low power systems, such as those operating Android or iOS, may struggle compared to the heftier HTPCs or Intel NUCs and ZOTAC ZBOXes that are running desktop and laptop processors.
  • Library Improvements:
  • The Kodi Library is getting improvements both coming in and going out. On the input side, library scanning is receiving a massive speed boost, which should make the initial scan on Android and iOS devices quite a bit more spiritedly.
  • On the output side, work continues, slowly but surely, on UPnP. Kodi is now significantly more compatible with servers like PlayOn and MediaBrowser, as client-related bugs have been dealt with. Further, communication between Kodi UPnP clients and Kodi UPnP servers continues to improve with proper or additional support for categories like date added, ratings, votes, and artwork, along with sorting for those new categories. UPnP search functions are also slowly working their way into Kodi.
  • More User Control Over Kodi:
  • Two new features have been introduced with Kodi that should give users even more control over how the software works. First, users can now prevent add-ons from updating without a forced update, prevent add-on update notifications, or simply continue to work with add-ons auto-updating as they do today. To change add-on update settings, visit the Add-ons folder in System Settings, if you are using Confluence, click left with your keyboard or remote to open the side panel, where a number of options exist, including the option to hide any add-ons that aren’t expected to work in your region.
  • Second, in the past the virtual keyboard on the screen that users of tablets and remote controls are forced to deal with has always been set to the western standard QWERTY style. It is now possible to change the layout to a variety of other language options. To do so, visit the International section of the Appearance folder in System Settings and select Keyboard layouts. (Pro-tip: If you are an English speaker living in the US, Australia, or New Zealand, you can also select a version of English that better suits your spelling style from the Language portion of the International section.)
  • Android, iOS, and embedded:
  • On the Android side, hardware playback improvements continue, including more and better support for various chipsets, improved fast forward and rewind capability, as well as 4K support for the AMLogic s802 chipset. On the iOS side, Airplay, which was fairly substantially broken by the update to iOS 7, appears to be almost entirely fixed on every platform save Android, which lacks certain software support, making Airplay playback only partially fixed on that platform. Additionally, support for the Freescale i.MX6 SystemOnChip has been added.
  • Furthermore, for you tablet users we’ve now replaced the ageing Touched skin with the improved Re-Touched skin, which includes a number of tweaks to bring it more in line with the features Kodi has to offer.
  • Windows, OS X, and Linux:
  • All three platforms continue to see improvements in audio playback and a reduction of many audio-related bugs that have been plaguing the platforms for a long time. Windows also sees improvement in DXVA video playback.
  • PVR:
  • American PVR users will be happy to learn that Kodi 14 introduces support for ATSC sub-channels. All users of PVR may be happy to learn that all PVR windows have been rebuilt to be better and more efficient.

New in Kodi 14.0 Beta 1 (Nov 4, 2014)

  • This release brings many updates and changes, not the least of which being the name of the software. For those of you curious, we’ve now taken the top 10 or so vote getters in the logo vote and submitted them to doghousemedia to see how they might pull the best qualities out of all of them and combine those qualities into the best possible logo for the organization. As we continue down this path, we’ll do our best to keep you updated.
  • The Next Generation of Video Codecs:
  • To begin, Kodi has been updated to use FFmpeg 2.2.4. For users, this means Kodi will now be capable of playing back h.265 (also known as HEVC) and VP9 video codecs. This could result in dramatically smaller video files sizes with exactly the same level of quality. A 40 GB file could be compressed to 20 GB. A 1 GB file could be compressed to 500 MB without any loss in perceivable quality. Users with particularly large libraries or interest in 4K video may be especially likely to appreciate this update. Software support for the VP9 video codec is also included.
  • The caveat to this update is that it is entirely software based. This means most low power systems, such as those operating Android or iOS, may struggle compared to the heftier HTPCs or Intel NUCs and ZOTAC ZBOXes that are running desktop and laptop processors.
  • Library Improvements:
  • The Kodi Library is getting improvements both coming in and going out. On the input side, library scanning is receiving a massive speed boost, which should make the initial scan on Android and iOS devices quite a bit more spritely.
  • On the output side, work continues, slowly but surely, on UPnP. Kodi is now significantly more compatible with servers like PlayOn and MediaBrowser, as client-related bugs have been dealt with. Further, communication between Kodi UPnP clients and Kodi UPnP servers continues to improve with proper or additional support for categories like date added, ratings, votes, and artwork, along with sorting for those new categories. UPnP search functions are also slowly working their way into Kodi.
  • More User Control Over Kodi:
  • Two new features have been introduced with Kodi that should give users even more control over how the software works. First, users can now prevent addons from updating without a forced update, prevent addon update notifications, or simply continue to work with addons autoupdating as they do today. To change addon update settings, visit the Add-ons folder in System Settings, if you are using Confluence, click left with your keyboard or remote to open the side panel, where a number of options exist, including the option to hide any addons that aren’t expected to work in your region.
  • Second, in the past the virtual keyboard on the screen that users of tablets and remote controls are forced to deal with has always been set to the western standard QWERTY style. It is now possible to change the layout to a variety of other language options. To do so, visit the International section of the Appearance folder in System Settings and select Keyboard layouts. (Protip: If you are an English speaker living in the US, Australia, or New Zealand, you can also select a version of English that better suits your spelling style from the Language portion of the International section.)
  • Windows, OSX, and Linux:
  • All three platforms continue to see improvements in audio playback and a reduction of many audio-related bugs that have been plaguing the platforms for a long time. Windows also sees improvement in DXVA video playback.
  • PVR:
  • American PVR users will be happy to learn that Kodi 14 introduces support for ATSC sub-channels. All users of PVR may be happy to learn that all PVR windows have been rebuilt to be better and more efficient.

New in Kodi 14.0 Alpha 3 (Sep 1, 2014)

  • Changes:
  • Ability to increase font size in Confluence skin
  • Add 5.1 PCM playback for Android.
  • Improved MusicBrainz matching from tags
  • Ability to choose between auto-update, notify or off for updating add-ons. This is a global setting for all add-ons.
  • Extend JSON-RPC which is used for by a variety of services and remotes
  • VP9 video codec now uses software multi-threading. This codec has no hardware support yet.
  • Simplifying and improving core code.

New in Kodi 13.2 RC 1 (Aug 9, 2014)

  • Fixes:
  • Fix audio problems with pass-through on OSX
  • Crash in Android if an app is favourite, then uninstalled from system.
  • Fix crash in Android when entering programs menu in some skins
  • Bitstream conversion fix for some BD mkv iso rips
  • Fix labelcontrols with autowidth set were always marked as dirty (re-render)
  • Update included PVR add-on
  • Set “remote as keyboard” default to true for Android
  • Fix FTP TLS not working
  • Fix some disappearing characters on Mac OSX
  • Fix onplaybackstarted event for external players
  • Don’t show OSD menu DVD menu with mouse/touch
  • GetText and delete sound option for add-on developers
  • Fix wrong sample-rate selection on OSX
  • Fix optical usb devices with > 2 channels on OSX
  • Fix firewall popups in OSX on start-up
  • Make the fake full-screen option only visible when running OSX snowleopard
  • Fix overlapping subtitles
  • Fix accented letters. Example: “VARIéS” rather than “VARIÉS”
  • Prompt for master pin in case the add-on manager is locked
  • Update GUI translations
  • Update included add-ons
  • Fixed several bugs and memory leaks

New in Kodi 13.1 RC 1 (May 26, 2014)

  • Fix resume point of certain PVR items begin stale on playback.
  • Fix weirdness when certain TVs query XBMC’s UPnP server and it starts running a bunch of add-ons which cause popups on the XBMC machine.
  • Fix crash at exit while airplay is playing
  • Better recovery of VDPAU on errors.
  • Fixes for cropping of interlaced content using VDPAU.
  • Fix for FLAC tracks with large embedded images not playing.
  • Fix for crash if librtmp wasn’t available.
  • Fix for ffmpeg building on linux using later versions of librtmp.
  • Fix for broken m4a, mp4 playback with paplayer.
  • Fix for the hint text not being shown in editcontrols once unfocused.
  • Fix minor memory leak in PlayMedia builtin function.
  • Fix albumartist use in song smartplaylists.
  • Use unique client broadcast UID in the PVR api.

New in Kodi 13.1 Beta 2 (May 19, 2014)

  • Fixes:
  • Fix resume point of certain PVR items begin stale on playback.
  • Fix weirdness when certain TVs query XBMC’s UPnP server and it starts running a bunch of add-ons which cause popups on the XBMC machine.
  • Fix crash at exit while airplay is playing.

New in Kodi 13.1 Beta 1 (May 19, 2014)

  • Fixes:
  • Better recovery of VDPAU on errors.
  • Fixes for cropping of interlaced content using VDPAU.
  • Fix for FLAC tracks with large embedded images not playing.
  • Fix for crash if librtmp wasn’t available.
  • Fix for ffmpeg building on linux using later versions of librtmp.
  • Fix for broken m4a, mp4 playback with paplayer.
  • Fix for the hint text not being shown in editcontrols once unfocused.
  • Fix minor memory leak in PlayMedia builtin function.
  • Fix albumartist use in song smartplaylists.
  • Use unique client broadcast UID in the PVR api.

New in Kodi 13.0 (May 5, 2014)

  • Android Hardware Decoding:
  • Since 2012 July 12, the single most requested feature has been hardware decoding in Android, and with XBMC 13 we are finally able to make that feature a reality. XBMC should run on Android 4.0 and higher and is offered now in two separate builds, namely ARM and x86, which are the hardware architectures of the device. You would need to consult your device specifications before you download XBMC for Android, though the vast majority of Android devices run on ARM hardware.
  • Raspberry Pi and Android speed improvements:
  • Since the release of Frodo a lot of effort has been put into getting XBMC to run smoother on lower powered platform like the famous Raspberry Pi and of course Android. All this effort has paid off and the experience of using these devices has become much more polished and satisfying than ever before. In particular, opening your libraries, browsing through them, loading images and starting videos have all seen dramatic speed increases.
  • Stereoscopic 3D Rendering:
  • For you lovers of 3D out there, we are also pleased to say that we now support 3D movies encoded in the following formats: SBS, TAB, anaglyph, and interlaced (on supported platforms for passive TVs). Unfortunately, XBMC cannot yet support 3D blurays and cannot provide hardware acceleration for FullSBS/TAB movies (therefore limiting those videos to relatively high powered CPUs).
  • Improved Touchscreen Support:
  • XBMC on touchscreens now supports gesture controls during video playback, as well as supporting swiping controls in navigation.
  • Improved UPnP capabilities:
  • Instances of XBMC throughout the house can now “speak” with each other and with other UPnP devices. Support now includes more advanced library browsing as well as “Play using…” functions, allowing XBMC to tell another device on the network to play a certain media file.
  • So you can browse the UPnP library on your tablet and send a video from that library straight to you main XBMC HTPC, similar to Apple’s Airplay and Google’s casting features.
  • Additionally when watching videos from the XBMC UPnP server, watch status will be updated so you don’t have to remember what shows you’ve already watched.
  • Dramatic Audio Engine Improvements:
  • The Audio Engine introduced with XBMC 12.0 “Frodo” has been reworked to be simpler, faster, with better quality and less likelihood of breaking in XBMC 13 across all platforms. You may also notice that some users will need to reconfigure their audio settings. This is caused by the audio improvements and restructuring of the settings systems. However this should be more intuitive and user friendly than it was in XBMC 12 thanks to improvements in Settings.
  • Settings Improvements:
  • From the user perspective, three major changes will be introduced that should dramatically improve usability in XBMC settings.
  • First, settings have been broken down into levels starting at beginner and going all the way up the scale to expert level. The typical XBMC user should never need to go very far past the Standard settings. If installing XBMC for friends or family, it is highly encouraged that you move the settings down to Beginner level. And if a setting has disappeared that you typically expect to see, definitely browse through the settings levels, as it likely has been hidden on a more advanced level.
  • Second, every setting now includes a description, which may be found at the bottom of the settings page on the default Confluence skin. If a setting title is odd or is otherwise confusing, this description is intended to clear up the purpose of the setting and the result of changing it.
  • Third, every setting page now includes a Reset to Default option so that if you find yourself completely unable to return to a usable state in XBMC, you can always start fresh without having to perform a complete reinstall. Importantly, resetting one group of settings to default does not affect any others. So if you have video settings just right, but audio is screwed up, you can reset audio without affecting video.
  • Making Subtitle Search Better:
  • This change should give subtitle add-on developers a great deal more latitude for implementing changes and fixes without needing to wait for other add-on devs to submit similar fixes, all to the benefit of the user experience. From the user perspective, the only significant change will be in the way a subtitle search service is downloaded. The user will need to select and download their preferred subtitle add-on before starting a movie and searching for subtitles. At present there are 19 to choose from.
  • An Extended Python and JSON-RPC API for developers:
  • While this feature may not be as immediately noticeable upon install, it could ultimately be one of the most important changes of XBMC 13. With the extension of the API, users should soon be able to control virtually every aspect of XBMC without once touching the XBMC UI. Developers will now have unprecedented opportunity to make even more powerful remote control apps, web GUIs, and XBMC add-ons. For example, with the Official XBMC Remote for iOS users can now configure every single setting in XBMC without once opening the settings window in XBMC itself.
  • We look forward to the community taking advantage of this extended API and creating some extraordinary features in the future.
  • Yet More Features:
  • Update to FFMPEG v1.2 which we use for audio/video playback
  • Stereo audio can now be up-mixed to 5.1 and sent through optical/SPDIF devices
  • Various visual changes throughout the skin which should improve usability and logic
  • Improve the handling of subtitle downloading and selection
  • Extend and improve the User-interface Engine which developers use to create a variety of skins to be used
  • Drop of support for Windows XP. Due to upgrades in the way we build XBMC, it is no longer possible to install or run XBMC on Windows XP. For current XP users we can suggest installing OpenELEC or XBMCbuntu as a free way to use XBMC 13 as a pure media centre
  • When initiating a library cleaning, XBMC will send a wake-on-lan request to any sleeping servers first, before cleaning the library, to ensure that content isn’t unnecessarily cleaned
  • Numerous PVR fixes and updates with additional new features updated on a per-platform basis. For more info, check out our PVR wiki page
  • Copy/paste support on Windows, OSX, and iOS to match copy/paste support elsewhere
  • Movie sets are now user editable
  • Episodic bookmarks – If episodes are not broken into individual parts (e.g. Friends episode 1 and 2 are in the same video file), a bookmark can be set that will cause launching episode 2 from the UI to go directly to the bookmark in the video file

New in Kodi 13.0 Beta 1 (Mar 7, 2014)

  • Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder):
  • Added much improved PVR / EPG and Live TV interface in XBMC's GUI skinning engine (already in use in Confluence)
  • Added improved PVR / DVR timeshift support to pause Live TV (note that each PVR backend still need to support timeshifting)
  • Added much improved PVR / EPG extensions and notifications support over the JSON-RPC API
  • Improved PVR front-end with Live TV and EPG specific windows, plus PVR stuff in OSD and GUI settings in Confluence skin
  • Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for many popular third-party external PVR backend platforms:
  • PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake backend from Team-XBMC for skin development and regression testing
  • IPTV (IPTV Simple Client) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • Tvheadend PVR Addon backend clients maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • MediaPortal PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • MythTV PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from the XBMC's community
  • VDR (Video Disk Recorder) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • Vu+ / Enigma2 / Dreambox PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • WMC (Windows Media Center) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • DVBLink PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager:
  • For full changelogs on changes to all Addons APIs, see Gotham API changes, the JSON-RPC Development Forum, and the Python Development Forum
  • Added option for allowing skins to query directories (e.g. plugins) to fill static content
  • Added a Monitor class to receive JSON-RPC notifications directly through the Python bindings
  • Added announce function and register addon for announcements to the Add-ons API
  • Added new Built-In function to control state of attached HDMI CEC device via Add-ons API
  • Added support for XBMC's Python interface to use native keyboard if possible (currently only iOS)
  • Added support for addon binary reading and writing via a "buffer" class usable from addons
  • Added WOL (Wake-on-LAN) with send magic packet function to the Add-ons API
  • Improved the ability to extend XBMC's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
  • Improved Addons API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambilight clone client software such as Boblight
  • GUI Engine (Skinning Engine):
  • For full changelog on changes to the skinning engine, see Gotham API changes and the Skin Development Forum
  • Added support for customizable menu structure for home and beyond
  • Added Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) to XBMC's GUI skinning engine
  • Added Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) for Subtitles when in 3D mode
  • Added a simple Movie Set management to GUI for Edit/Clear Set and Add/Remove Set members
  • Added option support for both banner and poster music art types simultaneously
  • Added picture tags metadata info accessible for skins or addons developers
  • Added further optimizations to XBMC's GUI engine for faster rendering on low resource embedded devices
  • Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms, and also improved the default touch screen skin (Touched)
  • Added ImageFactory implementation with factory to abstract different image libraries and hardware acceleration
  • Improved Dirty Regions rendering on all platforms
  • Refactored settings system to consist of XML files containing descriptions of every setting
  • Platform Independent Playback:
  • Added support for H.264 (including Hi10P) multi-threaded video decoding when software decoder on CPU is used
  • Added ability to play external audio track with videos
  • Added support for Forced Subtitles ("forced flag") in external subtitle files
  • Added support for video playback of SageTV recordings
  • Added unified buffering capability to video and overlay renderers for all internal players
  • Upgraded FFmpeg (libavcodec and libavformat) audio/video codec and demuxer libraries to FFmpeg 1.2 (rev e820e3a)
  • Library:
  • Added extensive MusicBrainz tags support to the Music Library and Database
  • Added ability to queue list of items / add items to a playlist without playing them
  • Improved and extended Smart Playlists functionality
  • Added support for scanning videos SFTP and SSH sources so can scrape metadata
  • Added support for write-enabled WebDAV (delete/rename/write files and directories)
  • Added "Add art" button to video artwork selection dialog
  • Added support for "last played" sort option to the TV Show GUI
  • Added support for OGG cover art extraction to TagLib
  • Added option support for exporting music art as JPEG or PNG rather than TBN file extension
  • Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster browsing
  • Web Scrapers:
  • Added theaudiodb.com music video scraper as new default for music videos
  • AudioEngine:
  • Added new cross-platform event driven active state machine pattern ActiveAE sink as the default for XBMC's AudioEngine
  • Added ALSA sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop and generic Linux based Embedded Systems
  • Added PulseAudio sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop
  • Added OSS (Open Sound System) sink for ActiveAE for BSD, like FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and similar Unix based systems
  • Added AUDIOTRACK sink for ActiveAE for Amlogic
  • Added Pi Audio sink for ActiveAE for Raspberry Pi
  • Added DirectSound sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Added WASAPI sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Added Darwin sink for ActiveAE for Mac OS X and iOS
  • Added support for CoreAudio AudioEngine to OS notifications for device changes on Mac OS X and iOS
  • Other:
  • Added support for "Play to" and controlling remote XBMC / DLNA instance over UPnP
  • Added new "Fishbmc" audio visualization addon (only OpenGL versions for Linux and Mac OS X for now)
  • Added GUI settings levels for Basic, Standard, Advanced, Expert (defaults to "Standard")
  • Added support and GUI settings for SOCKS 4/4a/5 proxy types and remote DNS
  • Added possibility to define help descriptions ("I" key) for every setting in GUI settings
  • Added option to set auto login of a specific user profile via the GUI
  • Added CPU / GPU frequency and temperature for all supported Linux platforms
  • Added support to allow key IDs in keyboard.xml to be in hexadecimal format
  • Upgraded DVD-Video navigation and playback libraries (libdvdnav, libdvdread, and libdvdcss)
  • Upgraded SAMBA client to version 3.6.x adding full support for SMB 2.0 and SMB 2.1 protocols
  • Added initial support for running libxbmc.so headless (without GUI) as a background service / deamon
  • Added a generic and user-mappable cross-platform touch input system
  • Improved CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
  • Moved subtitle addon core handling to core and added native support for subtitle plugin services
  • Updated community maintained translations to over 60+ languages to date for XBMC via Transifex Translation System
  • Mac OS X Specific:
  • Improved XBMC support for OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)
  • Added support for copy and paste to and from clipboard with command key

New in Kodi 12.3 (Dec 27, 2013)

  • OSX 10.9 Maverick fixes that appeared when it was release
  • update PVR addons
  • several PVR related bugs
  • memory leaks
  • audio channel mapping
  • possible crash on progress dialog
  • and more

New in Kodi 13.0 Alpha 7 (Sep 9, 2013)

  • Android Hardware Decoding
  • Stereoscopic 3D Rendering
  • Context Menu Clean-up
  • Removed Windows XP support
  • Bug List and Other Changes: XBMC 13 will now ship without a default weather app. Users who are upgrading will not see a change, and new users are welcome to re-download the add-on if they choose.
  • Notable bugs fixed :
  • EPG no longer crashes when there is no EPG data
  • Music Database fixes
  • font processing fixes
  • Fixed non-trivial dirty rectangle modes
  • Fix gain for MP3 files (vs FLAC and other audio files)
  • Fix file parse bugs (results in speedier file parsing)
  • Numerous Raspberry Pi fixes

New in Kodi 12.2 (May 3, 2013)

  • Fixed infinite loop on addon dependencies, resolves crashing problem that arrose immediately post 12.1 launch
  • Numerous UPnP fixes
  • Memory leak fixed when XBMC is minimized
  • Various Raspberry Pi playback fixes and software codec support
  • Fixed OSX audio mixing
  • Fixed some audio-related crashes in Linux builds
  • AirPlay fixes
  • Bluray folder resume-bookmarks now work
  • Ability to scan for new content on file folders has been reimplemented
  • Language updates from Transifex

New in Kodi 12.1 (Mar 19, 2013)

  • Full iPhone 5 resolution is now enabled
  • Player optimization on the Raspberry Pi, including more efficient playback, better subtitle support, and many crash fixes
  • iOS 6 support on the AppleTV 2.
  • XBMC does not crash when listed on the AppleTV top shelf
  • Added support for additional Xbox 360 controller types
  • Broader and more intelligent support for CEC devices
  • Fixed problems with several addons due to broken binary read/write in our python interface
  • Language fixes, including 7 new languages: Albanian, Burmese, Malay, Persian (Iran), Tamil (India), Uzbek, Vietnamese
  • Numerous crashing and stability fixes across all platforms

New in Kodi 12.0 (Jan 29, 2013)

  • HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine (OSX/iOS not yet available)
  • Live TV and PVR support
  • h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime
  • 64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux
  • Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types and more interesting and complex skins
  • Support for the Raspberry PI
  • Initial support for the Android platform
  • Improved AirPlay support across all platforms, including AirPlay audio in XBMC for Windows to match the other platforms
  • Improved controller support in Windows and Linux
  • Advanced Filtering in the library
  • Video library tags to complement movie sets
  • Advanced UPnP sharing
  • Default video languages now match the language being used by XBMC
  • Translations now powered by Transifex

New in Kodi 12.0 Beta 2 (Dec 3, 2012)

  • Improved Xbox 360 controller support
  • Audio fixes
  • Numerous other fixes, including fixes to nodes and smartplaylists, the volume range of Airtunes in Windows, a speedup of EPG data importing, solving a minor files issue, and others.

New in Kodi 12.0 Beta 1 (Nov 15, 2012)

  • numerous JSON-RPC updates, including PVR support, optimizations, better conflict handling, and better webserver support by Montellese
  • PVR timeshift support (if the backend supports timeshift) – hat tip to non-team member Margo for this one
  • improvements to the OMXplayer, the media player of Raspberry Pi by gimli
  • Additionally, OMXplayer can now play back DVD ISOs if users have gotten the MPEG2 codec license thanks to user epideme
  • the CD ripper now works in the background thanks to Spiff
  • panoramic photo panning support by Montellese
  • Dirty Region support is now on by default by TheUni
  • Further improved image handling in the database, allowing one to select fanart, poster, banner, and thumb, rather than forcing the choice between downloading posters and downloading banners – kudos to Jonathan Marshall and Montellese for this work.

New in Kodi 11.0 (Mar 26, 2012)

  • Addons Framework, API, and Manager:
  • Added ability for all addons to provide their own web interface (and handling of multiple web interfaces)
  • Added support for addons to save their setting values to their own settings.xml file before quitting
  • Added support for multi-file selections in the (python) file browser dialog
  • Extended Addons API to support adding extension points for Service Addons (xbmc.service)
  • Added support for Addon Rollbacks, enabling users to choose previously installed addons over more recent revisions
  • Added the ability to search Addons in the Addons-Manager
  • GUI Engine:
  • Improve XBMC's GUI Engine / Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful
  • Added option for auto login of a specific selected user profile (good for kiosk mode)
  • Added commands for xbmc.Player().getAvailableAudioStreams() and xbmc.Player().setAudioStream()
  • Added support to identify DTS-HD (DTS-HD MA and DTS-HD HRA) profiles in audio stream list
  • Add ability for skinners to show buffering progress for streamed/cached files (similar to YouTube)
  • Improved mouse support, add better control for dragging of seek / slide / scroll bars, and click handling
  • Improve touch interface API and gesture support for XBMC's GUI Engine for all platforms
  • Added Dirty Region support to reduce CPU usage
  • Added a custom JPEG decoder, at least 2x faster than the previous implementation (cximage)
  • Playback:
  • Added UDF 2.5 filesystem reading support to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
  • Added support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc as well as video library integration
  • Added an option for vertical shift of video image with slider setting
  • Added support for color and font styles tag in MPL2 (MicroDVD) subtitles
  • Added support for SSA/ASS subtitle tags; italics, bold, and color for SubRip (.srt) subtitles
  • Added support for MP4 embedded subtitles
  • Added support delay tag in vobsub subtitles
  • Gave external subtitles preference over internal subtitles
  • Added support for a new extended version of MPlayer's EDL (Edit Decision List) format
  • Added PlayerControl built in function to allow jumping to a percentage offset from a key mapping
  • Added support for Slingbox
  • Upgrade FFmpeg (libavformat and libavcodec) audio/video codec and demux library
  • Improved Blu-ray Disc and harddrive playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus
  • Removed subtitle caching (as it was only needed on Xbox because of the severe memory restrictions)
  • Removed all dependencies of libmms libraries from XBMC's code in favour of FFmpeg native MMS support
  • Remove all dependencies of liba52, libdts, and faac libraries from XBMC's code in favour of FFmpeg native
  • Added support for NFS virtual file server (vfs) (all platforms)
  • Added support for AFP (vfs) (all platforms aside from Windows)
  • Added Airplay support for Videos/Pictures (all platforms)
  • Added Airplay support for Music (all platforms aside from Windows)
  • Added Audio/L16 support for better DLNA UPnP client compliance
  • Improved UPnP Renderer
  • Added a slider for volume amplification and dynamic range compression during video playback
  • Added an option to pause video playback during refreshrate changes
  • Extended PathSubstitution from playlists to all files for users of shared MySQL Databases
  • Added the ability to adjust the display's refresh rate to match the video's frame rate in OSX (Feature already available in Windows and Linux)
  • Improvements made to the adjust refresh rate feature to pick the "best" rate, rather than the closest multiple
  • Added DXVA Deinterlacing support
  • Library:
  • Combined Files and Library mode for videos
  • Add asynchronous threaded background loading of metadata to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
  • Added support for cleaning the music library via CleanLibrary(music) command
  • Added a "Play from here" context menu button for TV Shows Episodes in the video library
  • Added the option to specify the default select (Play, Resume, Show information, Choose) action on videos
  • Changed "Set Content" to "Edit Content Settings" after being set
  • Added disc stub support for cataloging DVDs, BluRays, etc.
  • Added support for scraping Movie Collections, along with the ability to toggle collections on and off
  • Scrapers:
  • Improve TheMovieDB.org movie scraper by adding themoviedb.org posters scraping
  • Added movie set scraping'
  • Improve TheTVDB.com (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper
  • Improve Freebase (English) music scraper
  • Skins:
  • Confluence: Home screen switched to horizontal layout
  • Confluence: Greatly simplified the way FanArt works throughout the skin and the settings for it
  • Confluence: Added ability for users to easily add / remove Add-ons as items on the home screen menu
  • Confluence: Added codec flagging images for DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio
  • Other:
  • Added ability to handle and allow access to multiple web interfaces at once
  • Added option setting to play videos within picture slideshows
  • Added dimming setting to the built-in picture slideshow screensaver
  • Added support for sorting depending on current locale
  • Added advancedsettings.xml option to disable the display of startup splash image (enabled by default)
  • Added support for batch requests to the JSON-RPC API
  • Added support for requests by notification to the JSON-RPC API
  • Make JSON-RPC API compliant with JSON-RPC 2.0 specification ( details)
  • Cleanup and improve JSON-RPC API
  • Added advancedsettings.xml option to configure the TCP port used by JSON-RPC (default is 9090)
  • Improve the features of the default web interface
  • Removed Weather from XBMC core and switched to Weather Underground as the default weather provider addon
  • Added weather lookup by IP
  • iOS Specific:
  • Ported XBMC to iOS 4.x (adding "XBMC for iOS" to XBMC's existing list of supported operating-systems)
  • Added support for Apple A4 (ARM) iDevices, inc. Apple TV 2G, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, the iPad (effectively all jailbroken iOS products)
  • Added hardware accelerated video decoding support for H.264 decode on iOS via Apple's VideoToolBox API
  • Added support for OpenGL ES hardware accelerated rendering of XBMC's graphical user interface on iOS
  • Added retina support
  • Added initial iOS Touch / Gesture / Inertial Scrolling support for XBMC interface on iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, and the iPad
  • Added a APT repository for Apple TV, and Cydia with packages for iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, and iPad
  • Mac OS X Specific:
  • Added dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Mac OS X
  • Improve Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support (requires Snow Leopard and NVIDIA 9400 or later)
  • Improve XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier

New in Kodi 11.0 RC 2 (Mar 2, 2012)

  • The video sync bug introduced has been resolved

New in Kodi 11.0 RC1 (Feb 28, 2012)

  • Given preference to external subtitles over internal subtitles
  • Updated a number of XBMC translations for final release
  • Resolved a number of outstanding Airplay issues
  • Allowed specified movie sets to be sorted by title, rather than year, without changing the default sort order on other sets.
  • Added the useful feature of IP weather look up. Now, on a clean install of XBMC, users will no longer need to manually enter their weather location. Instead, XBMC will simply check the IP location of your box and auto-set the weather.

New in Kodi 11.0 Beta 3 (Feb 10, 2012)

  • Fixed playlist issues, altered some misbehaving Library buttons, provided a little more control over the way movie sets are scraped, and cleaned up numerous other small bugs.

New in Kodi 11.0 Beta 2 (Jan 23, 2012)

  • Unencrypted bluray, dvd player, startup problems in OSX, airplay, subtitle issues, unofficial addon repository installations, and the frustrating TMDB scraper problems that have made it difficult for everyone to scrape new movies have all seen fixes.
  • In addition, a great deal of progress has been made in the new XBMCBuntu build, which should be ready for the next preview release. Finally, all Beta 1 users are encouraged to update immediately to fix a scraper error that causes XBMC to crash.
  • The same warnings from beta1 still apply. Eden is quite stable already, but don’t forget that it is in beta.

New in Kodi 11.0 Beta 1 (Dec 27, 2011)

  • Addons Framework, API, and Manager:
  • Added ability for all addons to provide their own web interface (and handling of multiple web interfaces)
  • Added support for addons to save their setting values to their own settings.xml file before quitting
  • Added support for multi-file selections in the (python) file browser dialog
  • Extended Addons API to support adding extension points for Service Addons (xbmc.service)
  • Added support for Addon Rollbacks, enabling users to choose previously installed addons over more recent revisions
  • Added the ability to search Addons in the Addons-Manager
  • GUI Engine:
  • Improve XBMC's GUI Engine / Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful
  • Added option for auto login of a specific selected user profile (good for kiosk mode)
  • Added commands for xbmc.Player().getAvailableAudioStreams() and xbmc.Player().setAudioStream()
  • Added support to identify DTS-HD (DTS-HD MA and DTS-HD HRA) profiles in audio stream list
  • Add ability for skinners to show buffering progress for streamed/cached files (similar to YouTube)
  • Improved mouse support, add better control for dragging of seek / slide / scroll bars, and click handling
  • Improve touch interface API and gesture support for XBMC's GUI Engine for all platforms
  • Added Dirty Region support to reduce CPU usage
  • Added a custom JPEG decoder, at least 2x faster than the previous implementation (cximage)
  • Playback:
  • Added UDF 2.5 filesystem reading support to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
  • Added support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc as well as video library integration
  • Added an option for vertical shift of video image with slider setting
  • Added support for color and font styles tag in MPL2 (MicroDVD) subtitles
  • Added support for SSA/ASS subtitle tags; italics, bold, and color for SubRip (.srt) subtitles
  • Added support for MP4 embedded subtitles
  • Added support delay tag in vobsub subtitles
  • Added support for a new extended version of MPlayer's EDL (Edit Decision List) format
  • Added PlayerControl built in function to allow jumping to a percentage offset from a key mapping
  • Added support for Slingbox
  • Upgrade FFmpeg (libavformat and libavcodec) audio/video codec and demux library
  • Improved Blu-ray Disc and harddrive playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus
  • Removed subtitle caching (as it was only needed on Xbox because of the severe memory restrictions)
  • Removed all dependencies of libmms libraries from XBMC's code in favour of FFmpeg native MMS support
  • Remove all dependencies of liba52, libdts, and faac libraries from XBMC's code in favour of FFmpeg native
  • Added support for NFS virtual file server (vfs) (all platforms)
  • Added support for AFP (vfs) (all platforms aside from Windows)
  • Added Airplay support for Videos/Pictures (all platforms)
  • Added Airplay support for Music (all platforms aside from Windows)
  • Improved UPnP Renderer
  • Added a slider for volume amplification and dynamic range compression during video playback
  • Added an option to pause video playback during refreshrate changes
  • Extended PathSubstitution from playlists to all files for users of shared MySQL Databases
  • Added the ability to adjust the display's refresh rate to match the video's frame rate in OSX (Feature already available in Windows and Linux)
  • Improvements made to the adjust refresh rate feature to pick the "best" rate, rather than the closest multiple
  • Added DXVA Deinterlacing support
  • Library:
  • Combined Files and Library mode for videos
  • Add asynchronous threaded background loading of metadata to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
  • Added support for cleaning the music library via CleanLibrary(music) command
  • Added a "Play from here" context menu button for TV Shows Episodes in the video library
  • Added the option to specify the default select (Play, Resume, Show information, Choose) action on videos
  • Changed "Set Content" to "Edit Content Settings" after being set
  • Added disc stub support for cataloging DVDs, BluRays, etc.
  • Scrapers:
  • Improve TheMovieDB.org movie scraper by adding themoviedb.org posters scraping
  • Improve TheTVDB.com (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper
  • Improve Freebase (English) music scraper
  • Skins:
  • Confluence: Home screen switched to horizontal layout
  • Confluence: Greatly simplified the way FanArt works throughout the skin and the settings for it
  • Confluence: Added ability for users to easily add / remove Add-ons as items on the home screen menu
  • Confluence: Added codec flagging images for DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio
  • Other:
  • Added ability to handle and allow access to multiple web interfaces at once
  • Added option setting to play videos within picture slideshows
  • Added dimming setting to the built-in picture slideshow screensaver
  • Added support for sorting depending on current locale
  • Added advancedsettings.xml option to disable the display of startup splash image (enabled by default)
  • Added support for batch requests to the JSON-RPC API
  • Added support for requests by notification to the JSON-RPC API
  • Make JSON-RPC API compliant with JSON-RPC 2.0 specification ( details)
  • Cleanup and improve JSON-RPC API
  • Added advancedsettings.xml option to configure the TCP port used by JSON-RPC (default is 9090)
  • Improve the features of the default web interface
  • Removed Weather from XBMC core and switched to Weather Underground as the default weather provider addon
  • Mac OS X Specific:
  • Added dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Mac OS X
  • Improve Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support (requires Snow Leopard and NVIDIA 9400 or later)
  • Improve XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier

New in Kodi 10.1 (Mar 10, 2011)

  • If an in-use skin was updated in Windows, XBMC would freeze
  • Some RTMP streams in Windows did not play
  • Included add-ons have been updated
  • The correct referrer is now used for downloading add-ons, improving dependency statistics
  • Crashes during playback on ATI hardware in some circumstances have been fixed
  • Hardware decoding improvements for OSX
  • Various small fixes

New in Kodi 10.0 RC2 (Dec 3, 2010)

  • Shoutcast support has been redone. Listening to your favorite online radio stations with the shoutcast plugin is now a much nicer experience.
  • The add-ons moved out of the testing repository and into their permanent home. This means that everyone will need to upgrade in order to see future add-on updates. If you continue to use RC1 or previous, please don’t report a lack of updates.
  • Automatic updates for add-ons are now enabled by default. Of course, you can still disable them via the add-on manager if you prefer.

New in Kodi 10.0 RC1 (Nov 19, 2010)

  • A fix for a problem when pausing/seeking. This was known to cause static or erratic behavior on some amplifiers.
  • Beta4 introduced a regression with Linux and Live users that led to broken or choppy playback. Please note that anyone upgrading to RC1 on these platforms is highly advised to remove ~/.asoundrc, and create a new one if you had done so previously.
  • The Bootable LiveCD script is now much more reliable. What a great way to install to a flash drive!
  • After adding a source, you are now prompted to set content. This should be much more logical for new users.
  • New icons for the addon browser.

New in Kodi 10.0 Beta 3 (Oct 14, 2010)

  • Lots of Live fixes and clean-ups. We want Dharma Live to work out-of-the-box as much as possible. Those who have been plagued with broken ALSA upgrades and unsupported soundcards will be happy to know that these issues have been resolved. In addition, most ION/ION2 systems should just work ™, though there are a few small issues remaining.
  • Shoutcast, which is now an add-on, was causing hard-freezes. Now Fixed.
  • A bug causing redundant http requests has been fixed. Scraper sites (Hi TMDb and TheTVDB!) should see significantly less requests per session.
  • Several new addons. Many scrapers have been fixed. The popular Transparency! skin is now in the official repository; a total of 9 available even before official release!.
  • Many more small fixes. Small fixes are good.

New in Kodi 10.0 Beta 2 (Sep 16, 2010)

  • Closed many bugs, touched up some translations, and updated a substantial number of addons.
  • Includes web-interfaces as addons.

New in Kodi 10.0 Beta 1 (Aug 31, 2010)

  • As always, treat this as beta-quality software. Be sure to back up your profile in case you decide to roll back.
  • The clunky old web interface has been removed. We’re working hard to have a new one ready for final release.
  • svn-ppa users may have to remove old xbmc packages before installing Dharma.
  • You may have to reset your screensaver and visualization settings after upgrade. These are now addons.
  • Pre-Dharma scripts/plugins/skins will NOT work with Dharma, but most have been updated accordingly.

New in Kodi 9.11 (Dec 26, 2009)

  • GUI:
  • Improved XBMC GUI Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful
Powerbutton follows “shutdown function” in settings/system/power saving
Updated translations for most languages (help is always wanted with translation)
Skinnable Weather Plugin API enabling third-party Weather Plugins (Python Scripts)
Edit button for RSS feeds in settings, (needs RssTicker script installed, see SCRIPTS section below)
New screensaver option to turn off the screen (using VESA DPMS)
Always On Top option to advancedsettings.xml when XBMC runs in Windowed Mode
Better support for multi-monitor setups
Settings have been re-organized and cleaned up to sync with new features
  • Playback:
  • High Definition, Surround Sound, and Subtitle Flagging and Filtering in Video Library
Added support for SingStar and UltraStar Karaoke Lyrics Format
Updated FFmpeg (libavformat and libavcodec) audio/video codec and demux library
Speed up RAW image loading and handle more file extensions
Implemented better WAV/PCM handling on 64-bit operating-systems
Added support for additional tags in CUE sheets (Genre/Year)
Added support for MPL2 (Blu-ray) subtitles format
Added support forVPlayer subtitles format (which unfortunately is still in use)
Added support for RTMP (Flash) live video streams, plus skip, pause, and resume feature
Added proper MMS/MMSH streaming client (libmms) support
Added audio and subtitle delay pop-up to the GUI (similar to volume control)
Improved Commercial Skipping, EDL (Edit Decision List), and SceneMarker support
Options for smoother video playback (syncing the video to the refresh rate of the display)
Smart Playlists support for video resolution, aspect-ratio, codec, audio, and subtitles
Extension of ExternalPlayer enabling multiple external players based on file-extension
Added overlay renderer for dvd/vobsub/xsub
  • Library:
  • Performance improvements to SQLite (database) queries (help is always wanted here)
Support for movie sets and a sortorder tag in the Video Library
UPnP MediaServer compliant with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standards
Ability to view pictures over UPnP in XBMC, also loads of fixes to the UPnP library
Added scan for new content command to HTTP API, extended XBMC.updatelibrary call
Reorganized MythTV directory structure to separate TV Shows from Movies
Support importing MythTV movies into the Movies Library (including scraping)
Added support local actor thumbnails (store as actor_name.tbn under .actors directory)
Scrape studio info for TV Show/Season/Episode, info is available via studio field item
Changed handling in Scrapers and NFO replacing «thumbs» with multiple «thumb»
Added library update on resume if we are coming from suspend/hibernate
Ability to scrape and scan TV Shows into the video library by air-date via TheTVDB.com
  • Scrapers:
  • TheMovieDB.org (TMDB) movie scraper upgraded to version 2.1
Added Movie Trailer scraping from dtrailer.com to TheMovieDB.org scraper
TheTVDB.com TV Shows scraper scraper improvements and enhancements
MTV (Music Videos) scraper improvements and enhancements
New freebase music scraper (with Artist FanArt support via htbackdrops.com)
New Polish music scraper combining allmusic.com,merlin.pl, and lastfm.pl
New mymovies.dk (Multilanguage) movie scraper (*commercial)
New fdb.pl (Polish) movie scraper
New cinefacts.de (German) movie scraper
New filmdelta.se (Swedish) movie scraper
New world-art.ru (Russian) movie scraper
Updated imdb.cn (Chinese) movie scraper
New cine-passion (French/English) movie scraper
Fixes and additions for the mymovies.xml scraper
  • Skins:
  • Confluence is the new default
PM3.HD set to secondary
Removed legacy PM III (farewell old friend)
  • OS X Specific:
  • Logitech Harmony Universal Remote support
Added support for CoreAudio API and removed the PortAudio API code
AC3 and DTS digital audio pass-through to SP/DIF on Apple TV (thanks to CoreAudio)
Support for running external Applescripts
Support for command-tab application switching
support for OS X Spaces (virtual desktops)
  • Live-Specific:
  • New installer with disk partitioning support, network setup and language selection
Uses Beatzeps08’s variation of duduke’s great “spinner black” usplash theme! Thanks Beatzeps08!!
Based on Ubuntu Karmic
NVIDIA drivers: 190.53 (VDPAU included on supported GPUs)
ATI/AMD drivers: Catalyst 9.11
Includes the magic tvheadend package, which brings live TV in XBMCLive
The plugin “SVN Repo Installer” is also included, thus installing new scripts/plugins/skins will be easier

New in Kodi 9.11 Beta 2 (Dec 10, 2009)

  • Closed just under 200 bugs since the last beta (to be fair, some of those were translations and other small patches).

New in Kodi 9.11 Alpha 1 (Nov 5, 2009)

  • Numerous skinning engine updates which allow for use of some fancy new skins
  • Many improvements to the video player which allow for much smoother playback
  • Switch to Core Audio on OSX
  • Many VDPAU improvements under linux
  • Many platform-specific customizations
  • Much Much more. We will be showcasing the new features here on xbmc.org as the final release approaches.

New in Kodi Babylon 9.04.1 (May 28, 2009)

  • Updated scrapers.
  • Fixed segfault when clicking on either a Video or Music source which contains a malformed .pls file.
  • Shoutcast had two “..” paths.
  • Typo caused vobsubs to render at incorrect timestamps (and possibly crash xbmc).
  • Diffuse texture used the wrong coordinates for orientation when scalediffuse=”false” was specified.
  • Reset lcd dim after resuming from suspend.
  • HDHomeRun was crashing when browsing tuners.
  • Main title dvd/iso rips did not return to GUI when playback finished.
  • XBMC would suspend directly after resume when suspend time > shutdown time.
  • Sped up RAW image loading and handle more file extensions.
  • Better wav handling on 64bit OSs.
  • Metadata from nfo not used unless default scraper is the same as the url in nfo.
  • H264/AAC streamed over RTMP memory leak and video fps problem.
  • [OSX] EventServer could be started multiple times.

New in Kodi 9.04 Alpha 1 (Apr 6, 2009)

  • Working DVD playback.
  • Many bug fixes.

New in Kodi Beta 2 (Oct 7, 2008)

  • Improved Apple TV support.
  • 80+ bug fixes.
  • Optimized skins PM3 and PM3:HD.
  • Updated MediaStream to v0.93.
  • Improved Remote Buddy support.
  • Many more updates!

New in Kodi Beta 1 (Sep 22, 2008)

  • Brand new skin “PM3.HD”, a high-definition tribute to Project Mayhem III, which will be gracing screens as the default skin on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
  • Xbox users can, of course, choose to use this skin if they wish as well, and the original Project Mayhem III skin is still packaged with Beta 1 for those who prefer the old-school look. This is in addition to the already awesome selection of skins available for XBMC.
  • Support for integrating iTunes and iPhoto media into XBMC.
  • Comes bundled with a bonus skin for XBMC, and that is MediaStream by Team Razorfish, (this skin can, of course, be downloaded and installed on all XBMC platforms, like all other XBMC skins).