Kodi v21 Omega Alpha2, available for download and installation

Already available for download, the official version Kodi 21 Omega Alpha2. The software in Alpha state is very unstable, and it is recommended to use it only as a curiosity.

As you can see if we install the Kodi 21 Omega version, the changes at the aesthetic level are few and it seems a fairly continuous version in this aspect. In any case we have versions available for Windows in 32 and 64bit compilations in addition to the compilations for Android in ARM V7A format of greater compatibility and ARM V8A for Shield TV or similar. In the following months, this version will evolve, and we will inform you about its new features.

• For more compatibility with add-ons we can always go back to KODI 19.5.

Download KODI 21 Omega Alpha2

• DOWNLOAD WARNING: there are browsers that block EXE and APK download, use right click “Save link as”, then in the download tab below click on the little arrow above next to “Discard” and select SAVE.

Download KODI 21 Omega Alpha2 for Android

• Download apk Kodi v21 Omega Alpha2 for Android 32 bit ARM V7A, compatible with all the TV-Box.
• Download apk Kodi v21 Omega Alpha2 for Android 64 bit ARM V8A, only NVidia, Realtek and some Rockchip SoC’s.
• How to install an APK on Android, from USB or sending APK from your mobile.

Download KODI 21 Omega Alpha2 for Windows

• Download installer Kodi v21 Omega Alpha2 for Windows 64 bit, recommended for any PC.
• Download installer Kodi v21 Omega Alpha2 for Windows 32 bit, for very old PCs.

KODI Tutorials

• Installing Addons on KODI, step by step guide and additional tricks.
• Fix Judder effect, avoid image jumps during playback.
• Multichannel sound on Android and Windows, HD sound in your home.
• Use SAMBA home network with KODI

Changelog

Build/Dependencies

• Apple platforms are now all built using newer version of Xcode (14.2) and the relevant SDKs. Thanks to a combination of a new M1 Mac mini hardware donation from long time supporter of the project, MacMiniVault.com, and also the Kodi foundation purchasing a second M1 Mac mini, we have been able to decommission our ageing Intel Mac mini’s that have been in use for a long time.
• Building on Windows now uses the system curl executable instead of our formerly bundled (ancient) wget executable.
• Improvements to dependency building have been made by @lrusak to make the downloading/hash checking more robust.

Estuary

• Improvements to the seek window timeouts have been made to more correctly disappear after appropriate timeouts.
• Fix visibility of ‘next recording’ label in PVRTimers was made by @ksooo.

FFmpeg

• One of our newer team members, @neo1973 , has made some cleanups and fixed some crashes in our ffmpeg side data usage, as well as other improvements with our ffmpeg API usage.

General

• Improvements made to handling of movement keys (e.g. PageUp, Down, Home, End) in certain lists such as Settings.
• @rmrector has been endeavouring to improve image cache handling for GUI items. We look forward to the further work he has in the pipeline to improve the cache handling.
• Extraart configurations in advancedsettings.xml for Kodi 18 will no longer be migrated to the new GUI settings when upgrading. If you had meaningful configuration there, check that the artwork settings in the GUI match your preferences.
• @CrystalP extended the navigation history to track the line number of the selected item so that it can be restored when the item disappears from the list, instead of resetting the selection to the top of the list (usually the ..) after the end of playback or changing the watched status of an item.
• The generation of thumbnails was fixed for pictures in portrait orientation. The existing thumbnails in KODI_HOME/userdata/Thumbnails/* must be deleted in order to have new correct ones recreated.

JSON-RPC

• VideoLibrary.GetEpisodeDetails now returns “studio” and “genre” added by @scott967 in https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23112.

Platform Specifics

• Android:
  • @joseluismarti has continued with more cleanups and improvements to the Android codebase. Each improvement makes things easier to manage, and is greatly appreciated.
  • @fritsch has been able to make further improvements to AudioTrack to handle hardware that has sinks that get “stuck”. Its always a fine line making changes in the Android world, as the multitude of hardware vendors have widely varying implementation qualities of the standard Android APIs.
• Linux:
  • @lrusak has added the ability for users to select the audio backend with a command line switch when starting Kodi. This also allows seeing with which enabled audio backends Kodi was built. For more information check out the following PR.
• macOS:
  • The minimum OS required for Kodi on macOS is now Mojave (10.14). This was done to allow the project to continue using more modern C++ 17 features. macOS Mojave was released on 24th September 2018 and hardware supported can be seen at Apple.com.
  • @enen92 has continued to further improve what is known as “Native windowing” for our macOS codebase that will eventually lead to a formal Apple Silicon version. Improvements to window resizing, menu’s, window blanking, improved multiple monitor handling and more.
  • For developers, Kodi can also now more easily be run from Xcode without having to alter schemes.
  • @ksooo has now correctly added Speechrecognition entitlements for Apple platforms (including iOS/tvOS) which fixes a crash when microphone usage was triggered.
  • Support for HiDPI resolutions, such as those marketed as Retina displays, has been introduced in the native windowing version. This enhancement allows Kodi’s graphical user interface (GUI) to showcase higher pixel densities, resulting in a sleek and polished appearance on modern Macs.
• webOS
  • @sundermann and @craigcarnell have made further improvements to the new webOS platform. Screensaver support has been added, along with audio sink improvements and updates to codec hardware support.
• Windows:
  • Minimum Windows supported version has been raised to Windows 8.1.
  • @CrystalP and @thexai have made a number of improvements to windows HDR/SDR/HLG display including tonemapping and hardware DXVA support for a number of combinations of those media types.
  • @thexai implemented support for “Video Super Resolution” for Nvidia (RTX ) and Intel (ARC) compatible hardware. Please note, we obviously cant test all combinations of hardware, so don’t expect this to work for every combination under the sun. Give it a try and report any issues WITH debug logs.
  • Bump to libdav1d to version 1.20 should improve AV1 playback support for windows platforms.

Python

• A fix for a regression was made by @lrusak that puts addon paths at the front of the system paths. This fixes addons using system modules instead of potentially customised Kodi modules of the same name. This mostly affects Linux based systems.