Kodi 21 'Omega' hits a huge development milestone and is available to download now [Updated]

Kodi 21 -- codename 'Omega' -- is the next version of the popular home theater software. The first alpha version of the program arrived two months ago, with the Kodi Foundation describing it as a "major release" with lots of new features.

Today, a brand new build arrives, which will be more appealing to users seeking greater stability.

SEE ALSO: Kodi forum breach exposes user data

Kodi 21 'Omega' Alpha 2 is available for download now. The team says "Over the last couple of months we've merged 120 pull requests -- fixing issues, adding features, and improving Kodi."

Highlights of this build include:

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 endeavoring 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 customized Kodi modules of the same name. This mostly affects Linux based systems.

With this build we also finally get our first glance at what the splash screen for the new Omega branch looks like. You can see it at the top of the screen. Share your thoughts on this in the comments below.

In the meantime, you can get Alpha 2 from here. Select your platform of choice, and grab the new build from the Prerelease section.

[Update: This story has been updated to include a list of new features and changes in the Alpha 2 build.]

Image credit: The Kodi Foundation