Kodi 21.2 'Omega' has arrived and you should download it immediately!

The Kodi Foundation is still hard at work on Kodi 22 'Piers', with an Alpha release expected in the coming months. The team hasn’t forgotten Kodi 21 users however, and a new build for that branch has just been released.

It's been five months since Kodi 21.1 'Omega' arrived, and now the Kodi Foundation has rolled out a new build, Kodi 21.2, with a raft of changes, fixes and improvements.

SEE ALSO: Move over Kodi -- these are the top home theater alternatives you need

This is what's new in this brand new release:

Library/Sources and Management

• Fixed a bug that ignored images in the ...\season\.actors folder. The \season\.actors folders have been deprecated and all actors are saved in the \TV Show\.actors folder.
• Restore performance of movie addition to the library to v20 (Nexus) level
• Fixed/improved playback from some UPnP server software (at least UMS and Gerbera. Some NAS UPnP servers are based on UMS under the covers). Playback starts faster and multiple videos can be played consecutively.
• Preserve special characters in names of scanned or added movie extras
• Replace context menu items 'Set actor/artist thumb' with 'Choose art' to make it possible again to add/and set other artwork, not only thumbnails
• Fixed mark watched/unwatched operations missing in certain context menus
• Honour importwatchedstate and importresumepoint settings from advancedsettings.xml

Video

• Fixed HDR passthrough on video sources with partial or missing display metadata (only GL/GLES platforms)
• Fixed HDR to SDR tone mapping on video sources with partial or missing display metadata (only GL/GLES platforms)
• Fixed possible incorrect picture metadata if playing different HDR videos without stopping the previous one and the videos had different HDR metadata (all platforms)
• Fixed on Blu-Ray discs some BD-j menu items not displaying correctly due to multi-thread timing issues
• Fixed deletion of bookmarks in video if the video has also chapters

Music

• Fixed an issue with the last track duration of some albums stored in mka containers

Plugins

• Fixed missing context menu entries for plugin-provided items

Filesystem

• Restored the ability of enter credentials when browsing SMB shares (only POSIX platforms)
• Updated cURL to 8.10.0 to fix issues with FTP TLS sources

PVR

• EPG search fixes
• Fixed resume points for recordings not honored
• Fixed 'User has no access / server' error if broadcasts have been shifted
• Fixed default select action 'show info' for PVR items

Skin/GUI

• Added Donation tab in System Settings
• In preparation for our next major release, we've been updating the translation strings in all 78 of our binary add-ons (audio, inputstream, peripheral, screensaver, vfs, visualization...). These updates have now all been backported to this release, so there's a bonus of a year's worth of fixes and improvements here.

Android

• Greatly improved joystick support on Android
• Fixed possible crash when getInterfaceName method returns null
• Fixed resuming paused media playback not working via play/pause media key press
• Fixed black screen when resuming app from minimized state

Linux

• Fixed memory corruption when high quality video scalers are used
• Fixed possible infinite loop when using GBM and a DRM Atomic Commit fails
• Fixed windowed Kodi becoming larger on every start when running on Wayland with a scale factor

OSX

• Fixed crash when trying to detect optical media

Windows

• Fixed the crash issue that occurred when accessing the computer using Remote Desktop Protocol
• Fixed the ability of the built-in WOL feature to wake up servers
• Fixed the potential crash occurred when the system contained environment variables name with a length of more than 64 characters
• Fixed HDR feature did not work on Windows 11 24H2 under some circumstances
• Improved support for WCG displays on Windows 11 24H2

For Windows users, the team warns:

Because we're updating binary add-ons with this release, you're likely to experience crashes due to version issues if you don't also update the Visual C++ runtime. This is particularly likely if you stay on 21.1 (i.e. the add-ons get updated, but Kodi doesn't).

The solution is to upgrade to 21.2 and thus install the Visual C++ runtime that comes with the 21.2 installer or, if you really want stay on 21.1, you'll need to update the Visual C++ runtime externally.

You can get Kodi 21.2 'Omega' from here. Select your platform of choice, and download the new build from the Recommended tab.