Kodi is a free, open-source media center application that gathers video, music, photos, live TV and games into one interface. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, tvOS, Raspberry Pi and webOS. The non-profit Kodi Foundation oversees the project, volunteers develop it, and it is released under the GPL. Kodi began as XBMC, a media center for the original Xbox console. Its interface is still designed for a television viewed from the sofa and operated with a remote.
Kodi does not come with any films, music or channels. It plays what the user already has on local drives, network storage or discs, and it reaches online services only through add-ons that the user installs and configures.
Where Kodi finds media
A source in Kodi is any location that holds media: an internal or USB drive, an optical disc, or a network share. On the network, Kodi connects to SMB/CIFS, NFS, WebDAV, UPnP, FTP, SFTP and HTTP locations. This lets users play a collection on a NAS or another computer without copying it. Kodi also opens ISO images and plays unencrypted Blu-ray discs.
Playback uses an FFmpeg-based engine that handles most common containers, including MKV, MP4 and AVI, and codecs such as H.264 and H.265, with hardware or software decoding.
Movie and TV show libraries
Users who only want a file browser can play files directly from their folders. The library mode builds a database instead. When adding a source, the user assigns it a content type of movies, TV shows or music videos. Kodi keeps a separate library for each.
A scan then matches each file to an entry on an online information provider such as TheMovieDB or TheTVDB. A scraper add-on performs this lookup and downloads the plot, cast, director, genre and year along with posters and fanart. Matching depends on file and folder names, so Kodi expects media to follow its naming conventions. Local NFO files and artwork stored next to the media can supply or override the scraped details.
Once scanned, Kodi lets the user browse films by genre, title, year, actor or director. TV shows appear with season and episode views and watched markers.
Music library and audio playback
Kodi builds its music library from the tags inside the audio files, sorting songs by artist, album and genre. An optional scraping step downloads extra artist and album information and missing artwork. Users build smart playlists from rules on tag data, so the list updates as the library changes.
Supported audio includes MP3, AAC, FLAC, ALAC and WAV. The audio player offers gapless playback, crossfading, ReplayGain and cue sheet support. Kodi can pass AC3, DTS and HD audio formats straight to an AV receiver.
Photo browsing and slideshows
A picture source opens as a folder view where users can sort, filter and zoom images with a remote. Kodi reads Exif and IPTC information and runs slideshows with a pan-and-zoom effect.
Live TV through a PVR backend
Kodi does not tune TV signals itself. It works as the front end for separate backend software, such as Tvheadend, MythTV, NextPVR or an HDHomeRun device. The backend receives broadcasts through a tuner. A PVR client add-on that matches the backend links the two, and channels then appear inside Kodi’s Live TV and Radio sections.
Through this link Kodi shows an electronic program guide, plays channels, and pauses and rewinds live TV. Depending on the backend, users can set timers and series recordings from the guide and watch recordings later. Other Kodi devices in the home need only the PVR add-on, not their own tuner.
Add-ons and repositories
Most of Kodi’s extensibility comes from add-ons, covering video and music services, PVR clients, scrapers, skins, web interfaces, scripts and games. Installing from the official repository downloads the add-on together with any dependencies. Kodi checks for updates daily and can install them automatically, notify the user, or skip checking.
Users can also add third-party repositories and ZIP files, but only after enabling the Unknown sources setting. This grants such add-ons access to data on the device.
Emulators and game controllers
Kodi’s game support, called RetroPlayer, runs emulator add-ons based on libretro cores. These cover a large range of consoles and computers, including Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Atari, Commodore and arcade systems. Some cores need BIOS files, which Kodi does not supply.
Skins, profiles and remote control
The whole interface in Kodi is a skin. Estuary is the default, and other skins from the repository can change the layout, menus and appearance completely.
Profiles let several people share one Kodi installation, each with its own library, sources, skin and views. The master user can lock settings or specific media sections. These locks are not a security measure, since the lock codes are stored in plain text.
Kodi works with infrared and USB remotes, with TV remotes through HDMI-CEC, and with smartphone and tablet apps, including the official Kodi remote app. Remote apps and web interfaces connect through Kodi’s JSON-RPC interface once the user enables remote control over HTTP in the settings.
