Kodi 20.5 Nexus: Features, Download, Changelog

Kodi 20.5 Nexus is the current major release of the popular media center software with many new features and improvements. In this Kodi 20 guide you will find all new functionalities and changes, updates, download links and everything else you need to know before using the latest version of Kodi.

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Kodi 20 Nexus changes and new features

We’d like to point out that Kodi is an open source and non-commercial software, free to use by everyone. All developers are working on that project in their free time to improve the media center and add new features on a regular basis.

Compared to Kodi 19 Matrix the new version Kodi 20 Nexus comes with more than 4.600 changes. Some important key features in Kodi 20 Nexus are:

• AV1 hardware decoding for Android and Linux
• Major security improvements
• Updated PVR for live TV / IPTV
• Massive rework of the subtitle system
• Apple M1 support on macOS
• HDR support on Windows
• Savestate manager for Kodi Retroplayer (retro games)
• Support for built-in Steam Deck controller

A full list of all updates and new features is down below. Since Kodi is a free software you can also see all changes between Kodi 19 and Kodi 20 on GitHub.

Kodi 20 Nexus final release date and testing phase

Kodi 20 Nexus underwent an extensive testing phase. Through several intermediate stages, interested users were able to download and install test versions to report bugs and inconsistencies. The developers then fixed the bugs and continuously added new features.

The release cycle of a new Kodi version looks like this: At the beginning, an alpha version is made available to the public. Over the following weeks and months, more alpha versions are usually released with new features and bug fixes. After further months, a beta version of Kodi is released, which already runs more stable, but still serves exclusively for testing purposes.

The beta versions are followed by a so-called “publication candidate” or “release candidate” (RC version), the last step before the final release of the first stable version.

After such a long test period, it can be stated that Kodi 20 Nexus runs very stable and is suitable for daily use.

Impact on Kodi addons

The last big version jump from Kodi 18 Leia to Kodi 19 Matrix made many addons unusable – they were no longer executable under the new version of the media center. The reason has been a change in the background. All addons for Kodi are written in the programming language “Python”. Kodi 18 used Python in version 2, whereas Kodi 19 received an update to Python 3. Therefore, many addons had to be reprogrammed or redeveloped, which meant waiting times of several weeks and months.

Will this also be the case with the changeover from Kodi 19 to Kodi 20?

Kodi 20 Nexus continues to rely on Python 3. In fact, it’s not even foreseeable whether a supposed Python 4 will ever be released. Addons will have to be adapted for Kodi 20 Nexus, but the programming effort should not be as significant as for the switch from Kodi 18 to 19. Many of the well-known and popular addons are very likely to be available for Kodi 20 as well.

Kodi 20 Nexus Latest Updates

Kodi 20.5

Input

• Some controller changes that led to massive errors on Android have been reversed. The handling of the inputs corresponds again to that of version 20.3.

Android

• Fixed a bug that caused crashes when color mode changes were made
• Kodi Nexus now behaves like Kodi Omega in terms of AudioTracks. This means that some users may need to make changes to AdvancedSettings.xml. More details about this are on GitHub.

Linux

• Branding colors have been added to the meta info file so that they can be used by – for example – the Flathub Store. More info about that can be found on the FlatHub website.

iOS / tvOS

• Fix for “AESinkWASAPI” to improve the fallback if the exact layout of the output channel is not supported by drivers or hardware
• Inputstream FFmpeg Direct now available on iOS and tvOS

Kodi 20.4

Build

• Backport added to eliminate the error rate for binary addon builds

Input

• Update of controller addons

Android

• Several fixes have been backported to fix deployment issues on Google Play
• Corrections to eliminate input problems

Windows

• Fix for “AESinkWASAPI” to improve the fallback if the exact layout of the output channel is not supported by drivers or hardware

iOS / tvOS

• Bug fix for black screens when playing interlaced video content; users no longer need to disable VTB hardware playback. Other playback methods (e.g. .STRM files via HTTP URLs) are still affected.
• Memory leak problem in connection with game controllers fixed

tvOS

• Fixed bug related to framework list metadata for shared library frameworks

Kodi 20.3

Video

• Correction of the standard selection action in certain film-related windows

General

• DVD playback error with disconnected drives fixed
• Fix for infinite loops in CPluginFile when using scrapers
• Fixed crashes in connection with settings that are set in the wrong order
• Display of certain toast notifications anonymized (username and password)
• Memory leak in context menus fixed
• Fixed image cache handling to correctly regenerate cached files when using the JSON API

Estuary Skin

• A number of fixes, including focus position of categories on the home screen, counter labels and views
• Corrections to the weather layout under high load

Games / Retroplayer

• Fixed bug where controllers were not assigned correctly
• Correct display of colors on 10-bit monitors under Windows
• Fixed crashes caused by calling the port dialog box
• Fixed spelling error for middle mouse button in controller window

Music

• Music library can now restore itself if a cleanup process has been interrupted

Android

• Workaround implemented to avoid asynchronous audio playback on current AMLogic BSP devices (FireTV Cube 3rd generation etc.)

Linux

• VP9 Profile 2 playback error fixed
• Correction for a leak of EGLFences in the DRM Prime Renderer

macOS / iOS

• Fixed crashes on devices using Apple silicon when pressing the Caps Lock key

tvOS

• Settings in binary add-ons (PVR) are now saved permanently

Windows

• Fixed a bug where a 24 Hz refresh rate in conjunction with HDR was only used in certain use cases (when Windows Auto-HDR mode is switched off)
• The audio device “WASAPI:default” is no longer listed multiple times in the audio device list
• Fractional refresh rates of 119.88 Hz and higher are now displayed correctly

Pictures

• Fixed regression of Exif parsing from version 19

PVR / Live TV

• Subtitles of TV channels are now displayed correctly at the start of playback
• Recordings with a path containing a colon (‘:’) are now displayed in the recording window

UPnP

• Fixed a crash that occurred when a user added a UPnP source without having UPnP enabled
• Fixed playback from remote sources (ftp, http, etc.)

Kodi 20.2

Video

• When creating playlists watched/unwatched status now taken into account for items not added to video library
• Fixed missing watched/unwatched status in playlist window

Audio

• E-AC3 related fixes backported

Estuary Skin

• Music Visualizer screen improved
• Seekbar timer fixed when seeking

Games / Retroplayer

• Crashes due to memory exhaustion when using several emulators fixed

General

• Several fixes regarding building Kodi with GCC13

Android

• Crash fixed that occured when more than 100 jobs where scheduled for Android TV recommendation channels
• Google decorder prioritized on older Android devices that have both MediaTek and Google decoders for some media (MediaTek decoders are not able to play audio of encrypted streams)

Windows

• HDR playback fixed when Windows was already in HDR mode
• Backport fix for a potential Deadlock on Xbox when using SW decoding and pixel shaders

Linux

• Change reverted which fixes specific Linux setups to use the generic library (GL) instead of the specific GLX library

macOS / iOS

• Fixed speech recognition not working

PVR / Live TV

• Crash fixed when using saved search requests
• Last opened groups are now restored reliably on Kodi startup

Python

• Backported fix for settings picture and game info via infotags
• GameInfo added to Player class to get/set GameInfoTag data
• Backported a fix that mainly affects Linux platforms: the path used when searching for modules had Kodi script paths added to the end of the list and therefore could possibly find system Python scripts/modules instead of Kodi specific scripts/modules

Kodi 20.1

Audio

• New algorithm that automatically fixes audio errors on Android

Subtitles

• Fixed error when displaying languages that are read from right to left
• Improvements for WebVTT subtitles
• Spacing between lines optimized to prevent overlapping text

DVD

• Fixed error when playing DVD folder structures via network shares (SMB/NFS/HTTP etc.)

Filesystem

• Bugfix in Samba – new and old implementation are now handled identically

Games / Retroplayer

• Various bugs in savegame manager fixed and stability increased
• Various improvements of the OSD (on-screen display)
• Performance improvements (memory is read faster, accelerated dialogs and save states)
• Bug fixes for input devices
• Different controller types synchronized (game.controller.default, game.controller.keyboard, game.controller.mouse, game.controller.snes)

General

• Fixed various overflow errors when using the new chrono infrastructure
• “Keep audio device alive” option now works properly when using audio passthrough with AV receivers
• Fixed a bug on 32-bit systems that affected the sorting of content and entries
• Various changes to the Favorites window; partially restored Kodi 19 behaviors
• Fixed possible crashes when using Unicode characters

Android

• Fixed a packaging regression that affected some parts of the Python module “PyCryptodome”

Windows

• Fixed a bug that caused AMD systems to use software decoding instead of DXVA for videos with unusual resolutions
• “Chorus” web interface now works properly under Windows

PVR / Live TV

• Channels in channel groups are now listed in the correct order as provided by the PVR backend

Python

• cPython updated to version 3.11.2 – fixes crashes under Android when using the Python module “ElementTree”

UPnP

• Some improvements when using Kodi as UPnP server

Kodi 20 RC 2

Database

• Resolved database migration issues from version 19
• EPG database migration fixed
• Fixed Database migration error on Microsoft UWP platforms (Xbox and Windows Desktop)

General

• Fixed playlist detection for both audio and video

Linux

• Fixed issue with DRMPrime; hardware formats like Broadcom 8-bit (SAND128) and 10-bit (P030) can now be rendered correctly using the latest Mesa 3D

macOS

• Kodi 20 Nexus now runs on macOS 10.13 (it’s still suggested to use version 10.14 or newer)
• Resolved regression reading actual disks
• Fixed “libcdio” driver, enables disk usage von Apple Silicon native builds

Windows

• Fixed crashes on Windows debug builds (does not affect regular users)

PVR

• Fixed issue around multiple resume dialogs

Teletext

• Teletext issue fixed; increased reliability and safety

Kodi 20 RC 1

Addons

• Significant API change introduced for “VideoStreamDetails” and “InfoTagVideo” (more information on GitHub)
• Several bundled addons updated

General

• Support for action “play” to more items such as widgets and favorites on homescreen
• Fixed regression regarding duplicate/incorrect context menu entries
• Fixed error that caused the “continue watching” context menu to not show the resume time
• Several fixes regarding memory leaks
• Subtitles and Linux specific areas improved
• Fixed logging message when an empty directory is searched by a scraper

Scrapers

• TMDB TV show scraper only working with RC 1 and further releases; update from previous Kodi Nexus versions is required
• Fixed issue with Python TV show scrapers when adding new episodes to existing TV show in your libary (as described on GitHub)
• Updated TMDB TV shows and TV Maze scrapers

Games / Retroplayer

• Fixed crashes on Linux when starting games
• Fixed black screen issue with standalone games

Music

• Fixed crash when queuing multichannel audio files
• Default fallback image is not more relevant to a music item anymore

Android

• Kodi available in Google Play Store again (currently test channel)
• Several cleanups and fixes for Kodi Nexus on Android
• Bumped SDK target to 31

macOS

• Fixes to the macOS native windowing implementation
• Speech to text service implementation added

Windows & Xbox

• Kodi Nexus RC 1 has been submitted to Microsoft Store as an update

Skinning

• Fixed crash when an include has an empty condition
• Fixed crash that could occur when a textbox was too small for a font

Estuary Skin

• Users can now use the play button (on remote control, keyboard etc.) to start playback of items shown on home screen
• Extended context menu functionality for video and music
• Ability to play albums directly from home screen
• PVR: New home screen widget for saved searches
• PVR: Reworked home screen widgets for timers
• PVR: Smaller visual changes to OSD and home screen widgets

Subtitles

• Fixed regex for Sami subtitles

Teletext

• Crash and usability issues resolved
• Flashing teletext fixed

UPNP

• Fixed crashes occuring on startup when UPnP items were shown on homescreen widgets

Video

• It’s now possible to “continue watching” (resume) certain video folders from context menu (more information on GitHub)

PVR

• Multi-instance support for PVR client addons
• Persistent EPG searches
• Automatic cleanup of texture database and stale image files
• New function to refresh logos in channel manager
• Selection of items to delete when resetting PVR database
• Performance optimizations
• Code refactoring

Favorites

• New favorites window; different views and other improvements

Kodi 20 Beta 1

Addons

• Fixed binary addons – imagedecoder, screensaver, vis
• Fixed “multi instance” GUI settings for addons
• ID3 Tag metadata stream support for PVR radio addons
• New “SetVideoResolution” – “Adjust refresh rate” now works correctly with InputStream addons

Video

• Inputstream support for AV1 codec
• When software decoding is enforced no attempts for hardware AV1 decode anymore; fixes AV1 thumbnail generation on devices which don’t support AV1 decoding

General

• Kodi on Android and Apple platforms now come with Python 3.11
• Fixed bookmark resume for .strm files
• Fixed “jsonrpc Player.GetProperties” response when playback from a widget is started
• Fixed “CJobmanager” causing crashes
• Very old code refactored for better management
• Assorted improvements
• Correct duration to tracks in M3u playlists
• Header inclusions improved for better build times of future releases

Database

• Fixed Clean DB, which was broken in previous Kodi Nexus builds

Disc

• “libbluray” updates to version 1.3.2
• Fixed a “double free” issue when a disk is being ejected
• Improved handle of “BD_EVENT_DISCONTINUITY”

Filesystem

• UPNP fixed for picutre handling
• Improved support for subtitle formats when accessed via UPNP DLNA

Input

• Mouse cleanup

Network

• Support for HTTPS proxies

Filesystem

• UPNP fixed for picutre handling
• Improved support for subtitle formats when accessed via UPNP DLNA

Windows

• Window position now remembered when Kodi is running in windowed mode
• New setting to allow settings the peak luminance for a display
• Fixed cmake error
• Fixed slow Python usage on UWP platform (e.g. Xbox)

Android

• New build process for Android builds
• Several improvements overall
• Added more class parameters

macOS

• Fixed crash on exit

TVOS

• Sensitivity of remote reduced
• Tooltip and settings more intuitive

PVR

• EPG search fixes
• New function to browse available PVR addons from PVR settings
• Channels and recordings can now be sorted by provider
• Various improvements in terms of performance and fixes
• Considerable refactoring improvements

Favorites

• New favorites window with different views and enhancements

Skinning

• New infobool “System.Setting(hideunwatchedepisodethumbs)”

Estuary Skin

• PVR channel manager redesigned
• PVR home screen section icon now opens channel window
• Smaller changes to PVR OSD
• Extended music context menu; ability to play albums from home screen
• Extented video content menu

Subtitles

• Fixed 3D MVC subtitles not appearing correct when frame packed

Kodi 20 Alpha 3

Addons

• Fixed some crashes during addon installations and repository checks
• New feature allows multiple instances of the same binary addon (e.g. two instances of an PVR addon using different providers)

Database

• Optimized db warppers for better performance

DVD

• Fixed DVD Menu indicators for DRMPrime

Filesystem

• Fixed NFS for Windows after some recent NFS updates
• Multiple NFS improvements and cleanups
• NFS4 implementation

Font / Glyph

• Several improvements around the Font/Glyph handling, especially useful on low power machines
• Harbuzz glyph caching improvements
• Fixed errors and bugs with RTL languages and certain skinning components

Games / Retroplayer

• Improvements and cleanups regarding controllers
• Fixed crashes when controller info files don’t contain correct information

General

• Obsolete addons from Core Kodi install removed
• Fixed wrong player playlist type for STRM file playback

Input

• Mouse fixes when drag and drop some controls

Windows

• Fixed incorrect window positioning when transitioning from fullscreen and back

Linux GBM

• HDR Outpout can be set

MacOS

• OSX arm64 (Apple Silicon) now finds appropriate binary addons from repositories

PVR

• Ongoing updates, improvements and fixes regarding all things PVR by Kodi user ksooo

Estuary Skin

• When “Flatten Hierarchy” setting enabled titles are now being shown

Video

• Fixed 3D MVC Playback

Kodi 20 Alpha 2

Android

• Fixed stutter when opening Kodi Android app, closing it and opening it again
• TrueHD fix – buffers reduced for optimized data throughput
• More local app icons render fully
• Fixed packaging error for binary python modules (pycryptodome)

Xbox

• Fixed crashes when playing H.265 videos

Python

• Android and Apple received Python updates to version 3.9.13. There have been fixes by the CPython developers specifically for issues reported by the Kodi community.

Filesystem

• Fixed bug that caused thumbnails to not appear when accessed from “remote” filesystems (e.g. WebDAV)

Subtitles

• Multiple WebVTT fixes

Closed Captions

• Fixed instance of Closed Captions not working

Blu-rays

• Fixed resume issues when playing Blu-rays

Thumbnail images

• Reduced quality of thumbnail creation (advanced setting is available for users who wish to alter the default, see Kodi wiki)

Skinning

• Introduction of a few skinning changes
• player.DisplayAfterSeek removed
• Skip border infill
• Moving speed
• Diffuse fading animations
• VideoPlayer.Art(type) and positional variants

Kodi 20 Alpha 1

Video

• AV1 hardware decoding for Android and Linux (via VAAPI)
• Bump to FFMPEG 4.4

Subtitles

• Subtitle settings can now be changed during video playback
• New font style settings, e.g. border size / color, background type / color / opacity etc.
• Support for dynamic positioning of subtitles (position tags)
• Underlined and strikethrough text style support
• New color palette in color settings
• New setting to change text alignment for closed caption subtitles
• Subtitle metadata can be overwritten (like style and position)
• Improved font size that matches point/pixel proportions
• Subtitles are displayed correctly when Kodi is in window mode
• Improved VPlayer for better reading of multiline text
• Improved SAMI format, better support for multiple languages
• Improved TX3G format to support multiple styles, colors and alpha channel
• ASS/SSA subtitles are now displayed without flickering
• Improved image-based subtitle rendering for better aspect ratio
• Support for WebVTT subtitle format type
• Improved font list settings, actual names of fonts are now displayed
• Support for OpenType font type (OTF)
• Improved calibration window, possible to reset calibration settings

Discs

• Fixed resume of Blu-rays and DVD ISOs in file mode
• Fixed playback of some optical discs on Linux (incorrect mapping mountpoints)
• Optical media is now mounted by default onl Linux (via udisks)
• Code cleanup and platofrm split of disc drive handling
• Skin cosmetics
• Fixed duplicated context menu items

Edit Decision List (EDL)

• Fixed EDL mute sections and EDL cuts

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

• Independent volume settings for GUI sounds
• Password reveal button in keyboard dialog
• Fixed wrap lists
• Fixed hitrect on auto sited buttons
• Fixed context menu options that are not triggering the respective builtin action

Input

• Support for built-in Steam Deck controller

Skinning

• New Color Picker window dialog which displays a list of colors
• Improved image control to support read of dynamic $INFO data to “colordiffuse” tag
• Improved Player Process Info window with new information added, grouped by context
• New media flags for HDR videos: detect, store and process type of HDR in video file
• Skin developers can now define modal dialogs if its visibility depends on boolean condition evaluation
• Introduction of new infoabels, deprecation of old ones (e.g. Player.Editlist, Player.Cuts, etc.)

Estuary / Estouchy Skin

• PVR Home Screen: New widget for timers (replaces old current/next recording widget)
• PVR Home Screen: Add percentage played progress bars to recent channels and recordings widgets
• PVR Home Screen: Changed default click action to open TV guide window
• Improved display of EDL markers on default skin (EDL mutes are now shown, cut sections are identified)

Games / Retroplayer

• Savestate manager for Retroplayer with captions describing the state of the game (provied by website RetroAchivements.org)
• In-game Port Setup dialog to change between game controllers

UNIX Family Platforms

• Implementation of WS-Discovery (SMB) for *ix platforms (Android / Linux / Apple)

iOS / tvOS

• Improved Siri Remote handling
• Improved “Now Playing” Info

macOS

• Support for Apple’s M1 SoC including native windowing / input handling (Kodi developers do not provide prebuilt M1 DMG files)
• Extented game controller support to OSX
• Many code cleanups, refinements and refactors

Android

• Updated Android build to use Gradle for signing / aligning / packaging

Linux

• ACES / Hable Tonemapping for GLES
• More BiCubic Shaders for GLES
• Pipewire support

Windows

• New setting to use 10 bit swapchain for SDR videos, which improves video quality and more precise color conversions. Even applies if video output is limited to 8 bit RGB by system or GPU driver
• Improved DXVA2 performance (hardware video decoding) by sharing decoding and rendering surfaces; avoids video copy operations and reduces video memory usage on NVIDIA and AMD GPUs using recent drivers

i8n support

• Harfbuzz rendering for scripts with open type font shaping features

PVR

• Channels and recordings can specify a PVR provider
• Support for read-only recordings
• Saved search requests and new Estuary PVR Home Screen widget for EPG search
• Possibility to refresh all channel logos in channel manager
• PVR settings: New feature to specify which data to delete when resetting PVR database
• Automatic cleanup of cached PVR images (cached image files and texture.db)
• Improvements when using multiple PVR addons
• Performance improvements, especially when using a large channel list

Date / Time

• Many updates and changes to use std::chrono, affecting the complete code base

Addons

• Support for adding video HDR type info to a video list item
• New color picker feature
• Color button settings
• Function for removing orphaned dependencies recursively

Kodi 20 Nexus Download Link

Kodi 20 Nexus should always be downloaded from the official Kodi download page. Visit the page, select the icon for your platform and download the corresponding installation file.

Old versions of Kodi (e.g. Kodi 19 Matrix) can be downloaded from the official mirrors page. Select the folder for the appropriate platform and then download the installation file. Kodi 20 Nexus.