Download Kodi 18.0 Alpha 3

The third official development version of Kodi version 18.0 has become available. This cross platform media center software is developed for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. In version 18.0, codenamed Leia, the entire source code has been reviewed, among other things, with the aim of improving stability. Furthermore, several improvements have been made to the music library and watching live television, there is a full 64bit version from Kodi and is now also available through the Windows Store. Finally, the media player has been improved, which means that fewer stuttering should occur, and it can also handle 4k and 8k resolutions, HDR, DRM and the latest codecs. The complete changelog for this release is here to find; this is the first piece from the release notes†

Kodi v18 Leia – Alpha 3

We hereby present you the third and last alpha build of Kodi v18 as we are going forward entering beta stage. This release is a continuation of the previous two with our continuous focus on solving bugs and usability problems. So far it has proved to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it’s not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.

currently included

A full changelog is nearly impossible to create and in this release article we will only cover the basics. For a more extensive list you can visit our wiki page v18 (Leia) changelog which will be updated along the way. This third alpha release contains no big new features as we are focus on bugfixing only.

Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.

Stability and usability is key

In general the whole stability has been improved quite a lot. The times you still get glitches or occasional crashes haven been reduced due to just ripping out not so well coded parts and replaced with a more structured design and standard. Not that the old code was bad however over time new insights were gained and having newer code standards just make it better. Untangling all parts or components and make them behave better next to each other has been one of the biggest efforts done so far.

Current skins available

Due to changes in how Kodi works skins need to be updated for each release. As of this moment we have the following ones have been update by their developers and are readily available from our repository.

Adnoic† Aeon Nox 5† Andromeda† Black Glass Nova† chrome† Confluence† fTV† grid† mimic† Nebula† Omni† Rapier† Sio2† Xperience1080

More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.

The story continues

Although we don’t really have a clear future plan or clear cut goals (except making a great media center) we would welcome any developer who wants to spend time on getting Kodi better in every way. Either improving the core code to newer standards, fixing bugs or implementing a new feature we haven’t thought of. Compared to years ago the code has become better to understand and follow for newcomers to get started. Once we get something written down of certain to reach goals we will certainly share them.

A great improvement has been made on the documentation that explains how to compile and work on the core code for Kodi. We highly recommend to read the article Kodi’s GitHub codebase new face and better documentation†

release time

You might also wonder when we will actually release this as a final version? Currently we don’t really have a set time however it should at least be somewhere this year so. There’s still enough room left for improvements however we could change our minds at any point in time and just call it ready enough to start the release cycle. In short we can’t say or promise anything. For now we will start doing the Alpa release on a regular bases to bring further balance to the force.

That’s about it for now and we’ll go back at improving this upcoming v18 release. Should you wish to give it a try a new version is readily available each day as well as nightly version. We can certainly recommend trying it out however take in mind that it’s not fully production and living room ready yet (take a backup). So far a guestimate of several tens of thousands of users already use it so it can’t be that bad can it. You can get it from the download page clicking on the platform of choice and hitting the “pre release” tab android and Windows we have an easy to use download add-on which you can find in our repository.