Context Item Add-ons

Development

Add-on development

Context Item Add-ons

Context item add-ons extend the Kodi context menu with useful actions not present in Kodi by default.

Introduction

Context item add-ons must provide the kodi.context.item extension point and a <menu> definition.

Example:

<extension point="kodi.context.item">
  <menu id="kodi.core.main">
    <item library="contextitem.py">
      <label>30000</label>
      <visible>true</visible>
    </item>
  </menu>
</extension>

The first <menu> element defines which top level menu to attach to. In core, there are two available: kodi.core.main and kodi.core.manage. Add-ons may attach to a menu defined by other add-ons as well.

Next, the <item> element defines the action to add to perform when the user selects the item. It is specified my assigning the name of a Python script file to the library attribute. Each menu item needs to have a unique library value (Duplicate items are ignored).

<label> is a string, or an ID from the language file, that specifies the text that is shown in the context menu item, on the screen.

<visible> is required, and should contain a visibility expression, which will determine if (or when) the item is visible in the context menu.

This feature requires at least version 2.23.0 of the Python API (Jarvis), which should be specified in the Addon.xml#<requires> element:

<import addon="xbmc.python" version="2.23.0"/>

Note: Kodi v19 Matrix and later.

In Kodi v19 Matrix and later, it is possible to specify an optional args attribute to a context item. The contents of this attribute will be passed as an argument to the script specified in the library attribute. It can be accessed via sys.argv. The combination of args and library need to be unique. Duplicate combinations are ignored.

<extension point="kodi.context.item">
  <menu id="kodi.core.main">
    <item library="contextitem.py" args="command_arg">
      <label>30000</label>
      <visible>true</visible>
    </item>
  </menu>
</extension>

Note: Keep in mind that there is limited space in the context menu. Attaching a context menu to an add-on will force the user to have all of them enabled at the same time. Consider using #Submenus, or creating a separate add-on.

Submenus

<menu> and <item> elements may be mixed and nested to created submenus. Example:

<menu id="kodi.core.main">
  <menu>
    <label>My submenu</label>
    <item library="contextitem1.py">
      <label>30001</label>
      <visible>true</visible>
    </item>
    <item library="contextitem2.py">
      <label>30002</label>
      <visible>true</visible>
    </item>
    <menu>
      <label>Subsubmenu</label>
      <item library="contextitem3.py">
        <label>30003</label>
        <visible>true</visible>
      </item>
    </menu>
</menu>

Accessing information about selected item

The sys.listitem attribute contains a copy of the item the context menu was opened on. It is an instance of xbmcgui.ListItem. See https://codedocs.xyz/xbmc/xbmc/group__python__xbmcgui__listitem.html for available properties.

Example script:

import sys
import xbmc

if __name__ == '__main__':
    message = "Clicked on '{}'".format(sys.listitem.getLabel())
    xbmcgui.Dialog().notification("Hello context items!", message)

v15 Isengard (deprecated)

Isengard, API version 2.20.0, does not support <menu> definition and can only define a single item as follows:

<extension point="kodi.context.item" library="addon.py">
  <item>
    <label>Hello World</label>
    <visible>!IsEmpty(ListItem.Genre)</visible>
    <parent>kodi.core.manage</parent>
  </item>
</extension>

This syntax is considered deprecated and will be removed in future versions.

Note: Both syntaxes are backwards and forward compatible. Add-ons may use both the old <item> and the new <menu> at the same time for comparability with v15 Isengard and v16 Jarvis.