Releases

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Release history

This is the Kodi release history with condensed summaries of the changes present between each release and the one prior to it; only the most important or notable new features, functions, and changes in each stable version of Kodi are shown here. A link to the unabridged changelog for any version can be found on that release's announcement post on the Kodi Blog.

Legend
Green Current release
Blue Future releases
Red Old releases
Codename Version Release date Significant changes XBMC Live based on
Matrix 19.0 TBA N/A
Leia 18.3 27 June 2019
29 December 2017 - XBox One v18 Alpha released to Windows Store
  • Retroplayer gaming and associated game control support
  • Digital Rights Management decryption support
  • Music Library – new ways to explore and enjoy your music collection
  • Live TV improvements, including support for new back-ends
  • Binary addon support and the binary addon repository
  • Android Leanback and voice control
  • Playback improvements (audio and video), including improved Blu-ray support
N/A
18.2 22 April 2019
18.1 17 February 2019
18.0 29 January 2019
Krypton 17.6 15 November 2017 N/A
17.5 24 October 2017
17.4 22 August 2017
17.3 25 May 2017
17.2 21 May 2017
17.1 23 March 2017
17.0 5 February 2017
Jarvis 16.1 24 April 2016
  • Added FM Radio receiver based upon RTL-SDR as PVR Addon backend client
  • Added support to PVR API for Scheduling Recordings of TV Shows (EPG based DVR Timers for "Series Recording")
  • Added 'Play recording' context menu option if an EPG entry has an associated (PVR) recording
  • Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for all popular third-party external PVR backend platforms:
  • Added automatic dependency handling for binary addons
  • Improved add-on update and rollback support by adding ability to choose a specific repo and allow repositories to hold many versions of same addon
  • Changed saving of skin settings which are now stored as separate files
  • Added support for Animated GIF images to loadable for any kind of textures, e.g. Posters and FanArt
  • Added support for image resource (e.g. weather fanart, studio logos, genre icons, etc.) and sound resource (e.g. button clicks, transitions, errors, etc.) addons
  • Added new infolabels that can display audio/subtitle properties for all available streams
  • Added support for sortby and sortorder attributes to the <content> element
  • Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms, and overhauled Re-Touched, the default touch screen skin
  • Added support for lossless software decode of DTS-HD tracks/streams in videos using libdcadec
  • Improved and enhanced Blu-ray support (including updated libbluray dependecies)
  • Upgraded FFmpeg multimedia codec and demux libraries to stable branch release version FFmpeg 2.8.5
  • Removed certain audio codecs from core and made them into audio decoder and audio encoder add-ons
  • Unified the music library and files view (similar to video library structure)
  • Added option for for user ratings of video items and editing user ratings from the GUI frontend
  • Added support to sort by top albums by play count in the music library
  • Updated movie, TV show, music and music video scrapers
  • Improved ALSA, PulseAudio and OSS sinks for ActiveAE for Linux desktops/embedded systems
  • Improved Pi Audio sink for ActiveAE for Raspberry Pi
  • Improved DirectSound and WASAPI sinks for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved CoreAudio and Darwin sinks for ActiveAE for (Mac) OS X and iOS
  • Added ability to open and edit playlists from within Kodi
  • Added "long-press" support to extend the functionality of a single button on a remote control
  • Improved code stability and performance as well as general code clean-up in many core areas
  • Improved the the integrated UPnP / DNLA Media Server and Client
  • Improved AirPlay compatibility support for iOS 8 (via updated libshairplay) and added initial support for AirPlay from iOS 9 devices
  • Improved HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
  • Removed karaoke features due to lack of maintainer
  • Added proper implementation of handling MEDIA keys support on Android
  • Improved support for UltraHD decoding / 4K resolution output when HW supports it
  • Improved display of other Android apps while browsing these under Kodi as application launcher
  • Improved touch-screen keymapping for Android based platforms for better gesture support
  • Improved Kodi support for BSD (operating system) on FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
  • Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API for Intel), VDPAU (NVIDIA) and XvBA (AMD/ATI) video hardware acceleration (requires VAAPI/VDPAU/XvBA compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Improved automatic refresh rate switching support for video playback
  • Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support on ARM processor architecture (using WeTek Play and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Improved OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for Linux (using Raspberry Pi as reference hardware)
  • Improved touch and gesture support for iOS based iDevice platforms (iPad, iPod, and iPhone)
  • Removed support for Apple TV 2
  • Removed support for iOS 5.1 devices (e.g. iPad 1)
  • Updated the whole rendering system on Microsoft Windows platforms to DirectX 11 and Direct3D 11 native support
  • Improved DXVA/DXVA2 rendering and decoding on Windows (when using DirectX 11 device drivers)
N/A
16.0 21 February 2016
Isengard 15.2 19 October 2015
  • Added possibility to use multiple PVR clients for different PVR backends at the same time
  • Improved PVR, EPG, and OSD frontend GUI in Kodi and extended the PVR API to support more features and functions
  • Improved PVR API and database adding many new EPG and Channel properties
  • Improved PVR / DVR timeshift support to pause Live TV (note that each PVR backend still need to support timeshifting)
  • Improved PVR / EPG extensions and notifications support over the JSON-RPC API
  • Improved Closed Captions (CC) support for Live TV
  • Improved the "GlobalSearch" (service addon) function by adding EPG search support
  • Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for all popular third-party external PVR backend platforms:
    • PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake (method stub) backend for skin development and regression testing
    • IPTV (IPTV Simple Client) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • FilmOn PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • PCTV Systems (Broadway) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • Stalker Middleware PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • VBox TV Gateway PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • Tvheadend PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • MediaPortal PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • MythTV PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from the Kodi's community
    • VDR (Video Disk Recorder) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • Enigma2 (Dreambox / Vu+ / DBox2) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • WMC (Windows Media Center) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • DVBLink PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
    • DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • Removed internal MythTV VFS client code in favour of its external PVR Client Addons
  • Removed internal VDR (VTP) VFS client code in favour of its external PVR Client Addons
  • Removed internal Tvheadend (HTSP) VFS client code in favour of its external PVR Client Addons
  • Removed internal TuxBox (Dreambox/DBox2/Vu+/Enigma1/2) VFS client code in favor of external PVR Client Addons
  • Removed internal ReplayTV (DirectTV) VFS client code since its old and was no longer being maintained by anyone
  • Removed internal SlingBox VFS client code since its old and is no longer being maintained by anyone
  • Improved Addon Manager frontend GUI in Kodi, adding support for categorization, new manager layout and more
  • Added initial integration for binary addons support and changing the Kodi build system around it
  • Added framework support for binary addons for audio decoder and audio encoder codecs
  • Extend Addons API to support binary addons for audio decoder and audio encoder codecs
  • Added support for context-menu addons for skinners and addon developers
  • Added option for addons scripts to check status of DPMS energy saving functions of underlying OS
  • Improved the ability to extend Kodi's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
  • Improved Addons API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambient lighting (Ambilight clone) client software such as Boblight
  • Improved addon management at Kodi version upgrade by immediately fetch updates from repository after upgrade
  • Added support for context-menu addons for skinners and addon developers
  • Added support Sound Addons for skins instead of including sound files within each skin.
  • Improved PVR / EPG / Live TV and context menus interfaces in Kodi's GUI skinning engine (already used in Confluence)
  • Added support for Language Addons, moving internal Language translation files into external Language Addons
  • Added an accessibility settings section to provide one configuration area for the visually and hearing impaired
  • Added further optimizations to Kodi's GUI engine for faster rendering on low resource embedded devices
  • Added new icon types and missing icons to Confluence
  • Added PVR and EPG support to the Re-Touched (touchscreen friendly) skin
  • Improved Dirty Regions rendering on all platforms
  • Improved Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) to Kodi's GUI skinning engine
  • Improved Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) for Subtitles when in 3D mode
  • Improved navigation of video audio tracks and subtitle selection lists
  • Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms, and also improved the default touch screen skin (Re-Touched)
  • Improved and expanded the internationalization options and regional configuration settings in the GUI
  • Improved GUI settings configuration levels for Basic, Standard, Advanced, Expert (defaults to "Standard")
  • Improved selection when installing new skins
  • Update the default bold and regular Roboto TTF fonts from Google
  • Updated keyboard layout for many languages
  • Restructured settings windows and descriptions for almost every setting and configuration
  • Removed legacy code to backwards compatibility for skins made pre-Frodo (XBMC 11.0)
  • Added adaptive skipping/seeking through audio and video playback, also known as "skip steps"
  • Improved support for H.264 (including Hi10P) multi-threaded video decoding when software decoder on CPU is used
  • Improved Stereoscopic 3D playback with video playlist switching when playlists have 2D and 3D videos
  • Added support for MK3D (Matroska 3D) video extensions and enable double cache by default on these videos
  • Added a Chapter Selector Window with visual thumbnails shows thumbs on where to skip to in video
  • Added support for Closed Captions (CC) in CEA-608 and CEA-708 formats (ATSC Closed Caption)
  • Added support for external subtitles over UPnP / DNLA through the settings section
  • Upgraded FFmpeg (libavcodec and libavformat) libraries to release version FFmpeg 2.6.2
  • Remove certain audio codecs from core and made them into audio decoder and audio encoder add-ons
  • Disabled hardware video decoding of MPEG-2 videos with Standard Definition resolution by default
  • Added support for music nodes that can defined views that are used to organize your media from the music menu
  • Added support for marking as watched during other library operations like “update library” when scanning sources
  • Added support for allowing different sort orders for different sort methods
  • Added ability to jump to first unwatched episode in TV section by default
  • Added support to rescrape season art for newly added seasons
  • Improved MusicBrainz tags support to the Music Library and Database
  • Improved and extended Smart Playlists functionality
  • Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster library browsing
  • Updated music, movies, tv shows, and music video scrapers for Kodi
  • Improved the default cross-platform event driven active state machine pattern ActiveAE (Kodi's AudioEngine)
  • Improved ALSA sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop and generic Linux based Embedded Systems
  • Improved PulseAudio sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop
  • Improved OSS (Open Sound System) sink for ActiveAE for BSD, like FreeBSD and similar BSD Unix based systems
  • Improved AUDIOTRACK sink for ActiveAE for Amlogic
  • Improved Pi Audio sink for ActiveAE for Raspberry Pi
  • Improved DirectSound sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved WASAPI sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved CoreAudio sink for ActiveAE for (Mac) OS X and iOS
  • Improved Darwin sink for ActiveAE for (Mac) OS X and iOS
  • Added new audio visualization addons (only OpenGL versions for Linux and OS X for now)?
  • Improved display of CPU / GPU frequency and temperature for all supported platforms
  • Improved keymap for music playback, as while in full screen pressing select/ok button will now show the OSD
  • Added support for WSGI (Web Server Gateway Interface) to extend the Python Script support in Kodi's integrated webserver
  • Added support for JSONP for JSON-RPC requests to Kodi's integrated webserver
  • Added support for image resizing to Kodi's integrated webserver
  • Improved webserver caching control
  • Improved the JSON-RPC API
  • Improved the the integrated UPnP Media Server and Client
  • Changed Kodi application code base to C++11
  • Improved HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
  • Upgraded HDMI-CEC libraries code from Pulse-Eight to LibCEC release version 3.0.0
  • Upgraded DVD-Video navigation and playback libraries (libdvdnav, libdvdread, and libdvdcss)
  • Upgraded SAMBA client code library to version 3.6.12 for improved support for SMB/CIFS protocol
  • Updated community maintained translations to over 60+ languages to date for Kodi via Transifex Translation System
  • Removed internal DAAP VFS client code for iIunes 6.x music shares (network stream from older Apple iTunes)
  • Removal AFP filesystem support from Kodi's VFS (Virtual File System)
  • Improved code stability and performance as well as general code clean-up in all areas
  • Improved MediaCodec API video decoding implementations support for Android 4.2 (API level 17) and later
  • Improved the dedicated AMLCodec hardware accelerated video decoding support for Amlogic devices
  • Added automatic refresh rate switching support for video playback on Android 5.0 and later (>= API 21), including Android TV[1]
  • Added support for HEVC hardware decoding for MediaCodec API in Android 4.4.2 and later when the VPU supports it
  • Added support for HEVC hardware decoding on Amlogic SoCs in Android 4.4.2 and later when the VPU supports it
  • Added support for UltraHD decoding / 4K resolution output on Amlogic SoCs in Android when HW supports it
  • Added support for screenshot and video bookmarks on Amlogic SoCs hardware
  • Added support for LCD/VFD display panel output on Amlogic SoCs hardware
  • Added support for de-interlacing using BOB deinterlace method on Android
  • Added support for 7.1 channels PCM playback
  • Added support for system handling of audio volume on Android
  • Moved to Android API 17 as minimum with SDK 14 and NDK 10e, meaning at least Android 4.2 is now required
  • Improved NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture
  • Removed the dependency for root/SU access permission rights on Android
  • Improved Kodi support for BSD (operating system) on FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
  • Added MIPS processor architecture support for Linux (Imagination Technologies MIPS Creator CI20 as reference)
  • Added support for HEVC hardware video decoding on Amlogic SoCs when the VPU supports it
  • Added support for UltraHD decoding / 4K resolution output on Amlogic SoCs in Android when HW supports it
  • Added support for screenshot and video bookmarks on Amlogic SoCs hardware
  • Added support for LCD/VFD display panel output on Amlogic SoCs hardware
  • Improved video accelerated decoding on Freescale i.MX 6 based devices
  • Improved ARM processor architecture (using WeTek Play and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support (using WeTek Play and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration (requires VDPAU compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Improved XvBA (AMD/ATI) Hardware Video Acceleration (requires XvBA compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Improved OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for Linux (using Raspberry Pi as reference hardware)
  • Improved dedicated AMLCodec hardware accelerated video decoding support for Linux on Amlogic devices
  • Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux
  • Removed dependencies of SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for everything but hardware abstraction for input devices
  • Improve Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for iOS (on iPad, iPhone, and iPod iDevices)
  • Moved to iOS 8.1 SDK, minimum iOS 5.1 is now required, this removes support for Apple TV 2 builds
  • Improve Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for (Mac) OS X
  • Added Kodi support for OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" from Apple
  • Moved to OS X 10.10 SDK, meaning minimum (Mac) OS X 10.7 Lion is now required, and no more 32-bit builds
  • Improved DXVA/DXVA2 (DirectX Video Acceleration) support (requires DXVA/DXVA2 compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Added support for HEVC hardware video decoding via DXVA on Windows when hardware and driver supports exist
N/A
15.1 16 August 2015
15.0 21 July 2015
Helix 14.2 28 March 2015
  • Renamed and rebranded to Kodi Media Center (from XBMC Media Center)
  • Improved PVR, EPG, and OSD frontend GUI in Kodi and extended the PVR API to support more features and functions
  • Improved PVR / EPG and Live TV interface in Kodi's GUI skinning engine (already in use in Confluence)
  • Improved PVR / DVR timeshift support to pause Live TV (note that each PVR backend still need to support timeshifting)
  • Improved PVR / EPG extensions and notifications support over the JSON-RPC API
  • Updated and improved PVR backend clients addons for many popular third-party external PVR backend platforms:
  • PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake (method stub) backend for skin development and regression testing
  • IPTV (IPTV Simple Client) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • Tvheadend PVR Addon backend clients maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • MediaPortal PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • MythTV PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from the Kodi's community
  • VDR (Video Disk Recorder) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • Enigma2 / Vu+ / Dreambox PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • WMC (Windows Media Center) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • DVBLink PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
  • Added framework support for binary addons (inc. closed source proprietary addons) for audio encoder codecs
  • Added support for audio encoder codecs via a binary addons and move Vorbis, LAME, Flac and WAV audio encoders to addons
  • Added capability for Text-to-Speech screen readers addons for visual impaired
  • Improved the ability to extend Kodi's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
  • Improved Addons API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambilight clone client software such as Boblight
  • Improved Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) to Kodi's GUI skinning engine
  • Improved Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) for Subtitles when in 3D mode
  • Added support for HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) a.k.a. H.265 software video decoding
  • Improved support for H.264 (including Hi10P) multi-threaded video decoding when software decoder on CPU is used
  • Upgraded FFmpeg (libavcodec and libavformat) audio/video codec libraries to release version FFmpeg 2.2)
  • Removed FFmpeg from from the Kodi code tree, making it easier to compile/build separately
  • Improved network and file system reading when scanning files and searching for subtitles
  • Improved MusicBrainz tags support to the Music Library and Database
  • Improved and extended Smart Playlists functionality
  • Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster library browsing
  • Updated music, movies, tv shows, and music video scrapers for Kodi from the community
  • Added support for Planar Formats and PTS audio synchronization from player in ActiveAE
  • Improved the default cross-platform event driven active state machine pattern ActiveAE (Kodi's AudioEngine)
  • Improved ALSA sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop and generic Linux based Embedded Systems
  • Improved PulseAudio sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop
  • Improved OSS (Open Sound System) sink for ActiveAE for BSD, like FreeBSD and similar BSD Unix based systems
  • Improved AUDIOTRACK sink for ActiveAE for Amlogic
  • Improved Pi Audio sink for ActiveAE for Raspberry Pi
  • Improved DirectSound sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved WASAPI sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Improved CoreAudio sink for ActiveAE for Mac OS X and iOS
  • Improved Darwin sink for ActiveAE for Mac OS X and iOS
  • Improved CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
  • Upgraded DVD-Video navigation and playback libraries (libdvdnav, libdvdread, and libdvdcss)
  • Upgraded SAMBA client to version 3.6.x for improved support for SMB and CIFS protocols
  • Updated community maintained translations to over 60+ languages to date for Kodi via Transifex Translation System
  • Improved MediaCodec API video decoding implementations support for Android 4.1 (API level 16) and later
  • Improved StageFright API video decoding implementations support for Android 4.0 (API level 14)
  • Improved the dedicated AMLCodec hardware accelerated video decoding support for AMLogic devices
  • Improved NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture
  • Improved Kodi support for BSD (operating system) on FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
  • Added initial optional X11 support on EGL (EGL-X11) based systems on Linux, full-screen mode only
  • Added native XvBA accelerated video decoding for AMD/ATI GPUs on Linux
  • Improved ARM processor architecture (using WeTek Play and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support (using WeTek Play and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration (requires VDPAU compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Improved OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for Linux (using Raspberry Pi as reference hardware)
  • Improved dedicated AMLCodec hardware accelerated video decoding support for Linux on AMLogic devices
  • Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux
  • Upgraded SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) from version 1.2 to 2.0 for improved input-support on Linux
  • Removed dependencies of SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for windowing and event handling on X11
  • Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for iOS (on iPad, iPhone, and iPod iDevices)
  • Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for (Mac) OS X
  • Improved DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) support (requires DXVA compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Upgraded Kodi for Windows and binary addons to compile with Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 by default
N/A
14.1 2 February 2015
14.0 23 December 2014
Gotham 13.2 18 August 2014
  • Added much improved PVR / EPG and Live TV interface in XBMC's GUI skinning engine (already in use in Confluence)
  • Added improved PVR / DVR timeshift support to pause Live TV (note that each PVR backend still need to support timeshifting)
  • Added much improved PVR / EPG extensions and notifications support over the JSON-RPC API
  • Improved PVR front-end with Live TV and EPG specific windows, plus PVR stuff in OSD and GUI settings in Confluence skin
  • Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for many popular third-party external PVR backend platforms:
    • PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake backend from Team-XBMC for skin development and regression testing
    • IPTV (IPTV Simple Client) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • Tvheadend PVR Addon backend clients maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • MediaPortal PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • MythTV PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from the XBMC's community
    • VDR (Video Disk Recorder) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • Vu+ / Enigma2 / Dreambox PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • WMC (Windows Media Center) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • DVBLink PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
    • DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • Added option for allowing skins to query directories (e.g. plugins) to fill static content
  • Added a Monitor class to receive JSON-RPC notifications directly through the Python bindings
  • Added announce function and register addon for announcements to the Add-ons API
  • Added new Built-In function to control state of attached HDMI CEC device via Add-ons API
  • Added support for XBMC's Python interface to use native keyboard if possible (currently only iOS)
  • Added support for addon binary reading and writing via a "buffer" class usable from addons
  • Added WOL (Wake-on-LAN) with send magic packet function to the Add-ons API
  • Improved the ability to extend XBMC's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
  • Improved Addons API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambilight clone client software such as Boblight
  • Added support for customizable menu structure for home and beyond
  • Added Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) to XBMC's GUI skinning engine
  • Added Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) for Subtitles when in 3D mode
  • Added a simple Movie Set management to GUI for Edit/Clear Set and Add/Remove Set members
  • Added option support for both banner and poster music art types simultaneously
  • Added picture tags metadata info accessible for skins or addons developers
  • Added further optimizations to XBMC's GUI engine for faster rendering on low resource embedded devices
  • Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms, and also improved the default touch screen skin (Touched)
  • Added ImageFactory implementation with factory to abstract different image libraries and hardware acceleration
  • Improved Dirty Regions rendering on all platforms
  • Refactored settings system to consist of XML files containing descriptions of every setting
  • Added support for H.264 (including Hi10P) multi-threaded video decoding when software decoder on CPU is used
  • Added support for Forced Subtitles ("forced flag") in external subtitle files
  • Added support for video playback of SageTV recordings
  • Added unified buffering capability to video and overlay renderers for all internal players
  • Upgraded FFmpeg (libavcodec and libavformat) audio/video codec and demuxer libraries to FFmpeg 1.2 (rev e820e3a)
  • Added extensive MusicBrainz tags support to the Music Library and Database
  • Added ability to queue list of items / add items to a playlist without playing them
  • Improved and extended Smart Playlists functionality
  • Added support for scanning videos SFTP and SSH sources so can scrape metadata
  • Added support for write-enabled WebDAV (delete/rename/write files and directories)
  • Added "Add art" button to video artwork selection dialog
  • Added support for "last played" sort option to the TV Show GUI
  • Added support for OGG cover art extraction to TagLib
  • Added option support for exporting music art as JPEG or PNG rather than TBN file extension
  • Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster browsing
  • Added theaudiodb.com music video scraper as new default for music videos
  • Added new cross-platform event driven active state machine pattern ActiveAE sink as the default for XBMC's AudioEngine
  • Added ALSA sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop and generic Linux based Embedded Systems
  • Added PulseAudio sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop
  • Added OSS (Open Sound System) sink for ActiveAE for BSD, like FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and similar Unix based systems
  • Added AUDIOTRACK sink for ActiveAE for Amlogic
  • Added Pi Audio sink for ActiveAE for Raspberry Pi
  • Added DirectSound sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Added WASAPI sink for ActiveAE for Windows
  • Added Darwin sink for ActiveAE for Mac OS X and iOS
  • Added support for CoreAudio AudioEngine to OS notifications for device changes on Mac OS X and iOS
  • Added support for "Play to" and controlling remote XBMC / DLNA instance over UPnP
  • Added new "Fishbmc" audio visualization addon (only OpenGL versions for Linux and Mac OS X for now)
  • Added GUI settings levels for Basic, Standard, Advanced, Expert (defaults to "Standard")
  • Added support and GUI settings for SOCKS 4/4a/5 proxy types and remote DNS
  • Added possibility to define help descriptions ("I" key) for every setting in GUI settings
  • Added option to set auto login of a specific user profile via the GUI
  • Added CPU / GPU frequency and temperature for all supported Linux platforms
  • Added support to allow key IDs in keyboard.xml to be in hexadecimal format
  • Upgraded DVD-Video navigation and playback libraries (libdvdnav, libdvdread, and libdvdcss)
  • Upgraded SAMBA client to version 3.6.x adding full support for SMB 2.0 and SMB 2.1 protocols
  • Added initial support for running libxbmc.so headless (without GUI) as a background service / deamon
  • Added a generic and user-mappable cross-platform touch input system
  • Improved CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
  • Moved subtitle addon core handling to core and added native support for subtitle plugin services
  • Updated community maintained translations to over 60+ languages to date for XBMC via Transifex Translation System
  • Added first full (and stable) XBMC for Android port with multi-architecture platform support (supports ARM, MIPS, and x86)
  • Added built-in command for addons and skins to execute Android apps with optional params via applicationmanager
  • Added support to allow landscape and reverse landscape orientation of XBMC GUI on Android
  • Added MediaCodec API (Android 4.1 API level 16) software rendering implementation support to XBMC's DVDPlayer
  • Added StageFright API (Android 4.0 API level 14) hardware rendering implementation support to XBMC
  • Added OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for OpenMAX AL API on Android via StageFright and MediaCodec
  • Improved the dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on Amlogic
  • Added external player (external player launcher) support on Android
  • Added native volume control for Android from within XBMC
  • Improved NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture
  • Improved XBMC support for BSD (operating system) on FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
  • Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD
  • Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD
  • Added VA-API (libva) support for decoding videos with larger resolutions than 1080p (such as 4K resolution)
  • Improved ARM processor architecture (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
  • Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities
  • Improved OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for Linux (using Raspberry Pi as reference hardware)
  • Added RenderCapture implementation to Linux for Raspberry Pi for Ambilight addons
  • Added support for OpenMAX pipeline to handle JPEG decode/resize/convert/encode to texture on Raspberry Pi
  • Added support for hardware assisted video decoding of MJPEG, VP6, VP8 and Ogg Theora on Raspberry Pi
  • Added support for Fast Forward and Rewind video up 4x to OpenMAX (OMXPlayer) on Linux for Raspberry Pi
  • Added support multi-channel PCM audio output over HDMI to OpenMAX (OMXPlayer) on Linux for Raspberry Pi
  • Added screenshot implementation to Linux for Raspberry Pi that includes the video layer
  • Added hot-plug support for Linux input devices, such as Bluetooth remotes and keyboards
  • Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux
  • Removed dependencies of SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for windowing and event handling on X11
  • Added support for native media control bar and play background music on iOS
  • Added adaptions for developing XBMC on non-jailbroken iSO devices (for development only, not to release on App Store)
  • Improved XBMC support for OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)
  • Added support for copy and paste to and from clipboard with command key
  • Added support for Pixel Shader based HQ (High Quality) scalers for DXVA renderer on Windows
  • Added hybrid shutdown option on Windows 8 (which in turn enables quick boot)
  • Removed Windows XP support (as from now XBMC for Windows requires at least Vista or later)
Lubuntu 14.04
"Trusty Tahr"
13.1 5 June 2014
13.0 4 May 2014
Frodo 12.3 24 December 2013
  • Added unified Live TV and PVR frontend with a common EPG and DVR (Digital Video Recording) client GUI
  • Added unified PVR backend framework and API for multiple PVR backend software from third-parties
  • Initial Android (operating system) port with multi-architecture platform support
  • Initial BSD (operating system) port for FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
  • Added unified "AudioEngine" audio abstraction framework with an API and platform sinks
  • Added dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on Amlogic
  • Added dedicated OMXPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding via OpenMAX IL API
  • NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for the ARM architecture
  • Improved ARM processor architecture (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
  • Added ability to run a split display resolution for GUI and video playback on embedded platforms[1]
  • Enabled Dirty Regions rendering to redraw whole screen on single dirty region by default on all platforms[2][3]
  • Added 64-bit build support Mac OS X to match the existing 64-bit support for Linux
  • Improved CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
  • Library customization that allows for custom video nodes
  • Added Advanced Library Filtering for Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, and Music views
  • Improved Smart Playlist for Advanced Library Filtering
  • Added custom video library tags for Movies, TV Shows and Music Videos to simplify sets with scraping
  • Added support for both banner and poster video art types simultaneously[4]
  • Added storing of "Episode ID" for First Aired, DVD Episode Number, and Absolute Number sort order
  • Added support for exporting video art as JPG or PNG rather than TBN file extension
  • Switched to TagLib for reading metadata embedded into audio files
  • Better library database handling for faster browsing
  • Improved image and texture caching for GUI speedup
  • Improved Touch / Gesture API support for touchscreen interfaces
  • Added HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and M3U8 (Extended M3U) playlist support
  • Added WebSocket support for JSON-RPC and to Addons API[5]
  • Added image transformation handler for resizing images on-the-fly over JSON-RPC and WebServer API
  • Added basic support for PVR / EPG extensions and notifications over the JSON-RPC API
  • Added SmartPlaylist Extensions and Extended Filtering in JSON-RPC[6]
  • Added support for screensavers written in Python programming language
  • Added ability to extend XBMC's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
  • Blu-ray Disc HDMV menu support (but not BD-J / BD-Live menus)[7]
  • Improved deinterlacing "Weave" method for playback of interlaced video when upscaling
  • Improved performance of the default Web Interface (complete rewrite of JavaScript loading)
  • Improved AirPlay / AirTunes target support
  • Improved the Audio-CD ripper that now works as a background task job
  • Improved international language file translations system that are powered by Transifex[8]
  • Added a Test Suite based on Google C++ Testing Framework to make regression testing easier
  • Added support controlling external XBMC and third-party UPnP/DLNA instances over UPnP
  • Upgraded Plutinosoft's Platinum (libplatinum) UPnP and DNLA libraries
  • Upgraded FFmpeg's libavcodec and libavformat audio/video cedec and demuxer libraries
  • Removed the old HTTP API in favour of the new JSON-RPC API
Lubuntu 12.10
"Quantal Quetzal"
12.2 3 May 2013
12.1 18 March 2013
12.0 29 January 2013
Eden 11.0 24 March 2012
  • iOS port for Apple TV 2G, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad
  • Dirty regions rendering for texture support to skinning engine
  • Efficiency improvements to reduce high cpu/gpu usage
  • Default skin changed to a horizontal home layout
  • New RenderCapture type to the Python script framework
  • Combined Files and Library mode for videos
  • Playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc support
  • Slingbox playback over the network support
  • Peripheral manager controller under settings
  • Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) support for HDMI
  • Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support
  • Improved Touch / Gesture API and Mouse support
  • Improved ARM processor architecture support
  • Improved OpenMAX Video Decoding Acceleration support
  • Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support
  • Improved JSON-RPC API compliant with JSON-RPC 2.0 specs
  • Improved VDPAU performance
  • VDPAU HQ Upscaling support (require NVIDIA's capable GPU)
  • H.264 accelerated video decoding via Apple's VideoToolBox API
  • JPEG accelerated video decoding via Apple's VideoToolBox API
  • Added basic DRC (Dynamic Range Compression) volume limiter
  • AirPlay/AirTunes target support
  • Extended Addons API adding extension points for Service Addons
  • Ability for all addons to provide their own web interface
  • Removed native weather forecast scraper, use weather add-ons instead
  • Added support for multiple simultaneous HID device mappings
  • FFmpeg upgraded (libavformat and libavcodec)
Lubuntu 11.10
"Oneiric Ocelot"
Dharma 10.1 10 March 2011
  • Unified Addon framework
  • Addon Browser GUI for installation and management of third-party addons, skin, and scripts
  • Team XBMC's official Addons Repository with Addon FanArt support
  • Update Notifications
  • Movie Sets (option to group movie collections)
  • WebM/VP8 codec
  • Gesture support to XBMC's GUI Engine
  • Unencrypted Blu-ray Disc support
  • Broadcom Crystal HD video acceleration support (All Platforms)
  • Windows Touch API support (Windows 7 touch features and functions)
  • DXVA 2.0 (DirectX Video Acceleration) (Windows Vista/7 exclusive)
  • WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) for raw bitstream output (Windows Vista/7 exclusive)
  • High-Quality Bicubic and Lanczos Upscalers (Video Resamplers) as Direct3D HLSL (Windows Vista/7 exclusive) and OpenGL GLSL Shaders
  • Direct3D port of the OpenGL Spectrum 3D Audio Visualization for DirectX (Windows Vista/7 exclusive)
  • AVisual Studio 2010 Express edition and Visual Studio 2010 non-Express edition support (Windows Vista/7 exclusive)
  • ARM processor architecture (Linux exclusive)
  • VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (Linux exclusive)
  • OpenMAX Video Acceleration support (Linux exclusive)
  • NEON (ARM) Video Acceleration support (Linux exclusive)
  • Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support (OS X exclusive requires Snow Leopard and NVIDIA 9400 or later)
  • OpenGL ES 2.0 compliance
  • JSON-RPC, JSON API
  • RTMPE and RTMPTE
  • Microhttpd Web Server replaces old GoAhead and Spyce code
  • SSH file transfer protocol (sftp) via libssh
  • MySQL database backend
Ubuntu 10.04
"Lucid Lynx"
10.0 18 December 2010
Camelot 9.11 24 December 2009
  • Revamped user interface via the new default skin “Confluence“
  • DirectX support by default for the Windows platform
  • A complete reorganization of the settings menus uniformed across skins
  • Automatic video information extraction
  • Out of the box support for new remotes
  • Smoother video playback performance
  • All scrapers updated
  • Increased subtitle and Karaoke lyric support
  • Support for CoreAudio API (OS X exclusive)
  • AC3 and DTS digital audio pass-through to SP/DIF on Apple TV (thanks to CoreAudio)
Ubuntu 9.10
"Karmic Koala"
Babylon 9.04.1 27 May 2009
  • PPC (PowerPC) support for Mac OS X (PowerPC G4 or later)
  • VDPAU (Nvidia's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix)
  • New Karaoke features
  • Officially dropped support for Xbox
  • Updated codecs and major bug-fixes for DVD-Video playback core
  • More Media Info Scrapers
  • Improved FanArt support
  • Revamped skinning engine
Ubuntu 9.04
"Jaunty Jackalope"
9.04 6 May 2009
N/A 2.0.0 29 September 2006
  • Reworked skinning engine.
  • DVD-Video menu/navigation support (with ISO/IMG image parsing) through internally developed core
  • RAR/ZIP archive parsing
  • New audio/music-player (PAPlayer) with crossfade, gapless playback and ReplayGain support
  • Karaoke CDG-file display
  • Xored Trainer Engine (gaming-cheats) (not ported from Xbox)
  • XLink Kai (online-gaming) front-end (depreciated)
  • Added iTunes 6.x DAAP and UPnP-client
  • Read-only support for FAT12/16/32 formatted USB Mass Storage Devices up to 4GB in size
  • Brand new "skinnable" 3D visualizer.
N/A
N/A 1.1.0 18 October 2004
  • ITU H.261, creative labs yuv (cyuv), supermac cinepak (cvid), quicktime, on2 vp4, 3ivx d4 / 3vi1 mpeg-4 video support
  • Container support for nsa, raw audio in .mov, .ac3, .dts and dts-wav
  • Zoom/stretch options: zoom, stretch 4x3 or 14x9 or 16x9, original size, custom
  • Volume control
  • Tags parsing and display for wma, m4a, mp4 and aac (mpeg-4 audio) audio-files
  • International-language fonts for subtitles via ttf-fonts
  • Audio CD Ripper, backup cdda's to hdd in wav, ogg or mp3 (lame) format
  • Karaoke cdg-file and audio cue sheets (.cue) support
  • iIunes music shares via DAAP (network stream from Apple iTunes)
  • XBMC's xbmsp-client code updated to support "auto-discovery of xbmsp servers"
  • Auto-temperature and fan-speed control options
  • Network-configuration and setup via GUI
  • Emergency recovery console (enables the ftp-server during fatal errors)
  • Profiles for settings
  • Mouse support and virtual-keyboard
  • LCD-display output extended to also support xaddons lcd-mods and xecuter3 lcd
N/A
N/A 1.0.0 29 June 2004 N/A

Codename history

See: Codename history

References