What is Kodi?
Kodi is a free, open-source media player designed for computers and home theater PCs. It plays popular audio and video formats and supports playback from home networks and internet sources. Its interface is designed for use from a couch with a remote control, while also serving as a conventional computer media player.
Kodi scans media sources to create a library with cover artwork, descriptions and fanart. It includes playlists, slideshows and audio visualizations, with skins and add-ons providing further customization. It installs as a native application on supported operating systems, and developers can build it from source using platform-specific CMake instructions.
The project is run by the XBMC Foundation and developed by volunteers. User support relies on community contributors and forums rather than a dedicated telephone support team.
Key capabilities
- A media player for almost all popular audio and video formats
- Network playback and streaming over practically any protocol
- An automatically built media library with covers, descriptions and fanart
- Playlists, slideshows and audio visualizations
- Add-ons and a skinning engine
- Native apps for Android, Linux, BSD, macOS, iOS, tvOS and Windows
Where Kodi fits
Kodi fits home theater PCs and personal computers used to browse and play media collections. It can bring network-accessible media into a library-oriented interface, with remote control operation suited to living-room viewing.
Before deployment, device and operating system support, playback of representative media files, network access and remote control behavior should be verified. Source builds require platform-specific dependencies and instructions. The Android build guide explicitly warns that its x86 and x86_64 targets are not maintained, so those targets need particular scrutiny.
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