Alive GR Kodi Add-On – Current Status, Developer Statement, and Best Alternatives

Alive GR Kodi Add-On – Current Status, Developer Statement, and Future Possibilities

The Alive GR Kodi add-on, often searched as alive gr kodi, alive kodi, greek kodi, or kodi greek add-on, was once one of the most important Greek add-ons available for Kodi. For many Greek Kodi users, AliveGR became the default choice for accessing Greek live TV and other Greek-language content.

Today, however, Alive GR Kodi is no longer working properly, and its future remains uncertain. The original developer, Twilight0, has publicly acknowledged the situation and has shared his thoughts regarding a possible revival — not as a Kodi add-on, but as something different.


What Was Alive GR Kodi?

Alive GR (also known as Alive Kodi) was an unofficial Greek Kodi add-on that gathered Greek content into one place. It gained popularity because it reduced the need to install multiple add-ons for Greek media.

At its peak, Alive GR Kodi provided access to:

  • Greek live TV streams
  • Greek movies and TV series
  • Radio stations
  • Other Greek multimedia sources

Because of this, it became one of the most recognizable Kodi Greek add-ons.


Who Developed Alive GR Kodi?

Alive GR Kodi was developed and maintained by Twilight0, a Greek developer who hosted the project on GitHub:

🔗 https://github.com/Twilight0

This GitHub account contained the add-on’s source code and repository files. For a long period, this was the official distribution and update channel for Alive GR Kodi.


Why Alive GR Kodi Is Not Working

The main reason Alive GR Kodi no longer works is simple:
it is no longer actively maintained.

Kodi add-ons that rely on external sources require constant updates. When maintenance stops:

  • Stream sources change or disappear
  • Repositories fail to connect
  • Add-ons stop installing or stop functioning

This is exactly what has happened with Alive GR Kodi.


Developer Statement: Possible Revival as a Cross-Platform App

In July 2025, Twilight0 publicly addressed the future of AliveGR on his Twitter (X) account (@TwilightZer0). Instead of announcing a return of the Kodi add-on, he shared that he was considering a completely different direction.

Screenshot

According to his statement:

  • He is thinking about reviving AliveGR as a cross-platform app
  • He already has the technical tools to do so
  • The project would require significant time and resources
  • He stated that this could involve quitting one of his jobs
  • Because of this, he mentioned the need for funding, possibly through a GoFundMe campaign

He also clarified that:

  • The app would be free to use
  • It would likely include ads, possibly as a small banner

A public poll was shared alongside this statement, showing mixed community interest.


Current Status According to the Developer

Following questions from users in later months, Twilight0 confirmed that:

  • There is no active development yet
  • The project remains in the planning phase
  • He will announce any updates publicly if and when they happen

This confirms that:

  • There is no active revival of Alive GR Kodi
  • There is no working replacement app at this time
  • There is no confirmed release date or roadmap

Kodi Add-On Issues Reported by Users

In replies to the developer’s posts, users reported that:

  • AliveGR Kodi repositories could not be reached
  • “AliveGr Play” failed to install
  • Live TV streams were not working
  • Manual installation was required but unreliable

These reports align with what most users experience today when attempting to use Alive GR Kodi.


What This Means for Greek Kodi Users

For users searching for alive gr kodi or kodi greek add-on, the current reality is:

  • The original Kodi add-on does not work reliably
  • The GitHub repositories are inactive
  • There is no maintained Kodi version
  • Any future revival would likely be outside Kodi

Until a new solution is officially released — if ever — Alive GR Kodi should be considered discontinued.


Reports of a Temporary Workaround

There have also been isolated reports from the Kodi community suggesting that Alive GR Kodi was made to work temporarily by a user located in Australia. According to these reports, the add-on functioned after manual intervention and adjustments, rather than through the original repository or an official update.

It’s important to clarify that:

  • This was not an official fix
  • It did not come from the original developer
  • It does not represent a stable or long-term solution
  • It is mentioned as a paid assistance service

These cases appear to be individual technical workarounds, rather than a true revival of the Alive GR Kodi add-on. As such, they do not change the overall status of Alive GR Kodi as an unmaintained and unreliable add-on for most users.


Greek Content via the Bugatsinho Repository

While there is no direct replacement for Alive GR Kodi, some Greek Kodi users turn to other active repositories that still provide Greek-related content. One such example is the Bugatsinho repository, which is actively maintained and includes add-ons that may offer Greek media depending on availability.

The Bugatsinho repository can be found at:
https://bugatsinho.github.io/

Unlike abandoned repositories, Bugatsinho’s repo remains online and maintained, making it a more reliable option for users looking for working Kodi add-ons. However, it is important to note that it is not an Alive GR successor, nor does it aim to fully replicate AliveGR’s functionality. The availability of Greek content may vary over time, depending on the add-ons and sources included.


Why Greek Kodi Add-Ons Often Stop Working

This situation is not unique to Alive GR. Many Greek Kodi add-ons stop working because:

  • They depend on third-party websites
  • Streaming sources change frequently
  • Development is handled by one person
  • Long-term maintenance becomes unsustainable

Without continuous updates, even popular add-ons eventually fail.


Final Thoughts

Alive GR Kodi was one of the most influential Greek Kodi add-ons ever created. However, today:

  • It is not actively maintained
  • It does not function properly
  • The developer has shifted focus to a potential future app, still only in planning

Unless something changes, Alive GR Kodi remains part of Kodi history rather than a usable solution.

For now, Greek Kodi users should be cautious of outdated repositories claiming to offer “working” Alive GR versions, as these are not official.



It is the season for giving, so, for those who want the latest and greatest, this is for you: hot on the heels of Kodi 22 “Piers” Alpha 1 (and Kodi 21.3 “Omega”), we present the perhaps predictably-titled Alpha 2.

Usual words – the step from 21 to 22 is a major release, but it’s also an Alpha at this stage, so you’re going to get some bugs as well as funky new features. That is, of course, a major part of the point of early release software: please raise GitHub issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any regressions you wonderful testers come across.

Okay, what’s new in this version?

Video/audio

  • Upgraded to FFmpeg 8
  • Added HEIF/HEIC support
  • Fixed playing streams with more than 256 audio+video+subtitles tracks
  • Improved audio channel handling
  • Improved subtitle selection for “forced_only” subtitles

Library/Sources and Management

  • Added Season Plot
  • Added Movie/TV Show Original Language
  • Fixed bug in Alpha 1 where scanning fails if local NFO files are present
  • Improved Video Version importing

PVR

  • Fixed Daylight Saving Time switching issues

Weather

  • New Weather Skinning API
  • Various fixes and improvements for the Home widget and Weather window

Python

  • Upgraded to Python 3.13.7
  • Added ability to set available fanart

Platforms

  • Windows
    • Multiple Kodi instances can now be run simultaneously
  • Android
    • New dialog explaining microphone permission
  • macOS
    • Fixed high CPU usage in the background
  • LG webOS
    • Improvements for new Media Pipeline
    • Fixed very bright subtitles and GUI when playing HDR / DolbyVision content
    • Fixed subtitles sometimes not displaying

If cutting-edge software is your thing, you can get Alpha 2 from here. Select your platform of choice, and look in the “Prerelease” section. Again, though, please: expect some breakage, don’t use this as your daily installation unless you know how to get things working again, and please share your experiences back with us so we can really get going on those bugs. And take a backup first!

As usual, in the full spirit of open source, you can see what’s changed since Alpha 1 here and from v21.3 here.



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The more observant of you will have noticed that we’ve had some issues getting this version out to everyone, so some of you will have received this already depending on what channel you use (Flatpak, Google Play, winget community repos…). No matter, it’s here for everyone now.

While work is well underway on our next major release, with Alphas already out for Kodi 22.x “Piers”, this doesn’t mean we’ve given up on 21.x “Omega”, as that’s very much still our current release. So, with minimal fanfare, we present to you a package of changes, bug fixes and backports that we like to call Kodi 21.3 “Omega”. Full changelog from 21.2 here.

Release Summary

Major user-facing changes include:

Video

  • Added HDR support on Xbox One
  • Fixed Blu-ray playback on Linux
  • Fixed audio/subtitle issues when resuming Blu-rays
  • Fixed handling of HDR10 light metadata changes
  • Fixed subtitle selection for ISO 639-1 (two-letter) language codes

Library/Sources and Management

  • Improved speed of video library rescans
  • Fixed multi-episode files overwriting the first episode
  • Fixed info dialog for certain Movie Versions
  • Fixed some false positives detecting Movie Versions

Music

  • Fixed CDDB lookups using Gnudb.org’s CDDB API
  • Fixed album search failing for artist names

Audio

  • Fixed rare Pipewire crash when connecting/removing audio devices

PVR

  • Fixed crash when a PVR stream is stopped via remote app

Peripherals

  • Added support for Turkish keyboards on Linux
  • Fixed enabling and disabling Pulse-Eight CEC adapters
  • Fixed the Delete and Alternative Insert keys on macOS
  • Fixed minor visual glitches when managing peripherals

Addons

  • Fixed updating add-ons after 25 days of inactivity (extended to ~68 years)

Skin/GUI

  • Fixed busy dialog crash when multiple dialogs are opened
  • Fixed suspend dialog remaining open after the system wakes up
  • Improved touch support for slider dialog arrows

Network

  • Added support for HTTP Basic Authentication
  • Fixed some network streams failing due to interrupted HTTP/2 transfers
  • Updated libnfs to v6 for embedded platforms
  • Updated CA certificates to 2025-07-15 from the Mozilla CA certificate store

I know we always say this, but, genuinely – sincere thanks go out to everyone who’s helped to identify, isolate or fix any issues. If you know of anything that’s still irking you, please, post in the forums, or raise an issue on Github, as we can’t fix what we don’t know about.

As this is a point release, there are no major changes since the previous version, and you should be fine to install this straight over the top of any existing Kodi 21.x installation – indeed, this will happen automatically on many platforms. However, as for all software installations, back up your userdata beforehand if you’ve any doubts or have anything you can’t afford to lose (and definitely do this if you’re going for a major version upgrade).

A list of all changes for this version can be found at GitHub. If you want to read back on the full history of v21 itself, or of previous versions, you can find the corresponding articles in the relevant blog posts.

Application deployment on different platforms (notably the Microsoft Store) can vary considerably due to circumstances outside of our control, so just be patient, and the update will inevitably find its way through.

Windows Store/Android Deployment

Due to the internal and external hoops we need to jump through, it might be a little while before the update appears for you, and that’s before our usual staged approach to deployment. Sit tight, and it will be with you in due course (maybe the next week or two).



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🎄 Best Streaming Devices to Buy or Gift for Christmas 2025 (Ultimate Guide)

If you’re looking for the best streaming devices to buy in 2025 — whether for yourself or as the perfect Christmas gift — this guide covers the top options across Apple, Android TV, Google TV, and budget streaming sticks.
Below you’ll find optimized comparisons, clear recommendations, and affiliate-link slots ready for you to paste into your blog.


🎯 Best Streaming Device for Apple Users (2025)

Apple TV 4K — The Best Streaming Device for the Apple Ecosystem

If you’re deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, iPad, Mac, HomePod, HomeKit), the Apple TV 4K remains the most premium and polished streaming device available in 2025.

⭐ Why Apple TV 4K Stands Out

  • Industry-leading 4K HDR, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision support
  • Stunning audio with Dolby Atmos
  • Ultra-fast performance thanks to Apple Silicon
  • Clean, ad-free interface (tvOS)
  • Perfect integration with AirPlay, Apple TV+, Apple Music, iCloud Photos, and HomeKit

👤 Who Should Buy It

  • Apple users wanting the smoothest, most secure, most reliable streaming experience
  • People gifting to Apple fans for Christmas
  • Anyone who wants a premium, long-lasting device with constant updates

⚠️ Drawbacks

  • More expensive than most Android TV devices
  • Best value is unlocked only if you already use multiple Apple services

👉 Buy now: Apple TV 4K 3rd Generation


🔄 Best Android TV Streaming Devices (2025)

Android TV and Google TV devices offer unmatched flexibility, app compatibility, and price options — perfect for Android users or anyone wanting an affordable tech gift for Christmas.


Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2020

1) NVIDIA Shield TV — Best Overall Android TV Streaming Device (2025)

If you want the most powerful, most future-proof 4K streaming device, the NVIDIA Shield TV is the #1 choice.

⭐ Why It’s the Best

  • Supports 4K HDR, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos
  • AI-powered upscaling makes HD content look close to 4K
  • Flawless performance for apps like Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube
  • Can act as a Plex server or local media hub
  • Supports gaming through GeForce Now and Android games

👤 Who Should Buy It

  • Tech-savvy users
  • Home-theatre enthusiasts
  • Gamers or people with large local media libraries
  • Anyone gifting to a power user

⚠️ Considerations

  • Costs more than budget streaming sticks
  • Overkill if you only watch Netflix and YouTube

👉 Buy now: NVidia Shield TV


Xiaomi Mi TV

2) Xiaomi TV Box S 4K — Best Budget 4K Android TV Box (2025)

If you want a quality 4K box at a low price, the Xiaomi TV Box S 4K in it’s 3rd generation is unbeatable.

⭐ Why It’s a Great Value

  • Full Android TV / Google TV interface
  • Smooth performance for Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Disney+
  • Built-in Google Assistant
  • Compact, easy to set up, and ideal for gifting

👤 Who Should Buy It

  • Budget-conscious shoppers
  • Secondary TVs (bedrooms, guest rooms)
  • Perfect Christmas gift for someone who wants “smart TV features” without buying a new TV

⚠️ Trade-offs

  • Not as fast as NVIDIA Shield
  • Limited storage
  • Wi-Fi 6 only, no Ethernet port

👉 Buy now: Xiaomi Mi Box S 3rd Gen


3) Other Notable Android TV / Google TV Picks (2025)

✔️ Best for ultra-low budget

ONN ANDROID TV UHD

  • Perfect for Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Prime Video
  • Great value for money

👉 Buy now: ONN Android TV UHD

✔️ Best for simple Google-based smart-home setups

Google TV Streamer 4K

  • Excellent integration with Google Assistant
  • Best choice for people already using Nest, Google Home, or Android phones

👉 Buy now: Google TV Streamer 4K

✔️ Best for Amazon Prime Video / Alexa Home Integration

FireTV 4k Stick / FireTV 4k Max Stick

  • Comes with Alexa so it’s a no brainer if you use it
  • The “Max” version is the best on performance among the two
  • No more supports Android / Android TV

👉 Buy now / Affiliated link(s): FireTV 4K Stick FireTV 4k Max


🎁 How to Choose the Best Streaming Device for Christmas 2025

Here’s a fast comparison to help readers decide:

Your Priority / Use CaseBest Streaming Device
You use iPhone / iPad / Mac / HomeKitApple TV 4K
You want maximum performance and future-proof hardwareNVIDIA Shield TV
You need a cheap but reliable streaming boxXiaomi TV Box S 4K
You want something easy and ultra-affordableONN Android TV UHD
You want the best smart-home integrationApple TV (Apple HomeKit) or Google TV Streamer 4K / FireTV

🎄 Final Thoughts: Best Streaming Gifts for Christmas 2025

Streaming devices are among the best tech gifts for Christmas — affordable, universally useful, and compatible with any modern TV.
Whether you want the premium Apple experience, the raw power of NVIDIA Shield, or the budget-friendly Xiaomi box, this guide gives you everything you need to choose the right device.



So, here we go once again – development (and developers) never actually sleep, so we’re pleased to present the first public preview of our next significant release: Kodi v22, “Piers”.

This is a major release, so, as you’d expect, it comes with many new features. However, it is also an Alpha release, so there’s a very good chance that something won’t work the way it’s intended to. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, which is kind of the point of releasing it: please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any regressions you wonderful testers come across.

So, all that aside… what’s actually changed?

Video/audio

  • Upgraded to FFmpeg 7
  • Audio book chapter support
  • Movie Versions/Extras full redesign
  • Movie Sets support setting info and artwork
  • Better stream selection
  • Automatic cleaning of cached images/artwork

Blu-ray multi-episode support

  • New Blu-ray episode selection menu
  • Blu-ray episodes now have their own progress, media info and artwork
  • Library import/export now handles Blu-ray episodes
  • Episode ranges are now supported and shown in the library
  • Movie Versions/Extras are now supported for Blu-ray discs

PVR

  • New Recently Added Channels (plus new widget)
  • New Providers window (requires skin support)
  • New Custom Timers
  • Improved channel groups
  • Improved saved searches
  • Improved recording functionality
  • Improved EPG search
  • 1-minute EPG resolution (requires skin support)

Games

  • Shader support (from Google Summer of Code 2017/2019)
  • Improved mouse and keyboard support

GUI

  • Reduced memory usage for single- and dual-channel textures
  • Improved performance and memory usage on OpenGL and OpenGLES
  • Improved large texture image quality with better performance on slow devices
  • Implemented front-to-back rendering for better performance (OpenGL(ES) only)

Network

  • Improved SMB GUI settings
  • Support for SMBv2.0 devices lacking SMBv2.1 features such as “large MTU”
  • Fixed connecting to Windows SMB servers with no password
  • Drastically improved performance at listing large SMB directories

Platforms

  • Windows/Xbox

    • Initial Windows ARM64 desktop support
    • Python 3.13 on Windows/Xbox
    • Enabled XAudio2 sink for Windows desktop (was previously only on Xbox)
    • Enhanced Video Super Resolution feature with 10-bit SDR support (Intel and Nvidia) and HDR10 (Nvidia)
  • Android

    • Enabled file sharing to other apps and players
    • Improved channels on the home page
    • Upgraded to Android 15
    • Minimum Android version is now 7.0
    • Android support for 16KB page size
  • LG webOS

    • New unified media pipeline
  • Linux

    • HDR passthrough on OpenGL (was previously only on OpenGLES)
    • Support for the Wayland Color Management protocol, therefor supporting HDR on Wayland with compatible compositors
    • Make Kodi work on systems using a Turkish locale

Peripherals

Known issues

  • Scanning for new content will fail if local NFO files are present (fixed for Alpha 2)
  • Filesystems that use milliseconds can trigger a rescan

If you love life on the bleeding edge of new, you can get Alpha 1 from here. Select your platform of choice, and look in the “Prerelease” section. Again, though, please: expect some breakage, don’t use this as your daily installation unless you know how to get things working again, and please share your experiences back with us so we can really get going on those bugs. And take a backup first!

As usual, in the full spirit of open source, you can see what’s changed since v21.2 here.



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<tap, tap, tap> – Is this thing on? Yes, it is, and so it’s time to once again introduce the highlight of the Kodi year – friends and fellow travellers, welcome to DevCon 2025!

This year we’re coming to you from Tirana in Albania (or Tiranë in Shqipëri in the local language†). A country that, I suspect, most people know little about, Albania has a long and … bumpy history, mostly involving other countries and some less-than-friendly regimes: Romans (both western Roman and eastern Byzantine), Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, Italians, from imperial territory to independence, from international engagement to isolationist communism to modern democracy. Sitting astride both the Aegean and Ionic seas, the country now embraces the promise of full modernity and EU membership as it strives to turn its back on the darker chapters of recent history and take its rightful place in Europe.

As in previous years, we’re going to aim to do a daily update (content-dependent), so let’s see how it goes. Without further ado, then, let’s get straight into it with Day One.


We began with round-table introductions and a typical retrospective: reminiscences for older heads, background for newer ones. We’re coming up to a quarter of a century of XBMC/Kodi, and, as you’d expect, there’s now a significant story of how we got to where we are, and some of the main contributors and contributions along the way.

We continued with an update on the Foundation’s financial position from keithah. We’ve always been very transparent that we’re not a wealthy project, and we’ve never actively pursued financial gain for either Foundation or individuals. That hasn’t changed, although money is gradually getting tighter as e.g. major sponsors fall away, with limited opportunity to replace them in the current climate. We remain solvent, and can both pay our bills and invest in development hardware, server infrastructure and, yes, this conference, but we do need to generate new and more regular income to make sure that remains the case. In terms of priority, then, we wait to see if this is the last DevCon for a while.

Next up, we had a readout on the experience of our most recent release manager, garbear. Getting Kodi tagged, packaged and released on multiple platforms is a significant undertaking, so even point releases involve a good chunk of work. Even apparently minor changes involve merging new translations, for example, plus there are inevitable rule/eligibility checks on software stores and similar. Indeed, our most recent “Omega” 21.2 release actually included a complete update to the entire add-on ecosystem precisely because of translation issues, which means 100+ separate components needed to be built and released alongside the core Kodi application. Even that caused further ripple effects: we needed to update binary add-ons as well, which then, in turn, caused problems for existing 21.1 installations. This led straight into a more practical conversation, with garbear joined primarily by martijn, yol and lrusak to talk about how we could improve things: APIs, ABIs, links, scripts, dependencies, redistributables, SDKs, implications for different platforms – and, yes, much, much more about translations. Releasing new versions of Kodi is most certainly not a trivial task!

This conversation then segued into a long debate about build systems, and the complexity that Kodi brings: there are few, if any, multi-platform applications that use the same code base on quite so many target operating systems. If you think about most other applications that might be available on multiple platforms, the chances are that they use completely different code bases that are then built on specific tools to produce applications that might look similar, and might behave similarly, but are actually very different. Alternatively, you have very many applications that are basically web pages, rendered in a platform-specific wrapper – these can deliver a very consistent experience and rich multimedia, but in a very different way. Kodi doesn’t work like that: it’s a huge amount of C++ and other code that’s custom built to be as consistent as possible across platforms, and, while that resolves very many issues, it also creates some others at the bundling stage on some platforms.

A change of direction next: 78andyp joined to talk us through his recent work – and further plans – around Blu-ray support in Kodi. Currently, Kodi supports three disc playback modes: Kodi can show the Blu-ray menu, with all the navigation overhead; you can ask to play the main movie, and Kodi will just take a guess and play the longest media item on the disc, which may or may not be what you want; or you can go into file view, and wander around until you find that the main movie is labelled as item 636 out of a list of … well, lots. This is obviously all less than ideal, with further implications depending on whether it’s a multi-version disc, an episodic series disc, whether there are extras, and so on. Add to this the complexities of ISO versus physical disc, “playlists” with multiple episodes, or initial scraping versus play-time, and there’s clearly more to be done – and that’s the gauntlet picked up by 78andyp: to make playing a Blu-ray in Kodi as straightforward as playing a media file. This is very much a work-in-progress, but there’s a current 3,000-line pull request that aims to at least start this journey, addressing the simple file view for episodes at play-time. And, like so many things, this process is unveiling other side-quests on the way, ranging from NFO support through ranged episodes to library handling – for both Blu-rays and, potentially, DVDs. There’s clearly huge potential for much more to come, so watch this space, shiny disc fans!

(There was a sidebar conversation during this presentation in which ksooo raised some very valid questions about vision and the natural constraints on Kodi: what are the design principles we are using that ultimately drive what should and shouldn’t be included in Kodi versus, say, a media manager, and thus what are the dialogue boxes or other user interactions that are acceptable? Similarly, how effective could a heuristic be, when will it need user intervention, and what should that intervention look like? Does it need some external “priming”, or metadata information?).

And that’s it for Day One – it’s late, and dinner calls. We’ll be back tomorrow with more, so please, join us then!

† Fun fact: Albanian is the only surviving member of the Albanoid group of languages, and so stands alone, with no direct modern relatives. It’s the official language of Albania and Kosovo, one of the official languages in North Macedonia and Montenegro, and a widespread minority language in Italy, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Greece. Add in the Albanian diaspora across the Americas, Europe and Oceania, and there are three or four times more native speakers worldwide than there are inhabitants of modern Albania – including singers Dua Lipa and Rita Ora.



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A grand building, probably 19th century, on a street corner. The sun is shining, the sky is blue. A line of neatly-trimmed trees sits just in front of it.

… and we’re back! The skies are blue, the sun is shining, we’re fed and refreshed, yet we’re locked in a darkened, overly-warm, windowless room for today’s session. The privations we suffer for our art; you really have no idea.

Let’s get to it, then – welcome to DevCon Day Two!

We kicked off the session with a bit of administrative insight from keithah – how the Board operates, our bank account structure, what we use for 2FA and virtual postal addresses, interaction with tax authorities for our non-profit status, and similar. Nothing of interest to the outside world, but an insight for our team members on some more of the internal moving parts.

While going through some of our open issues, one triggered a conversation (as these things do) about advancedsettings.xml versus GUI windows, and what, if anything, should be “promoted” from the former to the latter. Kodi is a complex application, and the GUI settings are already overwhelming for many, but asking advanced users to edit text files is a little old school (as well as being clearly inconsistent or just plain annoying on some platforms). A good example of this is the use of MySQL: very many people use it, but putting it into the GUI might simply give more people the opportunity to completely ruin their system because of LAN latency or a simple mistyped IP address. No specific conclusions, but it’s clearly a conversation that will continue to run as new features are introduced, tested, and, ultimately, mainstreamed. There’s room for improvement, however.

Next up, garbear came back on to talk about shaders – specifically, work that’s been underway for several years now to implement them in Retroplayer. For those who don’t know, a shader is a computer graphics technique (program, piece of code) that controls the appearance of 3D graphics elements – colour, lighting, texture, reflectivity, and so on. To have these obviously has a significant impact on how a game looks, from 8-bit blockiness to smooth realtime rendering (although they obviously can’t work miracles). There’s a major pull request that’s nearing completion, but there remain some final issues on OpenGL/OpenGL ES targets before it’s all ready.

As we finished that topic, well, once again, we went off on a tangent: the mere mention of GL/GLES sent us off down a whole different conversation, with lrusak, sarbes, chewitt and samnazarko weighing in – but one that’s far too granular to summarise here. Broadly, OpenGL ES is targeted at embedded systems, so offers a subset of functions compared to OpenGL, but that means a disparity in features and thus compatibility. However, OpenGL ES enjoys wider platform support, so standardising on one or the other has a lot of appeal (or, indeed, on Vulkan, but that’s an entirely different conversation).

The next topic was a long one, involved very many people, and came in multiple parts: a broad fly-past of open internal issues (we use GitHub issues to capture and track issues across multiple external and internal topic areas: bug tracking, for general attention of the Team, for the Board, for blog topics, for this conference, and so on). So, discussions in varying depth around (variously) auto-closure of stale issues and PRs; managing permission groups and access rights (enforcing least privilege in a maintainable way); cleaning out old/unsupported add-ons; cleanup of repositories and GitHub organisations; policies and processes around inactive (and, ultimately, retired) team members; how best to use AWS and Azure credit versus what we run on existing servers; potential to move to an open-source messaging platform; the global regulatory landscape.

And that’s just about a wrap for Day Two. There’s a little bit of both physical and virtual tidying up to do, but that’s very much an “us” problem. We have a series of breakouts scheduled (and, inevitably, spontaneously spawning) for tomorrow, so we’ll update you on those as and if relevant – so, maybe see you then!



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A bronze statue of a man in mediaeval armour, sitting astride a horse. His sword is drawn and pointing at the sky; the horse has one fore leg and one hind leg raised.

Day Three dawns. We have a compressed schedule today before we break for individual workshops/breakouts – plus some people will be leaving us early in order to get home – so let’s get to work.

neo1973 opened the day with a discussion about merge policies, specifically around reviews and self-merging your own PRs. There’s a reality that, when you’ve been deep in a certain area of the code, you may well be the subject matter expert – for the moment, at least – so there’s nobody to necessarily critique the what of your code. As such, there’s an element of “publish and be damned”. There is, though, also the how: does the code itself stand up to inspection? We already use tools to sanity check the code, check for null pointers and undestroyed variables, and similar, so the quality side is already covered to a certain extent. That said, AI tools are falling into place and improving quickly, so there’s more that we can do here, and more to investigate.

Onwards into a conversation initiated by yol around some of our hosted infrastructure and some specific issues we have there. That in turn led into a more general conversation around hardware, usage, I/O and capacity, and similar: important to us, but probably less so to the general public.

Next up, chewitt with an update on LibreELEC: user numbers, current platform trends and future plans, dependency/kernel versioning, CI/build, upstreaming fixes, drivers, chipsets, hosting, finances, collaborations, architecture. For what should be obvious reasons, samnazarko weighed in where appropriate with an OSMC perspective.

Finally, lrusak gave an update on a long-desired feature: headless Kodi. It basically exists, it works, but it needs a good chunk of tidying up to make 100% certain that nothing tries to create or access a GUI on a non-existent window manager (e.g. popping up a notification toast). There are headless implementations – such as Docker images – already available from other sources, so this is really just about bringing this into the official release.

And, with that, the main conference comes to an end. Time to huddle together, fire up laptops, and do some coding.


So, that’s it for DevCon 2025. Genuine thanks to Tirana for the hospitality, and to everyone who’s helped to look after us this year – and thanks to you for reading.

Until the next time … lamtumirë, dhe faleminderit.

Team Kodi 2025, Tirana



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IMPORTANT UPDATE, 30th April

While we were proofreading this post and getting ready to publish it, we became aware of some terrible news: the OSUOSL is in very real danger of closing down at the end of this year due to recent funding changes, and they need immediate help. Lance Albertson, the Director of OSUOSL, explains it in his own words here.

This matters so much. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of US public sector funding, this could send shock waves through so many open source projects if it’s allowed to happen. Please, if you value their work – and we all should – and if there’s anything you or your employer can do to help them, we’d ask you to do so.

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It takes an army of people to create, maintain and deliver Kodi, but not everyone involved is a team member. As well as the obvious developers, graphics designers, forum moderators and similar, we’re also hugely dependent on our sponsors for both financial help and donations of infrastructure. It’s the latter category that we’d like to highlight today, specifically the Oregon State University Open Source Laboratory.

The OSUOSL is a nonprofit organisation that works to advance open source technologies, seeking to accelerate the growth of high-impact open source software projects, and promote a global open source culture of accessibility and increased productivity. The lab partners with industry leaders and policy makers to bring open source technologies to new sectors, including education, health and government.

To this end, they’ve been providing free hosting services for FOSS projects since 2003, and currently do so for more than 160 projects, including those of worldwide leaders like the Apache Software Foundation, the Linux Foundation, Drupal – and, of course, Kodi. They offer world-class hosting services, professional software development and on-the-ground training for promising students interested in open source management and programming. The most active organisation of its kind, the OSL delivers nearly 430 terabytes of information to people around the world every month from its hosted sites. Specifically for Kodi, they currently host a significant 2U, 96-core system that runs most of our build systems, as well as separate platforms that host a big part of our public-facing infrastructure: the forum, the wiki, and our pastebin site.

We’re immensely grateful for their assistance and support, and want to publicly thank them for everything they do. OSUOSL is primarily funded through grants, corporate sponsorships and individual contributions from the community. Please see their website for how you can help them to continue providing services such as this.



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