Kodi 20 ‘Nexus’ Reaches ‘Alpha 1’ Stage (Now Available for Download)

• The first pre-release Kodi 20 build is now available for download.
• Kodi 20 focuses on adopting modern features and enhancing subtitles.
• You can try Kodi 20 now, but keep in mind it’s highly unstable.

It’s been around 2 months since we received the latest stable version of Kodi (Kodi 19.4), but that doesn’t stop Kodi's developers from working on the next major version. With that said, Kodi 20 ‘Nexus’ has just entered a very important stage of development (‘Alpha 1’), becoming available for anyone to download.

As noted on the official Kodi website, you can expect a slate of changes throughout Kodi’s code, making the application more efficient. However, major Kodi releases have always implemented a lot of new features, and that situation is no different with Kodi 20 ‘Nexus.’

You can find the complete list of new features just below, but we’d like to point out some of the highlights. So, AV1 hardware decoding finally becomes available on Android and Linux. There’s also a whole slate of changes regarding how subtitles are handled. You can change their styling, alignment, calibration, and plenty more.

Then, Kodi 20 ‘Nexus’ continues to improve support for gaming. You can switch between different controllers more easily, and there’s support for Steam Deck as well. And when it comes to brand-new technologies, Kodi 20 comes with initial support for Apple’s M1 family of chips, including native windowing and input handling.

Here’s the full list of changes you’ll find in Kodi 20 ‘Nexus:’

Video

• AV1 hardware decoding for Android. 
• AV1 hardware decoding for Linux via VAAPI 
• Bump to FFMPEG 4.4 

Subtitles

• Add new font style settings such as border size/color, background type/color/opacity, shadow color/opacity, and blur
• Add support to display subtitles with dynamic positions which make use of position tags
• Add underlined and strikethrough text style support
• Add a new wide color palette in color settings
• Add a new setting to change text alignment for closed caption subtitles for a better reading
• Add a new setting to override subtitles metadata like style and position
• Improved font size that now matches the point/pixel proportion
• When Kodi is in windowed mode subtitles are now always displayed correctly
• Improved VPlayer for better reading of multiline text
• Improved SAMI format to better support multiple languages
• Improved TX3G format to support multiple styles, colors, and alpha channel
• ASS/SSA subtitles are displayed without flickering
• Improved image-based subtitle rendering to keep a better aspect ratio
• Add support to the WebVTT subtitle format type
• Improved font list setting - the actual names of the fonts are now listed
• Add support to OpenType font type (OTF)
• Improved calibration window, so it's now possible to also reset the calibration settings
• Subtitle settings can now be changed while in playback without side effects

Discs

• Fix resume of Blu-Rays and DVD ISOs in file mode (not in library)
• Fix playback of some optical discs on Linux due to the incorrect mapping of mountpoints
• On Linux optical media is now mounted by default (via udisks)
• Partial code cleanup and platform split of disc drive handling
• Skin cosmetics
• Fix duplicated context menu items

EDL

• Fix EDL mute sections and EDL cuts

GUI

• Fix wrap lists
• Fix hitrect on auto-sized buttons
• Fix some context menu options not triggering the respective built-in action
• Independent volume setting for GUI sounds 
• Password reveal button in keyboard dialog 

Input

• Added Steam Deck built-in controller support

Skinning

• Add a new Color Picker window dialog to allow to display a color list
• Improved image control to support read dynamic $INFO data to "colordiffuse" tag
• Improved Player Process Info window - new information has been added and grouped by context
• New media flags for HDR videos: detect, store, and process the type of HDR in a video file 
• Skinners can now define modal dialogs if their visibility depends on Boolean condition evaluation
• Deprecation of old info-labels with the introduction of new generic ones (e.g. Player.Editlist, Player.Cuts, etc)

Estuary/Estouchy

• Estuary PVR Home Screen: New widget for timers (replacing old current/next recording widget)
• Estuary PVR Home Screen: Add percentage played progress bars to Recent Channels and Recent Recordings widgets
• Estuary PVR Home Screen: Change the default click action to open the Guide window
• Improve display of EDL markers on the default skin (EDL mutes are now shown, cut sections are also identified)

Games

• Savestate manager for Retroplayer with captions describing the state of the game provided by https://retroachievements.org/ 
• In-game Port Setup dialog to change between game controllers 

Platform Specifics

• UNIX Family Platforms:
  • Implement WS-Discovery (SMB discovery) for *ix platforms (Android/Linux/Apple) 
• iOS/TVOS:
  • Improved Siri Remote handling 
  • Improved "Now Playing" info 
• macOS:
  • Initial support for M1 native including native windowing/input handling 
  • Extend GameController support to OSX 
  • Many code cleanups/refinements/refactors
• Android:
  • Update Android build to use Gradle for signing/aligning/packing 
• Linux:
  • Add ACES/Hable Tonemapping for GLES 
  • More BiCubic Shaders for GLES 
  • Pipewire support 
• Windows:
  • New setting to use 10-bit swapchain for SDR videos. Improves video quality and more precise color conversions: YUV to RGB, limited to full range, shaders, etc. This is true even if video output is limited to 8-bit RGB by the system or graphics driver. 
  • Improved DXVA2 (HW video decoding) performance by sharing decoding and rendering surfaces. Avoids video copy operations and drastically reduces video memory usage on NVIDIA and AMD graphics using recent drivers. 

i8n support

• Harfbuzz rendering for scripts with open type font shaping features 

PVR

• Channels and Recordings can specify a provider 
• Read-only recordings supported
• EPG Search: Add Saved Searches, incl. new Estuary PVR Home Screen widget
• Channel Manager: Add the possibility to refresh all channel logos
• Settings: Add the possibility to specify which data to delete when resetting the PVR database
• Automatic cleanup of cached PVR images (texture.db and cached image files)
• Functional Improvements for multi PVR Add-on scenarios
• Performance improvements, esp. for a large number of channels

Build System/Dependencies

• Most dependencies have been updated to the latest, or close to, for Apple/Android platforms
• Many cmake updates to update the build system

Date/Time

• Many updates/changes to use std::chrono throughout the codebase

Addons

• Color Picker 
• Color button setting 
• Add support to add video HDR type info to a video list item
• Function for removing orphaned dependencies recursively 

Since this is a very early pre-release build, expect the currently available ‘Alpha 1’ version of Kodi 20 to have its fair share of problems. With that said, Kodi’s developers recommend it only to those interested in the application’s development. In other words, you should not use this version as your main Kodi installation.

That especially applies to those with a lot of Kodi add-ons. As a reminder, we’ll say that Kodi 19.0 ‘Matrix’ broke many Kodi add-ons due to its transition to a more recent version of Python. That situation remains the same with Kodi 20 ‘Nexus,’ which doesn’t work with a lot of add-ons as it’s a pre-release build.  

If you’re willing to give it a go, visit the ‘Download’ section of Kodi’s website. Then, select your platform of choice, and make sure to pick the ‘Prerelease’ tab. Download and install Kodi 20 ‘Nexus’ from there.

Lastly, we’ll note that we’re quite far from a stable Kodi 20 ‘Nexus’ release, as it seems. Kodi’s developers have announced that they’re returning to a more traditional Alpha/Beta/Release Candidate model, so there’ll be plenty of pre-release builds until Kodi 20 becomes stable enough for everyday use.