You have movies on a NAS, music on an external drive and photos in a few folders, and you want one screen on the living room TV that reaches all of them. Kodi, from the XBMC Foundation, is built for that job. This page covers version 21.3.0.0 for Windows, and the installer comes straight from the official server mirrors.kodi.tv.
One library for local files, network storage and the internet
Media usually ends up scattered across disks, network shares and online sources, and a standard player handles one file at a time. Kodi works as a media center instead. It plays most videos, music, podcasts and other digital media from local storage, network storage and the internet.
The developer is the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. The app is free.
The 10-foot interface and the PVR tag
Kodi uses a 10-foot interface, meant to be read from a sofa and driven with a remote control. It runs on several operating systems and hardware platforms, including consoles and TVs. The app is tagged for movies, music, photos and PVR, which points to live TV and recording support.
The 21.3 release also touches the library. Video library rescans are faster, and multi-episode files no longer overwrite the first episode. Subtitle selection now handles two-letter ISO 639-1 language codes.
What to check before installing 21.3 on Windows
The package is 74 MB, and the package ID is XBMCFoundation.Kodi. Several fixes in this release target Linux, such as Blu-ray playback and Turkish keyboards, so they will not change much on Windows.
The team says Kodi 22 alphas exist, while 21.x "Omega" remains the current release. If you want the newest stable build, 21.3 is it.
What's new in 21.3.0.0
Version 21.3 adds HDR support on Xbox One and speeds up video library rescans. It also fixes multi-episode files overwriting the first episode, CDDB lookups through Gnudb.org, and a crash when a PVR stream is stopped from a remote app.
Kodi pros and cons
Pros
- Free, with a GPL-2.0-or-later licence
- Plays local, network and internet media in one app
- 10-foot interface designed for TVs and remote controls
- Faster video library rescans in 21.3
- Developed by the non-profit XBMC Foundation
Cons
- Most fixes in this release target Linux, so Windows users will notice little change
- Several 21.3 fixes apply to Linux, not Windows
- The 74 MB download comes from an external mirror, not from us
Is Kodi safe?
The installer is fetched from mirrors.kodi.tv, the XBMC Foundation's own server, so nothing passes through us. Kodi is released under GPL-2.0-or-later, which means its source code is open for anyone to read. We have not run an independent security review of this build, so use the official link and check where the file comes from before you run it.
How to install Kodi
- Press the download button to get the official file.
- Run the installer you saved and confirm the Windows security prompt if the publisher matches.
- Follow the setup steps, then start Kodi from the Start menu.
