How to use kodi’s web interface to control your home theater pc (or stream music)

Kodi is designed to be easy to navigate on the big screen, but there are times you may want to access it through your computer. You’re able to start play things and control playback, for example, all without needing to touch the system itself. You can also go one step further with Kodi’s web interface and stream content to your computer from your Kodi system.

It’s not necessarily for everyday use, but if you need to access your Kodi system in this way, here’s how to get it all set up.

Use a browser to control Kodi

1. Go to Settings.
2. Click on Service settings.
3. Select Control.
4. Click on Allow remote control via HTTP.

Note the username and port, though the default values should be “kodi” and “8080” unless you already changed them in the past.

How to find the IP address of your Kodi system

Next, you need to find the IP address of your Kodi system. Here an easy way to do that:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Select System info.
3. Click on Summary.

You’ll see your IP address listed there, so make a note of it for the next step.

To connect using your browser simply go to the address bar and type in , subbing the word “port” for 8080, if you didn’t change the default. The web interface will now load and look something like the image above.

Any of the content on your Kodi system is now available to you, but by default, you’ll be setting stuff to play on the main system. It is, however, a great way to cue up content for future viewing while you’re in front of your PC or schedule TV recordings.

Related stories

• What is Kodi, and how do you use it on Windows 10?
• How to use Kodi to watch live TV
• Why Kodi isn’t illegal: Cutting through the media’s misreporting

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You’re sitting on your couch, browsing the web on your laptop. Some music would be nice, but you don’t really want to put down your laptop, pick up the remote, and browse your music collection with your TV remote.

Happily, there’s a better way. One of Kodi’s built-in features lets you explore your entire media collection, even your add-ons, using the browser on your laptop. With it, you can start playing a TV show on your Kodi box without putting down your laptop and picking up the remote. You can even stream to your music right in your browser, which is great if you don’t have all of your music on your laptop.

A previously third-party add-on named Chorus is now part of Kodi itself, and this beautiful HTML5 interface couldn’t be easier to enable and use. Let’s get started.

How to Enable and Access Kodi’s HTTP Web Interface

To get started, you need to enable Kodi’s remote control feature. On the home screen, click the Settings button, which the gear at top-left.

Next, head to “Service settings,” as seen here.

Head to the Control tab, and you’ll see the option to allow remote control via HTTP.

You can set a custom port number, but the default will work fine. You can also choose a username and password, if you’d like to lock this thing down a little bit. The “Web interface” option should, by default, say “Kodi web interface – Chrous2,” but might be different if you’ve changed your web interface in the past. Make sure you set this to the default, assuming you want to try the new default interface.

Now that you’ve turned it on, you can access this web interface from any computer on your network. Open your browser and, the address bar, type the IP address for your media center, followed by a colon, followed by the port. For example, if your Kodi box’s IP address is 192.168.1.10 , and your port is set to 8080 , you need to type 192.168.1.10:8080 . Like this:

If you don’t know the IP address for your Kodi setup, you can find it within Kodi itself. From the Settings screen head to System Information > Network and you’ll see all of your network information, including the IP Address. We recommend you set your router to use static IP addresses, so that this IP address doesn’t change on you later.

Once you set a static IP, feel free to bookmark this site for future use.

How to Browse Your Media Collection and Add-ons from the Web Interface

The Kodi web interface basically acts as a remote control for your media center. See those icons on the left? Hover over them to find out what they do.

Each icon more or less represents a type of media in Kodi itself. For example, you can browse your TV Shows.

Hover over any show’s cover and hit the Play button; the entire series will start playing on your media center. Alternatively, you can click the cover itself to browse episodes, or queue the entire show to play after what you’re watching right now.

You can quickly create a playlist for your evening this way, all without interrupting what’s on your TV right now.

Speaking of TV: if you’ve set up your PVR with Kodi, you can use Chorus to quickly check what’s on, and even fire up a particular channel on your media center.

There are also sections for your movies and TV shows, if you want to browse those.

You can even browse your add-ons completely from your browser.

You can browse the complete contents of an add-on, making it possible to browse various everything and queue up a playlist of videos to watch later.

This is all really just getting started: I’m sure there’s no end of uses you can think of for all this access. But there’s one key feature we haven’t even gotten to yet.

Streaming Your Kodi Music Over Your Network

When you first start this browser interface, you’ll notice there are three main panels.

Let’s focus on the panel to the right. It has two tabs: “Kodi” and “Local.” Open the “Local” tab, and you can start building a playlist of music to play right there in your browser—streaming from your Kodi media center to the computer in front of you.

If the panel is open, just click any album or song. Note that this works only for audio files: you can’t play videos from Kodi in your browser over the network. It also doesn’t work for music add-ons in our tests, though if you want Pandora in your browser, it’s probably simpler to just open Pandora in your browser.

This feature is by no means a replacement for something like Plex, which lets you stream your media collection from anywhere. But if you just want a quick way to play your music collection on a Chromebook or phone, this couldn’t be simpler to set up.

A new webinterface called Chorus2

Kodi has many hidden secrets and even team members don’t know the full potential it packs. One of those features you might not know is that Kodi also has a web-interface from which you can browse your library and start playback directly on your Kodi device. It’s something we’ve never really promoted that it was available and I’m not really sure why. However the past few years not much was changed to to it and it kinda fell into decay with only minor fixes done to keep it kind of functional. For Kodi v17 this has been radically changed as we have packaged up a brand new default web-interface called Chorus2.

Back in 2014 or so a developer nicknamed jez500 (Jeremy Graham) appeared on the forum and showed a web interface Chorus he had been working on for some time. Compared to our plain and simply current web interface at that time it was miles ahead with great design and awesome features. From that moment we knew we had to bring him on board and asked if it was ok to make it the new default somewhere in the future and luckily he agreed. Over time work on the webinterface progressed and with everything learned from Chorus he started working on a next iteration which was simply called Chorus2. As we knew he was making an improved version we decided to skip v1 and take v2 when it was ready for daily use. With Kodi v17 also getting a new default skin getting the new webinterface added was the perfect timing. So let’s now do a brief sum up of it’s potential.

General overview
• Clean modern flat design with inspired by material design
• Responsive interface that adapts to screen size however it works best on larger screens/resolutions
• Multi language support – easy to add new languages
• Settings
• Customise web interface settings
• Customise menu items/links (add your favourite addon to the main menu)
• Enable disable Kodi Addons
• Configure Kodi application settings – great for headless setup
• Help section – encourage people to make it better
• File and addon browser to play media that is not in the Kodi media library (most, but not all addons will work via the browser)
• Remote control to navigate Kodi UI and control playback
• Volume, progress, repeat and random control
• Kodi Keyboard control
• Send text to Kodi
• Trigger scanning Audio/Video libraries
• Take a screenshot of Kodi
• PVR support

Playlists
• Easily add media to Kodi audio and video playing queue
• Create and manage unlimited audio and video playlists – these are stored in browser local storage
• Thumbs up audio and video – these are stored in browser local storage
• Saving current Kodi playlist to a browser playlist
• Load a saved playlist into Kodi playing queue
• Support for Kodi party mode playlists

Filtering, sorting and search
• Ability to do some advanced filtering and sorting on Artists, Albums, Movies and TV shows
• Eg. Show only movies with ‘Tom Cruise’ from ‘2015’ sorted by rating
• Search all Kodi libraries from a single search box

Movies and TV
• Detailed movie and episode pages showing loads of media metadata. Eg description, year, directors, cast, AV quality
• Click a cast member to see other media in your library they appear in
• Movie set information
• Progress indicator and resume support
• Watch the trailers for movies in the browser
• Stream video from your library in your browser – highly experimental – for best results use Chrome browser and video encoded as mp4/mkv with 2 channel audio. Support this to make video streaming more solid.
• Download video via the browser

Audio
• Detailed artist and album pages showing metadata. Eg. genre, mood, artist and album information
• Ability to lookup music videos for a song and play in the browser or Kodi (if youtube addon is installed)
• Download audio via the browser
• Stream audio to your browser, will play using a html5 player with a flash player as a fallback – currently only supports streaming mp3 audio
• Create a local streaming queue or import a saved playlist
• Ability to set default playback to be locally in the browser whenever Chorus is started

Under the hood
• Built using robust javascript frameworks: Backbone, Marionette, Lodash, jQuery
• Clean and organised languages: Coffeescript, SASS
• Very modular MVC structure with all aspects of the interface separated into logical concerns (modules) to ease support and addition of new functionality
• PubSub used for all communication between modules
• Grunt build and watch tasks making contributing and developing easier.

How to get it working

• “Kodi Settings > Service settings > Control
• “Allow remote control via HTTP”
• “Allow remote control from applications on other systems”
• Select “Web interface” then select “Kodi web interface – Chorus2” which should be default now
• Change the username to something you can remember
• Change the password to something you can remember. It is highly recommomended to not leave this empty.
• Note the port number (default is 8080)
• To access from the same computer: Open in a web browser
• To access from another computer: Get the IP address for the device running Kodi. Eg “Kodi settings > System information” and note the IP address and open in a web browser

If you have any programming skills or simply want to help get Chorus in your language you can: contribute here.

Made with love by Jeremy Graham

Well quite simple. Just install the last available Kodi v17 version which is available through our download page or Windows store and you are all set to go.

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Kodi is a free and open source media player application developed by the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.

Web interfaces allow users to control and interact with their Kodi installation through a web browser. This can be used for a remote control, library management, visual feedback, and many other things.

Contents

• 1 Turning on the web interface
• 2 Using the web interface
  • 2.1 Default web interface
  • 2.2 Using multiple web interfaces at once
• 3 Manually enabling remote control

1 Turning on the web interface

The webserver is disabled by default and has to be manually enabled by the user. This can be done in Settings → Services → Control → Allow remote control via HTTP . The settings allow to specify a custom port number and an optional username and password for HTTP’s Basic Access Authentication. Furthermore a Web interface can be chosen which will be used when accessing the webserver without any specific path.

2 Using the web interface

There are two options to use any given web interface:

2.1 Default web interface

To set a web interface add-on as the default web UI, go to System -> Services -> Control and select that add-on for the Default value. Then go to the hostname (or IP address) of that HTPC+Port number.

Note: Some platforms use port 80, which is the assumed port if no port is given in the address.

For example, or

2.2 Using multiple web interfaces at once

Let’s say is your local IP for accessing your default web interface add-on. You can access the other web interface add-ons you have installed by going to where you will see a directory listing.

For example, or

3 Manually enabling remote control

If you have installed Kodi on a device and it has started up in Kodi, and you either have SSH access or other access to the Kodi userdata folder, you can manually enable remote control. This is helpful in a few situations, for example: If you have a networked device but no physical remote control (left it at home, can’t find the dang remote, etc), you can still use the web interface or a smartphone/tablet app to control Kodi.

There are two basic ways to do this:

guisettings.xml –

Normally you do not want to manually edit the guisettings.xml file. In this case it should be “safe”, but only change these settings from false to true , and don’t edit other things.

1. Edit the guisettings.xml file in the userdata folder and look for the following settings under ” “, and make sure they are set to “true”. You’ll have to look for them a little bit, because there among several other settings. Assuming you have not set a password or changed other default settings, this should work:
   • – true
   • – true
   • – true
2. Save the file and restart Kodi.

While using an advancedsettings.xml file might be easier to enable these services, doing so will hide them from the normal Kodi GUI. You will have to remove or edit the advancedsettings.xml file to turn these settings back off, which can be confusing later on if you forgot you have an advancedsettings.xml file.

1. Create a plain text file (no rich text formatting, don’t use .doc, etc) and save it as advancedsettings.xml. Make sure that the file extension is “.xml” and not “.txt” or “.xml.txt”.
2. Cut and paste this into your new plain text file:

1. Save this file in your userdata folderNote: If you have an existing advancedsettings.xml file, make sure the tags are between the main tags.
2. Restart Kodi.

The Userdata folder is a subfolder of the Kodi Data Folder and is located as shown in the table below.

We would welcome anyone who is willing to do their part on any improvement that is needed.

Kodi brings your media to life with endless features, a beautiful interface, and ease of use.

Kodi has a giant catalog of community add-ons available for you to customize and tweak your perfect entertainment setup.

Our forum is overflowing with questions, answers, tips, and guides from people all over the globe.

We would welcome anyone who is willing to do their part on any improvement that is needed.

Kodi brings your media to life with endless features, a beautiful interface, and ease of use.

Got a smart TV? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Kodi puts your smart TV to shame. Kodi plays almost every kind of media you can find and looks great while doing it! Here are just a few things Kodi excels at:

Your music collection has never looked this good! Support for almost every format, playlists, party mixes and more.

So much better than a pile of DVDs on a shelf. Kodi brings your movie collection to life with artwork, cast genres and more.

Perfect for binge watching or the occasional catch up on your favourite show. Kodi keeps all your tv organised like nothing else.

Kodi is the best way to share your photos on the biggest screen in the house with a personal slideshow.

Kodi allows you to watch and record live TV all from an easy to use interface. It works with a number of popular backends including MediaPortal, MythTV, NextPVR, Tvheadend and many more.

Kodi isn”t just for passive entertainment media. You can also play games on Kodi. Pick from a large number of emulators, or even play a stand-alone game. There”s even extensive support for game controllers.

But wait, there’s more!

You can get a new skin to change the look of Kodi, or maybe you want to stream your favourite internet radio station and control it all with your web browser or mobile phone? This and so much more is all possible and easy with Kodi.

Kodi runs on just about anything

Kodi runs on a huge range of devices and operating systems, including:

• Windows
• Linux
• Android
• Raspberry Pi
• macOS, iOS, tvOS

A big thanks to our sponsors. They help to keep Kodi free.

What’s new in the world of Kodi

Switching Translations to Weblate

The moment is here to move to an even more optimal translation service for our application. Ultimately we have chosen Weblate, and its service will be hosted at This is done to optimize our workflow and to allow easy inclusion of all add-ons in the official Kodi add-on…

The Votes Have Been Counted and Verified.

Many of you will probably be aware that, since the dawn of time, each version of Kodi takes a vaguely sci-fi/fantasy/movie-themed name, in alphabetical order (Ed: no, don’t ask what happens after we get to Z). This has become common practice throughout the IT industry – look at iOS, Android, Ubuntu…

Kodi “Matrix” 19.1 Release

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, no matter how much testing you do before a major release, you’ll never find and squash anything like all the bugs until you get a proper, large-scale, mass test of the code. In other words, it’s time for a bugfix release on the Kodi 19 “Matrix” series, as…

Vital statistics

Users and members of the community contribute to Kodi in so many different ways.

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Kodi is a free and open source media player application developed by the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.

About

• Kodi Foundation
• Kodi Team
• Sponsorship
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• DMCA Policy

Sponsors

• Bytemark
• FLIRC
• Leaseweb
• Weblate
• GoatCounter
• Mac Mini Vault

Friends

• Fanart.TV
• LibreELEC
• OSMC
• MusicBrainz.org
• TheAudioDB.com
• TheGamesDB.net
• TheMovieDB.org
• TVDB.com
• TVMaze

Social

• Facebook
• RSS
• Twitter
• YouTube

© 2021 The Kodi Foundation. All rights reserved. This web site is powered by Netlify.

Contents

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Access
• 3 Using
• 4 Tips and tricks
  • 4.1 Debug Log Access
  • 4.2 Special Protocols
  • 4.3 Using Playlists

The File Manager allows the maintenace of files from within Kodi on platforms that have no underlying and easily accessible operating system. It will allow you to perform functions such as Move, Copy and Delete to name a few.

If you have Kodi installed on a desktop type operating system such as Windows, or you are able to access Kodi and the media folder system via a network share, there is no need to use this feature as Windows Explorer or equivelant may be easier and have more functionality to manage your files.

If you have arrived at this page looking for details on how to set up File Sharing, then head over to File sharing

The File Manager is accessed from the Settings screen.

The File Manager screen.

The File Manager Context Menu.

Copying files from one folder (Panel A- left) to another folder (Panel B- right)

The File Manager is a remote control friendly interface that uses an A-B panel system. For example, when copying files, Panel A (left panel) contains the original file and Panel B (right panel) will be the selected location the file is copied to.

• Adding a Source here is the same process as adding a Source for Movies, TV Shows, Music and Pictures. Sources added here will not show in the Media Sources page and vice-versa.
• Use the option Switch Media to send the highlighted folder as a Source to either Movies, TV Shows or Pictures. You will still need to Set Content on the Source for Movies and TV Shows and that Source must hold the correct class of media.
• Navigate around the screen using the ↑ ↓ ← → keys on your keyboard or remote control. Once an item is highlighted, use the Context Menu to see available actions.
• Select multiple files by highlighting each item and pressing 0 on a remote or Space on a keyboard. Selected files will show in a green coloured font .
• To use the Rename or Delete actions, you must enable Allow file renaming and deletion in the settings page.
• To add Kodi folders such as Userdata, Profile and others as a Source, use the Special Protocol address. For an example use, see Step 4 in Debug Log Special Protocol.

The following are typical uses of the File Manager.

4.1 Debug Log Access

4.2 Special Protocols

4.3 Using Playlists

To copy multiple files to another location without the need to individually select each one can be achieved with the use of Smart Playlists.

Who needs Netflix? With home theater apps like Plex and Kodi, you can roll your own sweet-looking library with all the TV shows and movies you like, with none of the junk. But which software should you use? Here’s how the two biggest solutions stack up against each other.

The Contenders

Plex and Kodi ( formerly named XBMC ) are home theater apps that allow you to manage your library of TV shows, movies, music, and photos from one place, in a slick interface that’s easy to navigate with your remote or even your phone. Despite having very similar goals, however, they have very different ways of getting there. Here are the basics of each:

• Kodi: Formerly called Xbox Media Center (or XBMC for short), Kodi is an open source project dedicated to building powerful, customizable home theater software. With years of development behind it, there are a ton of add-ons and skins that can add new functionality beyond what’s already included.
• Plex: Plex began life as a fork of XBMC, but it’s become so distinct you’d hardly notice. This project aims to make home theater software dead simple for everyone. It allows you to sync and stream all of your media to any device no matter where you are.

Any time we talk about managing your personal media, there’s going to be an element of personal preference involved. Everyone enjoys their stuff in slightly different ways, so we can’t say what’s perfect for everyone. Even here at Lifehacker, some of us swear by Kodi, while others can’t live without Plex. Keep in mind what you prefer while we break down the key differences between them.

Setup

Setting up your home library for the first time is always the most grueling part of the process. Kodi and Plex handle this step very differently. Which one works best for you will depend on the type of hardware you plan to use. Plex is very useful for streaming your media virtually anywhere, but that feature requires the computer that holds your videos to be turned on and connected to the internet all the time (unless you pay for Plex Pass, which we’ll talk more about later). Kodi, on the other hand, deals mostly with files on the computer it’s running on. Kodi can stream content from other devices, but you can only stream between computers on the same home network, it’s a little more complicated to set up, and it can’t do transcoding (which means you can run into compatibility problems with certain files).

With Plex, you’re prompted to create an account and set your “server” up right off the bat . It’ll use that account to sync your library and stream between various devices. This means if you have movies on your desktop that you want to watch on your phone, you only have to set up one device. Just log in to Plex on your phone and everything that’s available on your server is ready to go. You can also log in to the web interface for Plex from any device with a web browser, which means you already have access to your content virtually everywhere. Plex even transcodes your videos. That means it will automatically convert your videos to whatever type of file it needs on the fly to play anywhere. It’s the unsung hero feature that lets you play anything on any device and it’s easily the biggest advantage Plex has over Kodi.

Kodi’s initial setup can be simple or complex, depending on what you’re doing. When you install Kodi, you’ll be prompted to add files or folders to your library. If you’re installing Kodi on the same desktop that your files are stored on, the setup is easy. However, if your files are stored on another computer—say, your home server, or the desktop in your office—you’ll need to go through the more complex process or sharing those files with Kodi over the network . If you want to start streaming to other platforms, it gets even more complicated . And even then, if you have multiple devices running Kodi, it won’t sync your library unless you do even more work . If you only need to watch your content on one device, Kodi’s system is perfectly fine, but the more devices you add, the more complex it gets.

In this area, Plex wins out, since it’s incredibly simple to set up multiple devices. Of course, you have to be comfortable creating an account with a third-party just to watch your own stuff, but for most of us, that isn’t a problem. Kodi doesn’t require any external servers, though, so there’s no worry that the company might go out of business down the road or anything. There’s just a lot more effort required on your part in exchange for that independence.

The kodi platform allows you to control a Kodi multimedia system from Home Assistant.

The preferred way to set up the Kodi platform is by through discovery, which requires an enabled web interface on your Kodi installation.

There is currently support for the following device types within Home Assistant:

Configuration

Adding Kodi to your Home Assistant instance can be done via the user interface, by using this My button:

Kodi can be auto-discovered by Home Assistant. If an instance was found, it will be shown as “Discovered”, which you can select to set it up right away.

If there wasn’t any discovered automatically, don’t worry! You can set up a manual integration entry:

• Browse to your Home Assistant instance.
• In the sidebar click on Configuration.
• From the configuration menu select: Integrations.
• In the bottom right, click on the Add Integration button.
• From the list, search and select “Kodi”.
• Follow the instruction on screen to complete the set up.

If you previously had Kodi configured through configuration.yaml , it’s advisable to remove it, and configure from the UI. If you do not remove it, your configuration will be imported with the following limitations:

• Your turn on/off actions will not be imported. This functionality is now available through device triggers.
• You may have duplicate entities.
• Kodi must be on when Home Assistant is loading for the first time for the configuration to be imported.

Turning On/Off

You can customize your turn on and off actions through automations. Simply use the relevant Kodi device triggers and your automation will be called to perform the turn_on or turn_off sequence; see the Kodi turn on/off samples section for scripts that can be used.

These automations can be configured through the UI (see Device Triggers for automations). If you prefer YAML, you’ll need to get the device ID from the UI automation editor. Automations would be of the form:

Services

Service kodi.add_to_playlist

Add music to the default playlist (i.e., playlistid=0).

Service kodi.call_method

Call a Kodi JSON-RPC API method with optional parameters. Results of the Kodi API call will be redirected in a Home Assistant event: kodi_call_method_result .

Event triggering

When calling the kodi.call_method service, if the Kodi JSON-RPC API returns data, when received by Home Assistant it will fire a kodi_call_method_result event on the event bus with the following event_data :

Kodi turn on/off samples

The following scripts can be used in automations for turning on/off your Kodi instance; see Turning on/off. You could also simply use these sequences directly in the automations without creating scripts.

Turn on Kodi with Wake on LAN

With this configuration, when calling media_player/turn_on on the Kodi device, a magic packet will be sent to the specified MAC address. To use this service, first you need to configuration the wake_on_lan integration in Home Assistant, which is achieved simply by adding wake_on_lan: to your configuration.yaml .

Turn off Kodi with API calls

Here are the equivalent ways to configure each of the old options to turn off Kodi ( quit , hibernate , suspend , reboot , or shutdown ):

• Quit method

• Hibernate method

• Suspend method

• Reboot method

• Shutdown method

Turn on and off the TV with the Kodi JSON-CEC Add-on

For Kodi devices running 24/7 attached to a CEC capable TV (OSMC / OpenElec and systems alike running in Rasperry Pi’s, for example), this configuration enables the optimal way to turn on/off the attached TV from Home Assistant while Kodi is always active and ready:

This example and the following requires to have the script.json-cec plugin installed on your Kodi player. It’ll also expose the endpoints standby, toggle and activate without authentication on your Kodi player. Use this with caution.

Kodi services samples

Simple script to turn on the PVR in some channel as a time function

Simple script to play a smart playlist

Trigger a Kodi video library update

Notifications

The kodi notifications platform allows you to send messages to your Kodi multimedia system from Home Assistant.

To add Kodi to your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

Configuration Variables

Name displayed in the frontend. The notifier will bind to the service notify.NOTIFIER_NAME .

The host name or address of the device that is running Kodi.

The HTTP port number.

Connect to Kodi with HTTPS. Useful if Kodi is behind an SSL proxy.

Why and when you need to use Kodi? Read the following description and find out more about software everyone is talking about. You will enjoy it!

Kodi: why and how to use

The title ‘Kodi’ is on everyone’s lips nowadays. As a result, you might be interested in what it is and why it is so popular among people. So, let us explain to you its definition and features in short.

Kodi is software that aims to manage the customer’s collection of content, including movies, TV-shows, music, pictures, and so on. Previously it was well-known as a media player app for the first generation of Xbox game console. That’s why a lot of users still remember its old titles – Xbox Media Player (since 2002) and Xbox Media Center (since 2003).

Note that Kodi includes media files that already exist in your library. To get new content, you will still require to subscribe to video streaming (for instance, Netflix) and music streaming platforms (for instance, Spotify). But users have a lot of reasons to like Kodi: this utility is compatible with different file types and devices. Find out more information about this useful software.

Kodi’s features and interface

Let’s know more about Kodi’s interface and how to manage it. Its left-hand side includes a vertical menu. This is a place where you can see all your media data, for instance, music, TV-shows, movies, and so on. The menu seems like any other file manager and is easy-to-use. Also, you can see a search bar on this site. It allows you to find local content and files from YouTube or TheMovieDB.

Let’s know more about Kodi:

Its left-hand side includes a vertical menu. This is a place where you can see all your media data, for instance, music, TV-shows, movies, and so on.

The menu is easy-to-use. Also, you can see a search bar on this site. It allows you to find local content and files from YouTube or TheMovieDB.

With the special settings in the main interface, you will have no problems with using this software as an HTPC setup. If you need more basic information about your system, you will get it there too.

Among such data are battery charge level, resources which are currently used, information about the connection to other gadgets.

Different colors in the menu help you managing files in the easiest way. There are several ways to control software, including remote controllers and mobile devices.

Supporting content in Kodi

In general, there is no problem to add new content to your Kodi library. The user needs to make several clicks and enjoy his media to be well-organized. Here is the step-by-step instruction:

find the type of content you want to add in the left-hand menu;

choose files you want to upload;

add a title for your source.

Easy steps to personalize your Kodi account

Kodi community cared about users and made several skins to optimize the app look in several seconds. To change it, you need to open interface settings and select a skin you like. There are all documents for app skins if you need it, including professional support. Notice that two interface skins look very similar, but only one is prepared for devices with touch screens.

Also, you are free to download and install different add-ons to improve your Kodi. Usually, such extras are created by the Kodi community and supported by the head developers at the company. Users can choose extras they like and customize their own library in simple steps. You can find your already installed extras on the menu. Also, you are free to open the add-ons browser to see more. Just remember that all extras will be sorted involving the use.

Kodi and VPN

If you wonder about using a VPN or not, then there are two answers to your question. Your choice totally depends on the way you want to use this app. If your Kodi account is created to organize your own files in your media library, then you don’t need VPN. But if you plan to use extras that require your network connection, then VPN may be useful. A virtual private network will protect you from being spied on.

At the same time, don’t be misunderstood. A virtual private network is not a magic wand to protect your account from different dangerous situations. For example, if the user starts downloading a virus with legal extra, a VPN wouldn’t be able to recognize and prevent it. So, you should use a virtual private network at the sole judgment.

Kodi doesn’t propose any VPN add-ons. That’s why it is recommended to run VPN on the gadget from which you plan to run Kodi. Such an action will make your outgoing traffic safe. Be sure there are numerous good applications for different operating systems, including Windows, Android, iOS, etc.

Check any website you need regardless of your location. VeePN is a one-tap solution to overpower the block and limitations and help you access all the resources you need online.