The Next Kodi 17 Krypton Release Candidate Is Out Now

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Fans of jailbreaking and the media center software Kodi are waiting anxiously for the next version to be released, and it’s easy to see why. The Kodi team has promised quite an exciting list of updates for Kodi 17 Krypton, but first the software must go through an extensive series of beta testing. Fans will be happy to hear that the team is moving fast, however, and the third release candidate has arrived.

In fact, although we’re only on the 17th edition of the software, the team has already named version 18 Leia in honor of Carrie Fisher, the actress who played Princess Leia in the Star Wars film trilogy. She passed away a few weeks ago.

Kodi 17 Krypton may be out soon

The first release candidate for Kodi 17 Krypton came out at the beginning of the year, and already the third candidate is available. It’s unclear how many candidates we will see before the final version is released, and the Kodi team hasn’t given a target date for the final release. However, the fact that the third candidate is ready only about two weeks after the first one means that they’re moving fast.

The team that makes the popular open source media center software explained in their official post that each release candidate build is aimed at collecting feedback from testers as they move toward version 17 Krypton. Testers are expected to provide information on usability and overall stability of the software, and then the Kodi team goes to work on improvements.

The group explained that because it is a small team with limited resources, it’s possible that not all the bugs will be fixed, so they welcomed developers who can fix the bugs to submit information to help out.

What’s in the third release candidate?

In this latest release candidate, testers will find updates to Estuary, including some bug fixes and other improvements. The group also reverted a change that caused problems with video playback on some files in the previous candidate and fixed issues with the mouse not going all the way to the right side of the screen in the OSX version. Other bug fixes cover general playback of videos, EPG/ PVR, and the cmake build system. The Kodi team also updated CEC 4.0.1.

If you would like to try out this third release candidate, you can download it here.

New features expected in Kodi 17

One of the biggest new features coming to Kodi is a pair of new default skins, although the old Confluence skin will still be available. The new skins are Estuary and the touch-enabled Estouchy. The team revamped the home screen and now implements a smart playlists format to list the items that are most likely to interest you the most.

The next full release of the media center software also cleans up the settings section to make it more user-friendly and makes PVR easier to use and better. It will also include changes to the add-on manager, improvements to music handling, the addition of Video Player, and other features. You can check out the full list of new features here.

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