After more than a year of beta and release candidates, cross-platform multimedia service Kodi 17 has finally been made available to the public. It is available for all the major operating systems including Android, iOS, and Windows. Kodi is an open-source, free to download, media center software that allows you to access movies, music, radio content, and games from a single interface.
Kodi 17 offers a new interface
The latest version brings tons of bug fixes and improvements. However, it has dropped support for Android 4.4 and earlier. You are out of luck if you own an older Android device. One of the biggest changes Kodi 17 brings is a redesigned user interface. Estuary has replaced ‘Confluence’ as the new default skin on big screen devices. The new skin is said to be easier to navigate.
Estouchy is the new skin for touch-screen devices. It is a slightly modified version of Estuary. If you are an existing Kodi user, the new interface may require some getting used to, but it’s worth the effort. If you don’t like the new interface, you can always choose to use the Confluence skin. The complete list of changes is available here.
Highlights of the changelog
Kodi 17 introduces a new web interface called Chorus2. The Settings menu has been revamped for easier navigation. Kodi has also added improved setup options for PVR add-ons. The music library has been enhanced with better tagging and improved handling of your album.
Though Kodi 17 has dropped support for devices running Android 4.4 or older, it still has a lot of goodies for Android users. You’ll benefit from improved audio quality. Also, 4K decoding and output works much better if you own a powerful device. Kodi 17 now also support Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, DTS-X, and Dolby ATMOS audio pass-through.
You can download the final version of Kodi 17 for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Apple TV, Linux and others from Kodi.tv.
Kodi 18 under development
If you want a stable version of the software, you may want to download Kodi 17. But if you happen to be among those always looking for more, you can go for Kodi 18 pre-builds. Last month, Kodi announced that it had broken its years-long traditional name selection process to code name Kodi 18 “Leia” after late Carrie Fisher’s iconic character in Star Wars.
It is still unclear when the public version of Kodi 18 would arrive.
