While most people are transitioning into paid media streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify, some people still tend to watch their movies and listen to their music from local sources; either from optical disks or video/music files on the storage drives. This week’s app, Kodi, is a highly capable digital media playing and organizing software, targeting the media on the storage.
The ultimate media player for dedicated hardware
Kodi is an interesting app by design since it is meant to be used on devices that are supposed to be dedicated to media consumption. Shutting down the app by mistake is almost impossible since it does not allow quitting without clicking the “turn off” button on its interface.
Kodi can play almost any kind of media, including images, videos with all kinds of codecs, and music. In addition, users can install games or extra functionalities to Kodi for enhancing its capabilities. For example, it is possible to use third-party plugins to find and apply cover photos for all of the movies in your storage. The app has its own plugin repository with a visual interface and automatic update feature as well; no hassle in finding and updating the plugins.
The most important part of the app is its capability to play media from almost anywhere. You can stream your videos and music from an internet domain, a directly connected storage drive, a Windows PC in the same network, a NAS server, and many more. Although it might be a bit challenging to set up those configurations except directly connecting a storage drive for inexperienced users.
How to install Kodi?
Flathub
flatpak install flathub tv.kodi.KodiSnap
sudo snap install mir-kiosk-kodi