Kodi 22 Piers – Beta 1 Pre-Release Now Available

Kodi 22 “Piers” is now officially available as a Beta 1 Pre-Release version for those who wish to download the application.

Kodi is renowned for its constant updates and development, as pre-release versions are usually in the works while the stable version continues to be improved upon.

This tradition continues for the current version, as Kodi 22 “Piers” has moved from the alpha stage into its first beta. A beta release signals the developers consider the new features mostly complete, with the focus now shifting to stability and bug fixes. In an official press release, the Kodi development team stated the following:

“As we move from the Alpha to the Beta stage of the release cycle, the team is happy with the significant number of features and improvements that have come together for v22. Now, the focus becomes stability and performance, leading us to the final v22 release.

If you want the latest and greatest, this release is for you. Being a beta release, there’s some possibility of rough edges, and things that previously worked and now stubbornly don’t. But fear not, you’re part of a relentless community that now has our Beta 1 release to play with. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any faults.”

We have yet to test this pre-release with popular add-ons such as Umbrella, FEN, The Crew, etc. But for best performance we always recommend using the stable version of Kodi with 3rd party add-ons and builds.

Kodi 21.3 is the current stable release and it can be installed in seconds on any device from the TROYPOINT Toolbox.

However, those who do wish to test Kodi 22 Piers on various devices can find the installation links available on the Download Website, with the Beta 1 pre-release available for Android, PC, and more.

The official change log for all pre-releases of Kodi 22 Piers is available below. More details can be found on GitHub.

Kodi 22 Piers Releases

Beta 1 Pre-Release

Release Highlights

• Upgraded FFmpeg to v8.1.2
• Improved HDR handling and AV1 playback fixes
• Fixed the broken DVD on-screen display (OSD) that appeared after Alpha 3
• Improved chapter controls during playback

Platforms

• Linux: A major rendering rewrite brings full end-to-end HDR support and feature parity for OpenGLES, plus expanded support for ARM-based devices and better remote-key handling
• Improvements for webOS and tvOS devices

Known Issues

• On some GBM/GLES platforms, fullscreen video may show stale or flickering overlay graphics

Alpha 3 Pre-Release

Release Highlights

• Upgraded FFmpeg to v8.0.1
• Upgraded Python to v3.14.3
• Added support for taglines in TV shows
• Added support for H264 AVCC subtitles and full IANA language tags
• Added N64 support using software rendering
• Added JSON RPC methods “Player.GetChapters” and “Player.OnPropertyChanged”
• Changed MySQL/MariaDB charset to utf8mb4 and collation to general_ci (case insensitive)

Video/Audio/Subtitles

• Improved Blu-ray support for menus, playback, and TV show episode handling
• Improved chapter navigation and seeking during tempo change
• Changed default samplerate from 44.1kHz to 48kHz
• Fixed missing audio at the start of playback and when changing speed
• Fixed AC3 audio duration for non-48KHz content
• Fixed WebVTT, PGS/VobSub subtitle handling and BCP47 language tag crash from Alpha 2

Games/Streaming/Archives

• Improved shader support and fixed black screen for games with unaligned textures
• Fixed playback of tcp:// and strm:// streams, plus UPnP resume errors
• Added folder stack support for DVD/Bluray folders and fixed zip files over 4GB

Platforms

• Android: Fixed Auto Frame Rate on standby resume, improved Dolby Vision L5 and foreign subtitles
• webOS: Dolby Vision improvements, better audio passthrough and eARC support, AAC fix for older versions
• Windows: Added front-to-back rendering, new XAUDIO/WASAPI default output, fixed Windows 8.1 launch issue
• Linux: Improved power management, extended keyboard/remote support, fixed Wayland key press issue

Known Issues

• Kodi is incompatible with MySQL 9.6 (“sets” is now a reserved keyword). A fix will be included in the next pre-release.
• Blu-ray stream details aren’t saved in the library

Alpha 2 Pre-Release

Video/audio

• Upgraded to FFmpeg 8
• Added HEIF/HEIC support
• Fixed playing streams with more than 256 audio+video+subtitles tracks
• Improved audio channel handling
• Improved subtitle selection for “forced_only” subtitles

Library/Sources and Management

• Added Season Plot
• Added Movie/TV Show Original Language
• Fixed bug in Alpha 1 where scanning fails if local NFO files are present
• Improved Video Version importing

PVR

• Fixed Daylight Saving Time switching issues

Weather

• New Weather Skinning API
• Various fixes and improvements for the Home widget and Weather window

Python

• Upgraded to Python 3.13.7
• Added ability to set available fanart

Platforms

• Windows
  • Multiple Kodi instances can now be run simultaneously
• Android
  • New dialog explaining microphone permission
• macOS
  • Fixed high CPU usage in the background
• LG webOS
  • Improvements for new Media Pipeline
  • Fixed very bright subtitles and GUI when playing HDR / DolbyVision content
  • Fixed subtitles sometimes not displaying

Alpha 1 Pre-Release

Video/audio

• Upgraded to FFmpeg 7
• Blu-ray menu support
• Audio book chapter support
• Movie Versions/Extras full redesign
• Better stream selection
• Automatic cleaning of cached images/artwork

PVR

• New Recently Added Channels (plus new widget)
• New Providers window (requires skin support)
• New Custom Timers
• Improved channel groups
• Improved saved searches
• Improved recording functionality
• Improved EPG search
• 1-minute EPG resolution (requires skin support)

Games

• Shader support (from Google Summer of Code 2017/2019)
• Improved mouse and keyboard support

Performance

• Reduced memory usage for single- and dual-channel textures
• Improved performance and memory usage on OpenGL and OpenGLES

Network

• Improved SMB GUI settings
• Support for SMBv2.0 devices lacking SMBv2.1 features such as “large MTU”
• Fixed connecting to Windows SMB servers with no password
• Drastically improved performance at listing large SMB directories

Platforms

• Windows/Xbox
  • Initial Windows ARM64 desktop support
  • Python 3.13 on Windows/Xbox
  • Enabled XAudio2 sink for Windows desktop (was previously only on Xbox)
  • Enhanced Video Super Resolution feature with 10-bit SDR support (Intel and Nvidia) and HDR10 (Nvidia)
• Android
  • Enabled file sharing to other apps and players
  • Improved channels on the home page
  • Upgraded to Android 15
  • Minimum Android version is now 7.0
  • Android support for 16KB page size
• LG webOS
  • New unified media pipeline
• HDR passthrough on OpenGL (was previously only on OpenGLES)

Peripherals

• Improved OSMC Remote support
• Improved Pulse-Eight CEC Adapter support
• Improved Flirc support

We want to know what you think of the latest version of Kodi 22 Piers. Do you plan on installing and testing it with addons? Let us know in the comments below!

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