Kodi 22 Piers – Beta 2 Pre-Release Now Available

Kodi 22 “Piers” is now officially available as a Beta 2 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 now moved into its second 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:

“A lot of polish has come together for the features added in Beta 1. HDR support is drastically improved, including HDR screenshots. International language support is also improved, especially for JSON-RPC consumers. 

If you want the latest and greatest, this release is for you. Beta 2 merges over a cumulative 100 fixes on top of Beta 1. That said, being a Beta release, there is still the probability of bugs left to fix before the final v22 release. 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 2 pre-release available for Android, PC, and more.

The change log highlights for all pre-releases of Kodi 22 Piers are available below. Full details on every fix in this release can be found on the Beta 2 GitHub milestone.

Kodi 22 Piers Releases

Beta 2 Pre-Release

Release Highlights

• Upgraded FFmpeg to v9.0.1
• Drastically improved HDR support, including screenshots for HDR content
• Enhanced CEC support, especially for Pulse-Eight CEC adapters
• Added full RetroAchievements support for games
• Over a cumulative 100 fixes merged on top of Beta 1

Video

• Fixed pixel format detection for AV1 content
• Fixed fullscreen playback dimensions on 50 Hz TVs
• Fixed FPS detection of MPEG Transport Streams (.ts / .m2ts)
• Fixed loss of the HDMI video signal when playing certain content
• Fixed VC-1 regression causing heavy stuttering on Android TV
• Fixed resuming MPEG Transport Streams with H.264 video on Android

HDR/Blu-ray

• Upgraded Libbluray to v1.5.0
• Improved Blu-ray episode handling, movie playlist selection, and disc detection speed
• Fixed tonemapped (HDR to SDR) colorimetry and stale HDR metadata in video info
• Fixed Dolby Vision playback on Android with PGS subtitles
• Fixed playback of HDR10 HEVC Main 10 content on macOS

Audio/Subtitles

• Changed ReplayGain PreAmp settings to be centered at 0 dB instead of 89 dB
• Fixed possible loss of audio when playing HDR with passthrough audio
• Fixed distorted sound on webOS
• Improved automatic selection of different subtitle languages
• Fixed possible desync of external subtitles when seeking
• Fixed system-level crash on LG webOS when subtitles are displayed

Games

• Added ability to remember which emulators are used per-game and per-folder
• Added Fairchild Channel F emulation
• Fixed broken audio with some emulators and in-game rumble not working
• Fixed torn frames on some Linux-based platforms
• Fixed analog triggers in Dreamcast emulators

Library/UI

• Added SVG image support
• Fixed outdated watched/in progress status of movies and TV shows
• Fixed TV show details being lost after a metadata refresh
• Fixed several bugs for .rar archive handling
• Fixed jerky vertical scrolling of long text

Network/Peripherals

• Upgraded Samba to v4.24.4 and libcec to v8.1.6
• Improved SMB stability over poor connections
• Fixed browsing files via HTTP, HTTPS, and WebDAV if the server requires authorization
• Changed controller handling from the Linux Joystick API to Udev
• Fixed handling of the “guide” button on some remotes

Python/JSON-RPC

• Upgraded Python to v3.14.7 and Pillow to v12.3.0
• Extended full BCP 47 language support over JSON-RPC
• Added Database.GetDatabaseName, VideoLibrary.SetSourceContent, and PVR.GetPlayableBroadcasts methods

Platforms

• Android: Fixed possible crash on exit, local network access permission prompts, and launching playlists with Android intents
• Raised minimum macOS deployment target to 10.15

Known Issues

• If Kodi is provided without the patched TagLib 2.3.1, Matroska tagging is degraded back to v21

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). This was fixed in Beta 1.
• 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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