Release Notes

PS5-Specific Changes

PS5 Media Remote support: Navigate Kodi, open playback controls, pause and resume, rewind, and fast-forward using the PS5 Media Remote.
More reliable remote reconnection: Playback controls recover after the remote disconnects, without interrupting controller input.
Correct video pausing: Pausing holds the displayed picture instead of allowing video frames to continue advancing. Frame-by-frame stepping remains available.
Improved VP9 playback: More reliable playback after seeking or recovering from an interruption.
Improved video stability: Safer transitions when hardware playback falls back to another playback method.
Expanded optional add-on support: Added PS5 support for RTMP streams, SFTP file access, RAR and other archive formats, and PDF viewing. These add-ons are intended for the PS5 testing repository, are not bundled, and still require on-console validation.

These changes were merged from Kodi's upstream Piers branch. Not all changes may apply to the PS5 platform.

Improved navigation between chapters, bookmarks, and scene markers, with large skips when no markers are available.
More accurate seeking and automatic commercial skipping, including avoiding brief glimpses of adverts when seeking into a marked commercial break.
Improved Blu-ray playback continuity and menu reliability, including keeping menus visible and separate from subtitles.
Improved audio/video synchronization when using audio passthrough.
Easier subtitle browsing, with direct access to the current video's folder and correctly listed local drives.

Safer library refreshes: Movies remain in the library when their details cannot be retrieved.
Improved handling of multi-disc movies, including grouping matching discs into one library entry when automatic grouping is enabled.
More reliable scanning and refreshing of disc images and Blu-ray/DVD folder backups.
Corrected matching of artwork, trailers, subtitles, and external audio to the appropriate movie version, extra, episode, or disc.
Improved local metadata discovery and reduced unnecessary rescanning after refreshing movies or episodes.
Fixed upgrades from older libraries that could incorrectly turn movie versions into extras or leave the movie library empty.

Correct HEIF and AVIF photo display: Large tiled photos, including many iPhone images, now display completely rather than showing only part of the picture. Image rotation is also handled correctly.
Reduced memory use when loading large JPEGs and browsing artwork.
Restored UPnP file sharing that could fail with "not found" errors.
Fixed browsing checks for SMB server addresses.
Fixed notifications becoming stuck or disappearing when a new notification arrived as another was closing.
Improved long-text wrapping, interface rendering, and music visualization timing.
Improved shutdown responsiveness and reduced freezes during add-on management.
Improved stability when discovering network shares and displaying closed captions.

Smoother gameplay when a game's frame rate closely matches the display, with improved audio synchronization.
Improved save-state restoration and mouse support.
More accurate achievement tracking, clearer achievement progress in Encore mode, and fixes for empty leaderboards after submitting scores.

Apple TV: Added HDR10 and HLG playback, HDR10 playback for HDR10+ content, and improvements to HDR screenshots, rotation, and picture controls.
Android: Improved HDR detection and playback stability.
Windows/Xbox: Improved audio-device compatibility and support for some Python-based add-ons.
webOS: Improved playback compatibility for certain AAC audio streams.