Release 5.1

Koda 5.1 (versionCode 29)

Since 5.0, Koda has gained Smooth motion for video, dubbed audio tracks, a shuffle that really plays the whole playlist, layouts for tablets, foldables and landscape, per-profile history, the account notification bell, new Classic Home shelves, playlist import and export, a Videos tab in music search, smoother word-by-word lyrics, and far fewer requests to YouTube on every play.

Smooth motion (experimental)

• Added Smooth motion under Settings > Playback and quality. It is off by default and adds in-between frames so videos play at up to 60 or 120 fps to match your screen.
• Fast motion, thin lines and repeating patterns stay clean, and 24 and 30 fps videos move evenly instead of stepping.
• It is light enough for budget phones and stays smooth through long videos.
• A Smooth motion switch in the video player's settings remembers your choice and shows whether it is active or paused.
• While Smooth motion is on, HDR videos play in SDR. It needs a phone with OpenGL ES 3.2 graphics; on other phones the setting is disabled and says why.
• It is experimental and heavy on the GPU. If videos stop playing, turn it off.

Music player and queue

• Shuffle on a playlist, album, artist or the library now turns shuffle on, starts on the song you picked, and plays every song before recommendations and Add to queue.
• Shuffle plays songs you have not heard in the last few days first, and reopening the app keeps the shuffled order.
• The queue, Up next and the next-track line now show the songs in the order they will really play, and dragging in a shuffled queue lands where you drop it.
• Koda remembers where you were even when the phone closed it while music played, and large playlists and Liked Songs come back whole, up to 5,000 songs.
• Swiping Koda away from recent apps no longer stops music that is playing.
• Pausing during a crossfade pauses the song you were hearing.
• When a song cannot be played, Koda says so, and a song that will not load is skipped in 20 to 30 seconds instead of up to a minute.
• Added Refresh to the player's three-dots menu, which gets a fresh copy of a song that stopped or sounds wrong without losing your place.
• Added Watch video to the three-dots menu for songs that have a video. It keeps your place, brings the rest of the queue along and closes the music player.
• Swipe up on the expanded player to open its options sheet. The menu's buttons now line up, and the artist and album open from their own rows.
• Added repeat and like buttons to the music notification, and a like from the notification updates the heart straight away.
• Music and video can play at up to 8x speed, and the music speed slider gives more room to speeds around 1x.
• The expanded player keeps the screen on while playing, motion artwork pauses with the music, and the sleep timer fades out over its last 30 seconds.
• Word-by-word lyrics now light up in a softer wave: each letter rises gently as it is sung and the letters after it follow, and held notes swell and glow.
• Lyric lines keep the same size whether or not they are being sung, so a line no longer jumps onto two rows when it starts, and the words of the sung line sit at normal spacing.
• Lyrics are found for more songs, including official videos and uploads with extra text in the title, and failed lyrics services are retried.
• The music and video mini players swipe sideways to the next or previous item and swipe down to dismiss.
• Dragging a seek bar leaves a dot where you started; drag back onto it and let go to cancel the seek.

Video

• Videos with dubbed versions can be watched in another language from the video player's settings. Automatically dubbed and audio description tracks are labelled.
• The video notification and lock screen controls now have next and previous buttons, which also work from headphones and Bluetooth.
• Reworked the video playback settings into one Playback card, with quality and speed rows that expand in place.
• Added a video sleep timer, with timed and end-of-video modes.
• Added Listen as music, in playback settings and as a Music button under the video, to move a video into the music player.
• Video playlists now have the same cover-led page as music playlists, with Play all, Shuffle, Save and Download, and video mode can save the queue as a playlist.
• Video lists can be shown as cards, a compact list or a grid across the app.
• Added optional dislike counts on videos, from Return YouTube Dislike.
• Video cards can play a silent preview when you rest on them. This is off by default.
• Video search has a Today upload-date filter, and channel pages show Latest, Popular and Oldest sorting again.
• Picture-in-picture shows previous and next buttons, and a new setting lets them skip 10 seconds instead.
• The video mini player can be swiped away, sits evenly from the screen edges, and no longer overlaps the music player.
• Video brightness now goes all the way down.

Shorts

• Drag the progress bar on Shorts to jump around.
• A Short that is still loading shows a loading indicator, and a paused Short's progress bar settles flat.
• Shorts you have already watched, and Shorts from channels you blocked, no longer come back in the feed.
• Added Fully block Shorts, which also hides Shorts from channel pages and video search.
• Shorts you swipe past quickly no longer load in the background.

Home, Library and Search

• The Classic music Home has new shelves: Your playlists with a Liked songs tile, your top artists, YouTube Music mixes made for you, and Recent albums you have actually been playing.
• When you are offline, the Classic music Home shows your downloaded and cached songs first.
• Spotlight Home has YouTube Music's Home, Explore, Charts and New tabs, including moods and genres.
• With video recommendations off, Home shows a shuffled mix of old and new videos from the channels you follow, and returning to Home no longer reloads everything.
• Swipe left and right to move between Home, Library, Downloads and channel tabs, or drag along the navigation bar to pick a tab.
• Music search has a Videos tab for remixes, covers and other uploads that are not on YouTube Music, playable as music.
• The Library reopens on the tab you last used, Artists and Albums can be sorted, and New playlist is in the header.
• The song that is playing stands out on playlist and album pages.
• Long-press the app icon for Music and Videos shortcuts.

Playlists

• Add to playlist shows which playlists already hold the song or video, and you can tick or untick them.
• Local playlists can be sorted by title, artist or album, reversed or shuffled into a new order, with undo.
• Local playlists can be uploaded to YouTube Music as a private copy, and exported as an m3u8 file.
• Library > Playlists can import m3u and m3u8 files and NewPipe or PipePipe backups.
• Saving someone else's playlist while signed in also adds it to your YouTube Music library.
• Device video playlists can be renamed, sorted, rearranged, exported, imported and deleted, and device playlists show in both music and video mode.
• Downloaded playlists disappear once their last track is deleted.

Tablets, foldables and landscape

• Koda now rotates on tablets and unfolded foldables, and on phones when Settings > Appearance > Rotate with device is on (off by default).
• On wide screens, navigation moves to a side rail, and Library, Settings, playlists, albums, artists and Search use two-pane layouts.
• The player held sideways puts the artwork beside the controls, and on tablets adds an Up next and Lyrics panel.

Accounts, profiles and subscriptions

• Each profile now keeps its own listening history, liked songs and search history, so Stats, Recently played, top artists and recommendations change with the profile.
• The profile you are using when you update keeps your existing history; your other profiles start fresh.
• Signing in from No account brings your history, likes, searches, subscriptions and Don't recommend list into the new account profile.
• Switching accounts or signing in and out now refreshes everything straight away.
• Added a notification bell next to Subscribe to choose All, Personalized or None, and Koda notifies you about new uploads from channels set to All.
• YouTube links you tap inside Koda open in Koda, and Koda is offered for YouTube channel links from other apps.
• Community posts have comments, and links in posts and channel bios are tappable.
• Tap a commenter's picture or name to open their channel.
• Added a Content region setting so search and trending follow your country, and you can choose how often the subscriptions feed refreshes.
• Upload notifications are no longer lost while notifications are blocked, and Settings says when they are.

Reliability

• Songs, videos and Shorts load with far fewer requests to YouTube, which should make "confirm you're not a bot" refusals rarer.
• Koda no longer keeps retrying or skipping through your queue when YouTube asks you to confirm you're not a bot.
• When YouTube refuses your connection, the player suggests a fix for your network and resumes on its own when the connection changes.
• When YouTube no longer accepts your sign-in, playing something shows the session-expired prompt.
• Fixed YouTube Music history reporting on a fresh install and outside the US.

Android Auto

• Fixed browsing and searches getting stuck loading, and playback of device songs.
• Local music categories are grouped under Library, and Library tiles show artwork.

Polish

• Translated the most-visible parts of the app into all 25 supported languages.
• Statistics, Listening history, Search, Settings, pickers and option sheets use grouped lists.
• Fixed text that was hard to read in dark mode, titles cut off at the corners of cards, and song lengths hidden by long titles.
• The keyboard no longer pops up when the player expands or the Search list scrolls.
• Every Settings page can scroll its last option clear of the mini player.
• Video duration badges are readable in both themes, and switching tabs gives the same light haptic everywhere.
• Settings > About lists the open-source libraries Koda uses.

Backups

• Backups now keep each profile's history, likes, searches and upload notification mutes separately. A backup made by 5.1 needs 5.1 or newer to restore.

Downloads

• app-arm64-v8a-release.apk for most modern phones. This is the one you probably want.
• app-armeabi-v7a-release.apk for older 32-bit devices.
• app-universal-release.apk if you are unsure; it works on any supported device.