Kodi v18 Beta 4 Released – One Step Closer to The Final Release!

• The latest beta version comes two weeks after the third Kodi beta version.
• With no new features to be found, Kodi v18 Beta 4 is solely focused on performance improvements and code refinement. 
• Kodi's development team is also giving us a glimpse into the future development of their home theater software. 

Kodi’s development team has been hard at work during the last couple of months. Having published the first beta version of Kodi in August, we have been receiving new versions every few weeks. The latest version, Kodi v18 Beta 4, is finally here and brings a few major improvements and numerous refinements as we’re slowly but steadily heading towards the final release.

To keep track of all the changes, you can rely on the Kodi v18 Leia changelog page or even better – keep track of the application’s GitHub page. Since version 18 is under constant development, the software is being changed on a daily basis but those two pages will give you a quick glimpse into the way the final version is shaping into. Here are the most notable changes present in Kodi v18 Beta 4:

• All-new implementation of a binary repository for Android, macOS, and Windows;
• Improved controller handling;
• Playback fixes for playlists that are mixing audio and video;
• Fixes of occasional crashes;
• NFS library upgrade to 3.0;
• Numerous other smaller refinements.

In general, the latest Beta version of Kodi is the most stable yet. In case you’ve been waiting for a good time to start using the upcoming release as your daily driver, you can join the bandwagon now. You will get to use a pretty polished version with close to non-existing bugs and speedy performance. Therefore, we believe that the final Kodi version should be officially launched not too long from now.

It’s also worth noting that three areas have been thoroughly covered via Kodi v18 Beta 4. We can see a number of new skins being updated as well as two areas covering the way Kodi addons work. Let’s take a look at those.

Newly Supported Kodi Skins

Every major version of Kodi brings new features and changes the way that certain tools work. As you can expect, this includes changes to the UI as well. This is why skins need to be updated in order to work without any problems. This is highly important if you use a custom build for Kodi, since you need to make sure that it uses a supported skin.

Here are the skins that are currently fully supported by Kodi v18 Beta 4: Adnoic, Aeon Nox 5, Andromeda, Black Glass Nova, Chroma, Confluence, fTV, Grid, Mimic, Nebula, Omni, Rapier, Sio2, Xperience1080. If you want to know what kind of UI these bring, you can take a look at our article on the best Kodi skins.

Support for Addons Using Python 2 and 3

As noted in our article on the third Kodi beta version, the upcoming version 18 will be the last that supports both Python 2 and Python 3 code. This is good news if you’re a developer looking for a way for your creation to appear in Kodi’s official repository. However, this should change one year from now since Kodi 19 will only work with Python 3 addons.

To help the community to prepare their addons on time, a new Wiki section has been published that will be updated with new information over time. There’s also a page about Python 3 Migration on Kodi’s official forum.

All-New Binary Addons Repository

As noted in a dedicated blog post, Kodi’s developers has been looking for a way to separate platform-agnostic addons from Kodi. This means that they can work ‘standalone’ and don’t need to be included with the installation file. Right now, the team has managed to split off binary addons such as a PVR addon. As a result, Kodi’s installation file is now much smaller and the process of installation should be faster.

Please note that this doesn’t mean that the PVR functionality is no longer works. You can still install it from Kodi’s official repository and delete it when you no longer needed it. In the meantime, this functionality can be updated separately, without having to wait for a new Kodi version.

Binary addons only apply to Kodi for Android, MacOS, and Windows. Operating systems like Linux and iOS can’t make use of this feature, and these Kodi versions will still come with the binary addons included with the installer.

Kodi v18 Release Date

There isn’t any official news regarding a possible release date of Kodi 18. However, we think that we’re getting closer to the first RC (Release Candidate). As the Kodi v18 Beta 4 shows, the work seems to be almost done as this version is highly stable and looks quite polished. It wouldn’t surprise us if we see the first stable version published sometime next month.

If you’d like to try the latest beta version, head over to Kodi’s official download page. Choose your platform of choice and look at the Pre-release tab. This is from where you can download Kodi v18 Beta 4.

Are you willing to try the latest beta version of Kodi? Let us know your impressions in the comments section below. And, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay on top of the latest news. Thanks!