Kodi “Leia” Releases 18.9 – It’s Definitely the Final One This Time

• The XBMC team has released yet another bug-fix version for “Leia,” raising the counter to nine.
• This will be the final before Kodi 19 “Matrix,” which has recently released an unstable Alpha 2.
• Kodi 18 “Leia” is beyond doubt, the most well-supported and robust Kodi release ever.

Back in July, we covered the news about the release of Kodi 18.8, which was supposed to be the final version of the “Leia” branch. However, the Kodi team has just announced another minor bug-fixing version, the 18.9, and promised that this will indeed be the final version of the “18” branch that lasted almost two years now.

Thus, if you are still rocking Leia and haven’t jumped to the Alpha release of Kodi 19, you should download the latest version right away. For a full list of the changelog between version 18.8 and 18.9, you may check the GitHub commit history.

The most important stuff that comes with 18.9 are the following:

• Work around third-party changes to HTTP2 and SSL/encryption that impacted internet access from Kodi by scrapers, streaming addons, etc.
• Fix memory leaks in TexturePacker
• Fix event server unable to send raw key strikes
• Fix issues around directory navigation and incorrectly-set start directories
• Fix MediaCodec OES/EGL rendering

The above fixes concern both Kodi’s functionality and its security, so applying the update should be treated as an essential thing to do. Also, with this version, Kodi 18 Leia becomes maybe the most stable and well-supported release from the XBMC team, and the users who are not planning to upgrade to Kodi 19 may continue to use the previous major version and enjoy its robustness for years to come.

Obviously, the latest Kodi version won’t land on all platforms immediately, as building the apps and testing them takes time, so be patient. However, most of the popular platforms already have packages ready, which you can pick right away from the official download page.

As for the status of the Kodi 19.x “Matrix” release, the Alpha 2 landed at the start of the month, bringing many new features, improvements, and fixes. Alpha means that a lot of stuff is partially working or not working at all, so if you want to give it a spin, keep that in mind. We would generally recommend people to stay with “Leia” until “Matrix” reaches a stable first version (19.0) and ideally until 19.1, which will fix many bugs that are missed in testing.