The more observant of you will have noticed that we've had some issues getting this version out to everyone, so some of you will have received this already depending on what channel you use (Flatpak, Google Play, winget community repos...). No matter, it's here for everyone now.
While work is well underway on our next major release, with Alphas already out for Kodi 22.x "Piers", this doesn't mean we've given up on 21.x "Omega", as that's very much still our current release. So, with minimal fanfare, we present to you a package of changes, bug fixes and backports that we like to call Kodi 21.3 "Omega". Full changelog from 21.2 here.
Release Summary
Major user-facing changes include:
Video
- Added HDR support on Xbox One
- Fixed Blu-ray playback on Linux
- Fixed audio/subtitle issues when resuming Blu-rays
- Fixed handling of HDR10 light metadata changes
- Fixed subtitle selection for ISO 639-1 (two-letter) language codes
Library/Sources and Management
- Improved speed of video library rescans
- Fixed multi-episode files overwriting the first episode
- Fixed info dialog for certain Movie Versions
- Fixed some false positives detecting Movie Versions
Music
- Fixed CDDB lookups using Gnudb.org's CDDB API
- Fixed album search failing for artist names
Audio
- Fixed rare Pipewire crash when connecting/removing audio devices
PVR
- Fixed crash when a PVR stream is stopped via remote app
Peripherals
- Added support for Turkish keyboards on Linux
- Fixed enabling and disabling Pulse-Eight CEC adapters
- Fixed the Delete and Alternative Insert keys on macOS
- Fixed minor visual glitches when managing peripherals
Addons
- Fixed updating add-ons after 25 days of inactivity (extended to ~68 years)
Skin/GUI
- Fixed busy dialog crash when multiple dialogs are opened
- Fixed suspend dialog remaining open after the system wakes up
- Improved touch support for slider dialog arrows
Network
- Added support for HTTP Basic Authentication
- Fixed some network streams failing due to interrupted HTTP/2 transfers
- Updated libnfs to v6 for embedded platforms
- Updated CA certificates to 2025-07-15 from the Mozilla CA certificate store
I know we always say this, but, genuinely - sincere thanks go out to everyone who's helped to identify, isolate or fix any issues. If you know of anything that's still irking you, please, post in the forums, or raise an issue on Github, as we can't fix what we don't know about.
As this is a point release, there are no major changes since the previous version, and you should be fine to install this straight over the top of any existing Kodi 21.x installation - indeed, this will happen automatically on many platforms. However, as for all software installations, back up your userdata beforehand if you've any doubts or have anything you can't afford to lose (and definitely do this if you're going for a major version upgrade).
A list of all changes for this version can be found at GitHub. If you want to read back on the full history of v21 itself, or of previous versions, you can find the corresponding articles in the relevant blog posts.
Application deployment on different platforms (notably the Microsoft Store) can vary considerably due to circumstances outside of our control, so just be patient, and the update will inevitably find its way through.
Windows Store/Android Deployment
Due to the internal and external hoops we need to jump through, it might be a little while before the update appears for you, and that's before our usual staged approach to deployment. Sit tight, and it will be with you in due course (maybe the next week or two).
