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How to setup Kodi… the right way

Tim Wells – AndroidPCReview.com

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Since Kodi 16, also known as Mark XVI Jarvis just came out, I thought this would be a

great time to release my Kodi Setup Guide for new users. If you’re still using an older

version, don’t worry: this will teach you how to use XBMC as well. I get a lot of questions

about how to best setup Kodi, both for streaming content from the Internet and from

your local network.

The best thing about Kodi is that there are so many different options and tweaks that

you can do to really make it your own – from different skins, different backgrounds and,

of course, third-party add-ons.

But, that also means that Kodi can be pretty complicated – especially if you’re just

getting started.

Kodi has a great community of users, developers, and of course the Kodi Wiki. Those

are going to be amazing resources as you start using it, and even for tweaking your Kodi

setup down the road.

Finding your way around the forums can be a bit challenging, especially if you’re not

very technical. While the Wiki gives a great overview, it sometimes doesn’t go into

enough detail to get the job done.

One of the most popular posts on this site has been my guide to fixing Kodi buffering

problems, and now I want to help make it easy to get Kodi setup and configured as

painlessly as possible.

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How this guide is set up

If you’re starting from scratch, you can read this guide from start to finish and end up

with a complete installation. On the other hand, you can use the hyperlinks below to

jump to the sections you want, and ignore the rest. It’s OK. My feelings won’t be hurt.

Keep in mind, though, that no matter what setup guide you read, you’re always going to

have to tweak it a bit to your own needs. Kodi works on lots of different hardware, and

has so many options and settings to change, that there’s just no way to account for all

of them. But, if you follow this guide along with me, you’ll be well on your way.

Table of Contents

How this guide is set up ............................................................................................................................ 2

Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 2

Information you (may) want to know ........................................................................................................... 4

What is Kodi? ................................................................................................................................................ 4

What’s changed in Kodi 16: Jarvis? ............................................................................................................... 5

Installing Kodi ................................................................................................................................................ 6

How to use XBMC \ Kodi ............................................................................................................................... 7

Other menus ............................................................................................................................................. 8

Context menu........................................................................................................................................ 8

Sidebar Menu ........................................................................................................................................ 9

Favorites and Shutdown ........................................................................................................................... 9

Video library ................................................................................................................................................ 10

How to organize your media library ....................................................................................................... 10

How to name Movies .............................................................................................................................. 11

How to name TV Shows .......................................................................................................................... 11

How to add videos to your library .......................................................................................................... 11

Music library ............................................................................................................................................... 21

New Music Library in Kodi 16 ................................................................................................................. 21

Advantages to the Music Library ............................................................................................................ 21

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Tagging Music in Kodi ............................................................................................................................. 22

Why Tagging? .......................................................................................................................................... 22

How to add music to your library ........................................................................................................... 23

Pictures ....................................................................................................................................................... 29

Adding Pictures to the library ................................................................................................................. 29

Pictures Sidebar Menu ............................................................................................................................ 34

Misc options ............................................................................................................................................ 34

Pictures Settings ...................................................................................................................................... 35

File Lists ............................................................................................................................................... 35

Slideshow ............................................................................................................................................ 35

Add-ons ....................................................................................................................................................... 36

How to install Kodi Add-ons .................................................................................................................... 36

Installing Add-ons from the Videos, Music or Pictures menu ............................................................ 37

The Kodi Add-on Manager .................................................................................................................. 37

Changing Kodi Skins .................................................................................................................................... 42

Confluence .............................................................................................................................................. 42

Aeon Nox ................................................................................................................................................. 43

Black Glass Nova ..................................................................................................................................... 43

Metropolis ............................................................................................................................................... 44

Mimic ...................................................................................................................................................... 44

Nebula ..................................................................................................................................................... 45

Phenomenal ............................................................................................................................................ 45

Rapier ...................................................................................................................................................... 46

Titan ........................................................................................................................................................ 46

Transparency! ......................................................................................................................................... 47

Weather ...................................................................................................................................................... 48

Getting Weather Information ................................................................................................................. 49

Installing Weather Add-ons .................................................................................................................... 49

Installing Yahoo! Weather ...................................................................................................................... 52

Installing OpenWeatherMap Extended Weather ................................................................................... 55

More Resources .......................................................................................................................................... 61

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 61

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Information you (may) want to know

I mentioned earlier that Kodi works on many different systems: Android, Linux,

Windows, and Mac to name a few. To make writing this setup guide easier, I created it

using screenshots from my Windows 10 PC. SnagIt and Photoshop are much easier to

use on a PC, sorry. Don’t worry, the interface is almost identical from system to system,

so if you’re familiar with Kodi on Windows, you’ll be able to use the Android or Linux

versions just fine.

I’ve only covered (for now) information that is available in the stock version of Kodi. I

don’t cover any tweaks that individual manufacturers have done to their Kodi\XBMC

versions, nor do I look at installing add-ons from third party developers that aren’t in

the Official Kodi Repository. Articles about third-party addons could fill an entire library

and I have to draw the line somewhere.

Finally, if you’re using XBMC, then you can still use much of this guide. Kodi is the new

name for XBMC (see What is Kodi below), and while the name has changed, the

interface of Kodi 16 is still pretty much the same as it has been for years. So if you’re

looking for something to teach you how to use XBMC, you’re still in the right place.

What is Kodi?

Kodi, which used to be called XBMC, is an open source media center that grew from an

amateur project to play content on the original Xbox. If you’re good with acronyms,

you’ve probably already figured out that XBMC originally stood for XBox Media Center.

It is designed to be used from your living room couch, so you’ll often hear that Kodi has

a “10 foot user interface.” It allows users to play almost any file format for video, music,

podcasts and pictures on your TV, no matter where you store them.

If you’re wondering what’s in a name, Kodi versions have usually been named after

popular sci-fi, comic book, or generally geeky references:

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XBMC v8.10 Atlantis (2008) – (Stargate)

XBMC v9.04 Babylon (2009) – (Babylon 5)

XBMC v9.11 Camelot (2009) – (King Arthur mythos)

XBMC v10.0 Dharma (2010) – (Lost)

XBMC v11.0 Eden (2012) – (Garden of…)

XBMC v12.0 Frodo (2013) – (Lord of the Rings)

XBMC v13.0 Gotham (2014) – (Batman – and my personal favourite)

Kodi v14.0 Helix (2014) – (Helix TV show)

Kodi v15.0 Isengard (2015) – (Tolkien)

Kodi v16.0 Jarvis (2016) – (Tony Stark’s artificial intelligence)

Kodi v17.0 Krypton (TBD) – (Superman’s home world)

What’s changed in Kodi 16: Jarvis?

I’ll mention some of Jarvis’ new features

briefly. If you’re looking for more details,

check out our announcement for the release

of Kodi 16 here.

For Windows users, Kodi 16 now uses

DirectX 11, which allows newer graphics

cards to perform better, while still maintaining backwards compatibility with older

devices. On the Android side, there’s a new version of Android Surface Rendering which

will let Kodi display the user interface at its native resolution (normally 720p) while

simultaneously rendering 4K video content. This doesn’t work on AmLogic devices, but

it will work for the NVIDIA Shield and select other devices.

Kodi has implemented the “long press” to bring up the context menu so that Android

users (especially) who are using an IR remote can access the context menu without

having to go into air-mouse mode. There are also improvements to the Add-On Manager

that will let you decide whether to enable or disable automatic updates for each

individual add-on.

Are you ready to setup Kodi?

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Installing Kodi

Depending on what device you’re using, you’ve got several different options on how to

install Kodi. No matter what, you can always find all of the latest versions on the official

Kodi download page at: https://kodi.tv/download/ (shown below). Android users can

install directly from the Google Play Store if it’s available on your device, or sideloading

it using the latest APK.

For those of you that may not know what that is, sideloading an app is when the app is

not available on an app store like Google Play Store, or the Amazon App Store. When

that happens, you download the APK (Android Application PacKage) which will take you

through the setup process manually.

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If you choose to go the manual route and sideload it, be sure that you’re using the

correct version. Since Android can run on both ARM and Intel processors, there is a

different version of Kodi for each CPU architecture. Since Kodi is available in the Google

Play Store now, you probably won’t have to sideload it on any Android device you have.

If you find that extremely rare TV box that can’t get to the Google Play Store, I have an

older video showing how to sideload XBMC 13 Gotham on an Android stick PC. Even

though it’s an older video, the steps will still work for Kodi v16 Jarvis.

Once you’ve installed Kodi, it’s time to learn how to navigate the interface.

How to use XBMC \ Kodi

Since this is your first time

setting up and installing

Kodi, I’ll touch briefly on how

to navigate around the Kodi

user interface, or UI.

Remember when I said

earlier that you’ll hear the

words “10 foot user

interface” quite a lot? Here’s what that means.

The main controls for Kodi are laid out in a ‘ribbon’ along the center of the screen, and

are configurable to a certain extent. The main menu ribbon includes these categories by

default: Videos, Movies, TV Shows, Music, Pictures, Programs, System and Weather.

Depending on the skin, you can sometimes add extra categories or hide unused ones.

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Other menus

In addition to the main ribbon, there are two other types of menus available in Kodi that

you’ll want to be aware of: the Context menu and the Sidebar menu.

Context menu

The Context menu will provide extra

functionality depending on what screen

you’re on when you click it. For example, in

the image on the left I brought up the

contextual menu for a movie – Star Wars IV:

A New Hope. Here, the context menu gives

us the option to add the movie to our queue,

play the video, add it to our favorites, mark it as watched or pull up additional

information on the movie.

In other screens, the options you see may be different, depending on what makes sense

for that media type.

To pull up the Context menu, it depends on what type of device you’re using Kodi on:

Android: Long Press (new feature in Kodi 16)

Mouse: right-click

Keyboard: ‘C’

Amazon Fire TV: Menu button

NVIDIA Shield controller: ‘X’ button

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Sidebar Menu

The sidebar menu changes the view types,

sorting options, filters and provides quick

access to search and update library

functions.

The View option will change how your

movies and music appear in your library.

Changing the view options will change between a List, Thumbnails, Fanart and Cover

Flow.

Changing the Sort criteria will allow you to sort by Title, Year, Rating, My Rating, MPAA

Rating, Duration, Date Added and Playcount. You can then sort the list in either

ascending or descending order.

Favorites and Shutdown

Finally, in the lower left hand corner of the Kodi home screen, you’ll see two icons. The

power-button icon will bring up the Kodi Shutdown menu. You can select to Exit, Power

Off the System, create a Custom Shutdown Timer, or put the system into Suspend,

Hibernation or even Reboot the system.

The star shaped button will bring up your Favorites menu. This works just as you’d

expect it to. Using the context menu, you can add a movie to your favorites list so that it

will appear on this list whenever you click the Favorites button from the Kodi home

screen.

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Video library

One of the most important steps in setting

up Kodi is creating your media library. Let’s

start by adding videos to your library.

Before you start just adding every file on

your hard drive, there’s some work you need

to do first.

Kodi expects the media files to follow a certain format, and that format is different if the

file is a movie or a TV show. If the filename isn’t listed correctly, then Kodi may not be

able to tell what it is.

Why does that matter? Well, Kodi uses a process called scraping to pull data from the

file. If Kodi isn’t able to scrape correctly the file then it may do one of two things: It may

ignore the file and skip over it when creating your library, or worse, it could mistake the

file for a completely different movie.

You should probably put some thought into how your library is organized, but that is a

longer topic than I have room for here. But if you follow these simple guidelines, you’ll

make it easier for Kodi to figure out what’s in your library.

How to organize your media library

There are two common ways to organize your media folder:

One folder containing all of your media files

Each movie or TV series in its own folder

It’s your choice how you want to organize your media library. There are pros and cons to

each method, and that’s a topic for another article. But I will offer this piece of advice. If

you have a larger library, it will be easier to manage if each movie is in its own separate

directory.

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How to name Movies

If you choose to use subfolders, movie folder names should include only the title and\or

the year. Tip: To improve the scraper’s performance, add the year within parenthesis to

the end of the foldername, or filename.

\Movies\Avatar (2009)\somefilename.mkv

\Movies\The Usual Suspects (1995)\somefilename.avi

How to name TV Shows

If you’d prefer to have one folder for all of your media files, you would include the same

information in the same order, but you would change the filename, rather than the folder

name.

\Movies\Avatar (2009).mkv

\Movies\The Usual Suspects (1995).avi

How to add videos to your library

Kodi uses the same general process to add

Videos, Music or Pictures to your media

library. There are differences, of course, but

the three processes will all start out the

same.

Just in case you’ve skipped to this section

and plan on ignoring the Adding Music or Adding Pictures sections, you’ll see much of

the same information repeated. It’s worth reading each topic, though, because there will

be some specific information for each section that won’t be included in the other two.

Start by scrolling over to Videos on the Kodi ribbon. Once you’re there, click on Files. If

you don’t have anything in your library, it will take you directly to the screen below. If you

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already have some files set up, there’ll be a list of folder shares in an intermediate menu

before this with an option to Add Videos. Don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense right

now. You’ll see folder shares in a few minutes.

If you know the path of your media server, you can take a shortcut and enter it directly in

the box here. I’m going to assume that you don’t have that memorized, or even written

down someplace safe. In that case, you’ll need to Browse for it.

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Depending on how your media server is set up you’ll have a couple of different options

here.

Kodi doesn’t care if you’ve got your media files on your Windows PC that you’re

networking to, a dedicated Network Accessible Storage (NAS) device, or simply an

external hard drive that has one folder with hundreds of movies on it. Kodi will figure it

out.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume that you’ve already set up your

server how you like it. The most popular option for home servers is some sort

of Windows Network (SMB), so that will be the one we discuss here.

Once I told Kodi that my media server was on a Windows Network, it went out searching

for devices and came back with three possibilities.

My network devices are named after characters, places or things in movies. In this case,

they’re characters from Big Hero 6. No judging, please.

The first device is my Windows 10 PC. The device in the middle is a shared printer. The

third device is my Western Digital MyCloud NAS. That is where my media files are

stored, so I’ll select that.

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My NAS file server is set up in different folders. As you can see, some are media files

and some are documents. Since we’re adding videos to Kodi, I’ll select the Videos sub-

folder.

As you’re navigating through your folders, Kodi will keep updating the file path at the

bottom of the screen. Here, you can see we are in the /Videos/Video Samples folder.

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The way my files are set up, this is as far down into the file structure as I want to go.

Each sub-folder underneath here is a different video title. As you’ll see later, there are

multiple versions of the videos in each folder, so there will be some duplication.

A good rule of thumb is to go as deep into your folder structure as you can, but not too

far that you lose videos. Remember, Kodi can see in the current folder and any sub-

folders below. It won’t look in the folders higher than whatever folder you’re in.

Once you’ve decided on your folder, click OK.

That will take you back to the Add Video Source window and add the file path to your

media server in the box.

By default, Kodi will choose the folder name as the name for the share, but you can

change the name of the share in the Enter a Name for the Media Source box.

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Once you’ve chosen the folder, the next step is to tell Kodi what type of files are in the

folder and to set some options for the Scraper.

This window is split into three parts. In the upper-left section, there’s a dropdown box

titled This directory contains. The options here are:

Music Videos

Movies

TV Shows

Once you make a selection, you’ll have one or more options in the Choose a

scraper section in the upper-right.

In this example, I’m adding a folder of movies so I’ve selected that from the drop-down

box. Because of that choice, there are some Content Scanning Options in the bottom

half of the window.

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Remember when you set up your media library in the How to Name Movies section?

Here’s where that choice is going to come into play.

Under the Content Scanning Options header, the first option is whether or not Movies

are in a separate folder that match the movie title. If your files are all in the same folder,

leave this unchecked. If instead you have your movies in separate folders, make sure

this option is checked.

The second option to Scan recursively is one I always check. This will force Kodi to look

in any sub-folders for new files.

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Depending on what scraper you use, there may be additional options listed under

the Settingsbutton at the bottom. These options determine whether or not Kodi will

keep the original title, enable Fanart, trailers, or where to get ratings from. Click OK when

you’ve made any changes.

The final step is for Kodi to start scanning your new folder share and adding the videos

to the library. Once you’ve clicked OK in the step above, you’ll get a message box asking

if you want to refresh the information for all items within this path.

The message box here it the same if you’re making changes or if you’re setting up the

folder for the first time. This is one aspect where Kodi isn’t as clear as I’d like it to be.

However confusing the message box may be, you’ll usually want to answer Yes to this

question.

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Thankfully, Kodi will let you move on to do other things while the scanning process does

it’s thing. The only status bar you’ll see is in the very upper right hand portion of the

screen. Be warned: if you’ve got a rather large library, this process could take a long

time. But, once it’s done….

Your individual titles will have a full-color background image, a poster-art and some

basic information such as resolution for each video, depending on what options you’ve

chosen and what skin you’re using.

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And back on the main Kodi home window, you’ll see thumbnail views of the last five

movies you’ve added to your library above the center menu ribbon. In theory, if you’re

consistently adding videos to your library, these will be the files that you’ll want to watch

first.

There are a lot more tweaks and settings to help you get the most out of your videos,

but let’s look at adding some music to Kodi next.

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Music library

Adding music to your library is the second

big part of your Kodi setup. As of Kodi 16

Jarvis, it now follows a similar process as

adding videos above, but that wasn’t always

the case.

New Music Library in Kodi 16

Prior to Jarvis, there was a definite difference between how you used the Music Library

and the Video Library. For some odd reason, scanning files into your Music Library was

a two-step process, unlike the automatic scanning available in the Video Library. You

actually had to manually pull up the context menu and select Scan to Library.

Now, in Kodi Jarvis, the system will ask you if you want to scan all the files in the folder

immediately after you add a new source – just like it does for the Video Library.

Advantages to the Music Library

Kodi first announced the new Music Library in December 2015 on a blog post on

Kodi.tv. They listed quite a few enhancements that I’ve highlighted below.

A consistent looking library view just like for Movies and TV Shows

Searching your music files is now enabled

Library splits up the music in sections: Genres, Artists, Albums, Singles, All songs,

Years, Top 100 (based on your playback), Recently added/played albums,

Compilations

Ability to use Smart Playlists to further filter

Rate your music and filter based on that rating

Share music over you home-network provided that the clients support UPnP

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Scan for additional information like artist biography or album review/synopsis

using the Context menu in album or artist library

This can be enabled by default in Settings -> Music -> Library -> Fetch additional

information during updates

Tagging Music in Kodi

In the Video section, I mentioned that Kodi needed files to be in a very specific format in

order for the scrapers to figure out what the files were. The same holds true for your

Music Library.

Unlike Videos and TV shows, Kodi doesn’t look at the file names themselves, it looks at

the ID tags embedded in the file.

What this means is that each file (song) must have ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, Vorbis

Comments or APE tagging. If the files aren’t tagged, Kodi won’t be able to figure out

what the song really is.

Why Tagging?

If you think about it, this makes sense.

When you look at a movie, you only need a

combination of the movie title and the year

in order to figure out what the movie is. For

example, Transformers (1986) is very

different from Transformers (2007), but

with those two pieces of information, you

can easily determine which is which.

With music, it’s much harder. If an album is released, a song can have live and studio

versions of the same song, acoustic or full band versions, even karaoke versions – all

on the same album. Worse, different artists can release different songs with the same

title in the same year.

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How can Kodi figure it all out without making the file names incredibly huge?

That’s where tagging comes in. Tagging embeds information in the file itself including

Artist, Album, Year, Track Number, Genre, Length, and Bit Rate. Tagging can even hold

information on the beats per minute or rating of the song.

What if your music files aren’t tagged?

I’m not going to say it’s an easy thing to fix, but there are programs that can help you

with the process. I’d suggest looking at MusicBrainz Picard, Mp3Tag or TagScanner.

How to add music to your library

Because the new Music Library is modeled

after the Video library, this will hopefully

look very familiar if you’ve been following

along. If you haven’t been following

along….why not?

Start by scrolling over to Music on the Kodi ribbon. The submenus underneath Music

may look different than the screen on the left. This image is from a fresh installation

with no music files whatsoever. If that’s the case, Kodi is smart enough to realize that

you’re either going to want to install a music add-on, or set up your library. There’s no

need for it to show any additional information such as Artists, Albums, Songs or Library

since they don’t exist yet.

Whether you have nothing in your library yet, or you want to add files to an existing

library, click on Files to continue. If you don’t have anything in your library, it will take you

directly to the screen below.

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If you already have some files set up, there’ll be a list of folder shares in an intermediate

menu before this with an option to Add Music. I covered folder shares in the Video

section above, but just in case you skipped that section, I’ll touch on it again in a little

bit.

Click on Add Music to continue.

If you know the path of your media server, you can take a shortcut and enter it directly in

the box here. If you don’t know the path, you’ll need to Browse for it.

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My music is stored on the same NAS (Network Accessible Storage) server as my

movies, so I’ll select Windows Network (SMB) to continue. Depending on how your

network is set up, you may have your files stored on an external drive or even a UPnP

server somewhere else on the network.

Kodi goes out and searches the Windows-based network for any devices that may have

media files on them. It can’t determine what the devices are, so these may or may not

be media servers. Sometimes, this isn’t as intelligent a discovery process as you’d

expect. For example, Kodi is giving me the option of scanning my Brother wireless

printer, the second item listed, for media files.

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Since I know the name of my NAS server, I’ll select it from the list.

Once I select a device, Kodi then looks at any folders that it finds and asks where my

music is located. In this case, I only want to go one more level down, since that’s where

the Artist sub-folders are located. As you’re navigating through your folders, Kodi will

keep updating the file path at the bottom of the screen.

That will take you back to the Add Music Source window and add the file path to your

media server in the box.

By default, Kodi will choose the folder name as the name for the share, but you can

change the name of the share in the Enter a Name for the Media Source box.

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As I mentioned earlier, one of the big improvements to the Music Library in Kodi 16 is

that it will automatically as you if you want to add the media from this source to your

library. Unless you’re adding multiple folders and want to scan at the end, I would

always select Yes.

Scanning your Music Library will usually take considerably longer than scanning your

Video Library. Most of us have libraries with several thousand songs in them, and that

can be time consuming to scan and index. Be patient here.

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Once Kodi finishes, you’ll find the recently added albums on top of the main ribbon on

the Kodi home window.

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Pictures

Kodi does a lot more than just play movies

and music. Kodi can also take your photo

library for a spin too.

There isn’t as much functionality included in

the picture viewer, mostly because there

isn’t a whole lot that you can do with

images out of the box. That being said, there are quite a few great add-ons to help put a

little spice into your image library.

Adding Pictures to the library

If you’ve added music or movies to your library, then this is going to look very familiar.

From the Kodi home screen’s ribbon scroll over to the Pictures option. Here there’s only

one sub-menu listed below for any Add-ons you want to install. That’s not what we’re

looking for, so click on the main Picturesoption instead.

Just as with Movies and Music, you can install Add-ons and add files to your media

library in this screen. Also, when you do have pictures in your library, their folder names

will be listed in this menu as well.

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Unlike the Movies and Music tabs, the Pictures menu is much simpler. In fact, all you

can do on this page is add pictures to your library or install an add-on.

Let’s walk through how to add pictures to your Kodi media library. As you can probably

guess, you’re going to want to click on Add pictures… to start the process.

By now Adding a Source should look familiar. If you know the file path, you can enter it

in the text box, or click Browse to search for it.

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All of the drives that your Kodi installation can detect will be listed here, with blue icons.

The red icons will be network file locations which you may or may not have, but Kodi

lists them anyway, for completeness sake.

My pictures are stored on a Western Digital MyCloud Network Accessible Storage (NAS)

device, which could be found in one of three ways, depending on how I set it

up: Network File System (NFS), Universal Plug and Play UPnP devices, or Windows

network (SMB). In my particular setup, it’s configured as a Windows network (SMB)

device.

Navigate to the folder that your pictures are stored in. For this example, I went to one

individual folder without any subfolders. Kodi won’t list the individual pictures, only the

folder names.

There were two ways that I knew I’d reached the correct folder. First, The only option in

the main window was to go back up a level, as shown by the blue up arrow and the ‘..’ at

the top of the Browse for new share window. The second way is to look at the shared

folder’s path which is in white text at the bottom of that window.

Once you’ve found the folder, click OK to continue.

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Once you click OK, you’ll be brought back to the Add Pictures source window and your

folder path will be listed in the text box. Choose a name for your pictures and click OK to

continue.

That will take you back to the main Pictures sub-menu and your folder will be listed on

the menu. In my case, you can see my Sample Pictures folder listed between Picture

add-ons and Add pictures...

Kodi will then attempt to scan the folder to get a better idea of what kind of files are in

that directory.

Page | 33

After the scan is complete, click in your new directory and take a look at your pictures

library.

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Pictures Sidebar Menu

You can access the Pictures sidebar menu

by moving the mouse to the left hand side

of the screen, or by pressing the left

directional arrow if you’re using a remote

control with a D-pad.

From the sidebar menu, you can change

settings related to how you view your pictures and how you view slideshows. The View

options are fairly self-explanatory, but I want to touch on the slideshow settings. They

are listed under the Misc Options heading.

Misc options

Once you’re in a folder that has pictures in it, you’ll see three things listed in the sidebar

menu: Slideshow, Recursive Slideshow and Randomise. The only settings change here

is the toggle for randomizing the order that your photos appear.

The Slideshow and Recursive Slideshow options will both (predictably) start a

slideshow using the pictures in this folder. A Recursive Slideshow will also look in any

and all sub-folders in the directory and include those images in the slideshow as well.

Slideshow settings in Kodi 16 have been trimmed down slightly and made a bit easier to

understand. Only a bit though. I think there’s still room for improvement, especially for

users who aren’t programmers or who’s primary language is not English. Recursion is a

topic I don’t hear about very often, unless I’m speaking with my computer programmer

friends. A simpler way to describe this would be a toggle for “include sub-folders”, which

would mean the same thing and is easier to understand.

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Pictures Settings

There are only two subcategories for Pictures in the Kodi Settings menu: File

lists and Slideshow. There are some minor revisions to these in Kodi 16, so even if

you’re familiar with how they’ve worked in the past, it’s worth a refresher.

File Lists

If you’re used to having settings related to

EXIF picture information, you’re out of

luck. EXIF stands for EXchangeable Image

File format. It tags pictures with extra

information such as date and time, camera

settings, orientation and geolocation.

In an effort to cleanup some of the “minor” settings options, the Kodi developers have

enabled EXIF rotation by default and taken away the option to change the setting.

They’ve also done the same with the Show EXIF Picture Information setting.

With those two settings removed, the File Lists settings window now only contains

toggle on\off options for Automatically Generate Thumbnails and Show Video Files in

Listings.

Slideshow

The Slideshow settings here allow you to

tweak your slideshow presentations. You

can change the Amount of time to display

each image from as low as 1 second to as

many as 100 seconds per image.

There is an on\off toggle switch for Using pan and zoom effects, that bring a little life

into a flat slideshow. The effect is popular, which also means it’s overused. You may

want to use it sparingly.

Finally, there is another toggle switch for randomizing your slideshow.

Page | 36

Add-ons

Add-ons are at the heart of Kodi. In fact,

many people would argue that without third-

party developers creating add-ons and

adding extra functionality, Kodi would be

nowhere near as popular as it is today.

Kodi includes an Official Kodi Repository filled with hundreds of add-ons which are

supplied and supported either by members of Team Kodi, or by developers they trust.

You can find an add-on for just about anything you want – skins, streaming services,

sports, live TV…the list goes on.

If that’s not enough for you, there are tons of unofficial repositories on the Internet that

you can download add-ons from. Many of these add-ons are of questionable quality and

even more questionable legality, so they’re not something I’ll cover in this Kodi setup

guide. If you Google a particular add-on, I’m quite sure that somebody out there has

covered.

Still, I’d advise caution installing anything that’s not official. I’m not here to judge, but I

am here to look out for you.

How to install Kodi Add-ons

Because Add-ons are such an important part of your Kodi installation, there are a couple

of different ways that you can install them. The process is the same, but the starting

point can be different. I’ll explain…

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Installing Add-ons from the Videos, Music or Pictures menu

Each of the three main Kodi menus –

Videos, Music and Pictures – has a sub-

menu titled Add-ons, as you can see in the

image on the left.

If you want to install a Video add-on, for

example, you’re probably going to be on the

Videos tab already, so it makes it easy access for you without having to go back to the

System –> Settings tab.

Don’t worry, if you happen to be on the Videos menu and just thought of a great Music

add-on you want to install, you can do that from there as well. Kodi doesn’t care what

type of add-on you want to install. Think of the sub-menus on the Videos, Pictures or

Movies tabs as a way to skip ahead to ‘Step 2’ if you don’t want to go all the way back to

the Kodi home window.

The Kodi Add-on Manager

If you’re like me, you’ll probably just end up going to the System Menu a lot anyway, just

to check on system performance or make some tweaks. Since I come from a PC

background, it’s been drilled into me to always start at the System or Settings screen, no

matter what system I’m on. At this point, it’s just a force of habit.

To get to the Kodi Add-on Manager, scroll over to the System menu and click

on Settings.

Page | 38

From here, that will take you to the familiar Change your Settings window, which I hope

you’re familiar with by now. On the menu on the left side, scroll down to where it

says Add-ons and click on it.

The next menu will have options for My add-ons, Install from repository, Install from zip

file, Searchand System. I’ll touch on each briefly below:

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My Add-Ons: This will pull up a list of all of the add-ons, broken down by category,

and whether they are enabled or disabled on this Kodi installation.

Install from Repository: This is all of the add-ons available for installation in the

official Kodi repository. We’ll go through the process for installing from here

below.

Install from Zip File: If you’re installing an add-on that’s not in the official list, this

is how you’ll do it. You’ll have to download a zip file to your device and browse for

it using this option. It’s a little more cumbersome, but it will let you install anything

you want to.

Search: If you know what add-on you’re looking for, or just have a general idea of

the topic, you can enter it here and see the results.

System: This will show add-ons that are currently running, ad well as any

dependencies that they have.

For our purposes, we’re going to be installing one of the official video add-ons, so click

on Install from Repository.

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Here are all of the categories of add-ons that exist in this repository. I recommend

taking some time to browse through them all because you never know what you’ll find,

and they’re updated frequently. For the purposes of this Kodi setup guide, click on Video

add-ons.

Whether you started in the Add-On Manager or in one of the other menus, you’ll end up

at a screen that looks like the one above. There will be slight differences, but the

important parts will be there. Here you’ll find a list of all of the video add-ons on the left

hand side. You can scroll through the list, as you’d expect. Once you have an add-on

selected, more information will pop up about it on the right half of the screen.

Page | 41

We’re going to be installing the KordKutters video add-on. KordKutters is a side project

for Nate and Ned, both members of Team Kodi. They talk about Kodi news, features and

the occasional hardware review. If you want the scoop on what’s coming up in the Kodi

world, these are the guys to follow.

Scroll down to KordKutters and select that add-on.

Once you select it, a window will pop up showing more information, which incidentally is

usually just a full screen version of the information panel on the previous screen. It will

have options to Install, Configure, Update, Auto-Update, view the Changelog, and Enable

or Disable.

Since the add-on isn’t installed yet, only the Install and Changelog options are allowed

right now. Click Install to install the add-on. Once the add-on is installed, you’ll have the

option to configure or change any settings, if any exist. For this particular add-on,

there’s not much to configure.

One final note: Kodi 16 Jarvis now gives you the option of configuring each add-on to

either automatically update on it’s own, or never update. Generally, I set my add-ons to

automatically update because I want to be sure that I have the latest version with new

features or bug-fixes. Occasionally though, updating an add-on will cause it to break, so

this enables you to find a version that works and keep it indefinitely.

Page | 42

Changing Kodi Skins

Changing skins is a great way to get a whole new look and feel for your Kodi experience.

The best part is that it’s easy to change skins and you can do it as often as you like.

For Kodi 16, skins hold their settings in individual settings files. These files are found

within your platform-unique “userdata” area, in the “addon_data” subfolder. Note that if

you use profiles, there will be a separate “addon_data” folder for each profile. (In normal

use, there is no need for users to directly access these files.)

Confluence

Although Kodi includes all of the skins

below in their official repository, every

single Kodi installation starts with

Confluence.

Confluence has been the default Kodi skin since version 9.11. It’s the interface you’ll see

in just about every single image on this Kodi setup guide, as well as on most of the

articles and videos on the web.

On first installation, Confluence has a simple interface with the main commands

listed horizontally along the center ribbon. Once movies and music are added to the

library, the five most recently added albums thumbnails will take up most of the top half

of the screen. You’ll see this layout common among many of the third-party Kodi skins,

but it all started with Confluence.

Page | 43

Aeon Nox

Confluence may be the default skin, but

Aeon Nox is hands-down one of the most

popular add-on skins.

Customizable menu layouts including a grid

layout (Wall), sliding Landscape view, List (with or without movie info), or even a banner

list to get the maximum number of titles on the screen at one time. Or you can even go

the minimalist way and simply show the movie logo with a full-screen fan-art.

Aeon Nox is a beautiful Kodi skin that puts your media libraries the focal piece for your

home theater device.

Black Glass Nova

Black Glass Nova moves the center

command ribbon down to the bottom in

order to free up the upper 2/3 of the screen

for background images which change

depending on your selections.

For example, in the image on the left, the image of WALL-E and Eve will show up

whenever you settle on the Movies tab. If you move to the left, the background image

will change to the camcorder or USK flash-key when you land on Videos or Add-Ons.

Black Glass Nova offers many of the same menu options as Aeon Nox, but opts for a

more “sci-fi” feel.

Page | 44

Metropolis

Obvious Superman reference aside,

Metropolis is a great skin if you like to have

as much information on the screen at one

time.

It walks the tightrope between informative and overwhelming fairly well. For example,

when scrolling through movies you can see the resolution, aspect ratio, media codec,

source (DVD\BluRay), audio information, and much, much more – all at a glance.

It may be too much information for a lot of people, but if you’re a movie buff who’s

going to pick a movie based on all the little details, this Kodi skin may be just what

you’re looking for.

Mimic

Mimic’s developer described it as

“a shameless amalgamation of features

from my favorite skins, including Aeron Nox,

reFocus and Acrtic Zephyr.”

Mimic has a modern Android “material design” feel to it, which makes it feel snappy and

responsive. I like Mimic because you can make it as simple or as graphic as you like.

The image to the left shows a clean simple, installation, with no-frills or distractions.

But, since Mimic was based on Aeon Nox, you can still customize layouts for your

movies and music in dozens of different combinations.

Page | 45

Nebula

I have to admit that Nebula isn’t one of my

favorite skins. The design is extremely

clean, using sharp contrasting light and dark

themes in order to stand out on HD TV

screens. Artwork is kept to a minimum in

the default settings, opting for a nicely framed thumbnail and lots of negative space.

Personally. it reminds me too much of an Apple device. The white background looks too

sterile and lifeless, lacking much of the easy-to-access information that is common in

many of the other skins.

If you’re new to the Android world, this may be just what many people are looking for.

Phenomenal

Like Mimic, Phenomenal has a modern,

“material design” feel to it. What sets

Phenomenal apart is that it makes better

use of custom fan-art to make selecting a

movie or TV show a more interactive

experience.

The menu system in Phenomenal pops out from the right side of the screen, with extra

levels of the menu continuing to move left into the viewable area. Icons such as

Settings, Power and Favorites are animated, which is a nice touch. Collections of

movies which have multiple discs have their own animations which really adds to the

polish of this skin.

Page | 46

Rapier

Think of Rapier as Confluence on steroids.

At first glance, the color scheme is the

familiar Kodi-blue, but you can change this

to either red or orange as well. The ribbon is

locked against the bottom of the screen

which leaves enough room for an information panel and a very large icon above your

menu choice.

One thing to note: Rapier requires eleven additional Add-ons in order to work as designed.

Several of these are add-ons you’ll probably be installing anyway. However, if you like

running a lean, “no frills” Kodi installation, this probably isn’t the skin for you.

Titan

Titan is a port of the MediaPortal Titan skin,

but tweaked for Kodi. The look and feel of

the skin is modern, but not quite material

design, opting for a simple font type and

better menu structure.

Like several of the other skins on this list, you can view your media library several

different ways in Titan. You can opt for an icon wall, or a simple list of movies, and

almost everything in between.

What sets this theme apart is that Titan provides almost as much information about

each title as Metropolis, but in an easier to read format. The text may be smaller and

less flashy, but it stands out better due to better organization and improved readability.

Page | 47

Transparency!

If you like your fanart, then Transparency! is

the skin for you. It offers a ton of different

library views including scrolling “DVD cases”

or several different versions of the animated

“poster wall” style interfaces. If you want

something a bit more on the normal side, there’s also usual information list view.

Transparency! is certainly one of the most flashy Kodi skins that I’ve seen. If you’re the

person who likes to show off your system to your friends, then you should definitely

check out this skin.

Page | 48

Weather

Just in case playing movies and music

wasn’t enough, Kodi can also provide

weather information.

There are six standard weather services in

the official Kodi repository. Most are free to

use, but some require registration on their

websites in order to get the most out of them.

The official Kodi weather add-ons are:

OpenWeatherMap Extended

Weather Underground

Yahoo! Weather

Met Office

Oz Weather (Australia specific weather)

Weather China (China specific weather)

Each of these services has their pros and cons, so I recommend trying them out and

seeing which you prefer. The basic installation process is the same for each, although

as I mentioned earlier, you may need to go to the service’s web site in order to register.

I’ll outline the installation for both Yahoo! Weather and OpenWeatherMap

Extended below. OpenWeatherMap Extended requires you to register for their free

service on their website for an API key. Without the API key, the add-on will only update

the Kodi weather data once every hour. Yahoo! Weather doesn’t require any registration,

but doesn’t have as many features as OpenWeatherMap Extended.

Page | 49

Getting Weather Information

We’ll go over installing a weather service in a moment, but I wanted to cover how to get

the forecast first.

Once you have a weather service installed, you can navigate to Weather on the ribbon

on the Kodi home screen. Clicking on this option will bring up the most recent weather

data, depending on your add-on choices.

Installing Weather Add-ons

No matter which of the Kodi Weather add-ons you choose, the installation process will

start the same. From the main Kodi home screen, navigate to the System menu and

click on Settings. From there, scroll down and click on Weather.

Page | 50

This will bring up the Weather Settings menu. At the moment, there’s not much here

because we haven’t installed a service yet.

The first line in the main window will let you choose the Service for weather

information. Click anywhere on that line in order to bring up the service selection

screen.

Page | 51

This screen will show you which weather add-ons you have installed on Kodi on this

machine. At the moment there’s nothing here, but on the right hand side there’s a button

that says Get more…

Here you can select which weather service you want to use. There’s no harm in trying a

few of them out. You can only have one weather service active at any time and you can

switch back and forth between services very easily.

Page | 52

Installing Yahoo! Weather

Yahoo! Weather is one of the more popular Kodi Weather services because it is easy to

configure and doesn’t require any additional information from the user other than what

city you want the forecast for.

From the Get more… window, scroll down until you see that Yahoo! Weather add-on and

click it to install. After a very brief installation process, you’ll be back at the Weather –

Settings window, butYahoo! Weather will appear on the top line as the Service for

weather information.

Yahoo! Weather is installed, but it still needs to be configured for your particular city.

There is a single Settings option on the second line of the main window, directly

underneath the Service for weather information line. Click on Settings to pull up the

Location Setup window.

Page | 53

You can enter in several different cities depending on how simple or complicated you

want your weather forecast to be. For me, I’m only interested in the city closest to me:

Orlando, Florida. To enter a city, click on the line that says Location 1.

On the popup keyboard, type in the name of the city. I tried several different cities and

small towns of various sizes and I wasn’t able to find one that Yahoo! couldn’t recognize

– even several ‘one stoplight’ towns I know.

Page | 54

If there is more than one entry for a particular city, Yahoo! will ask you to choose which

one you meant. Since I’m not looking for the Orlando in South Africa or Brazil, I chose

the top entry: Orlando (Florida -US).

Once you make your selection, you’re taken back to the Location Setup screen. Repeat

the process for as many cities as you want weather information for. Once you’re done,

click OK to continue.

Go back to the Kodi home screen and click on the Weather option to bring up the latest

Yahoo! Weather information.

Page | 55

Within Yahoo! Weather, the sidebar menu will let you scroll through multiple locations if

you have have them set up. It will also let you manually refresh the data and quickly

jump back to the Weather Settings menu.

Installing OpenWeatherMap Extended Weather

If you’re like me and you want a little bit more substance to your forecast, you’ll want to

opt for OpenWeatherMap Extended instead of Yahoo! Weather.

From the Get more… window, scroll down until you see that OpenWeatherMap

Extended add-on and click it to install. After a very brief installation process, you’ll be

back at the Weather – Settingswindow, but OpenWeatherMap Extended will appear on

the top line as the Service for weather information.

Page | 56

More data comes with a catch, though. To get the most out of this service, you’ll have to

register at http://openweathermap.org/appid. The service is free for individual users

and it will refresh the data once every minute. Otherwise, you’ll only get updated

information once per hour. It’s up to you, but if you’re taking the time to install a weather

addon for Kodi, I’d recommend getting giving them your name and email and get access

to “almost real-time” updates.

Once you go to OpenWeatherMap.org, you’ll see a page like the one below. Click on the

orange “Sign Up” button and get your custom API key. Note: here’s where copy\paste

will be your friend. The API key is extremely long and it’s very easy to make a mistake. If

you have the option, please just copy it and paste it into Kodi. It’ll save you a lot of

headaches trying to type it in.

Page | 57

Once you have the API key entered, or even if you skipped that part, it’s time to add your

location data so you can get a custom forecast.

You can enter in several different cities depending on how simple or complicated you

want your weather forecast to be. For me, I’m only interested in the city closest to me:

Orlando, Florida. To enter a city, click on the line that says Location 1.

Page | 58

Once you make your selection, you’re taken back to the Location Setup screen. Repeat

the process for as many cities as you want weather information for.

Don’t click OK yet though…..There are Advanced and Expert settings to talk about first.

The Advanced settings will let you choose what days your weekends fall on, which I

guess is good for people who work non-standard schedules. Your “weekend forecast”

will actually be on your weekend.

Page | 59

It also lets you enable logging, show longitude and latitude when searching locations,

change the zoom level and toggle whether you’re downloading weather maps.

The Expert settings show your inputted locations and their ID codes. There’s really not

much to do here, but I included it for completeness sake.

Once you’re done, click OK to continue.

Go back to the Kodi home screen and click on the Weather option to bring up the latest

OpenWeatherMap Extended information. The first page will show your 14 day forecast,

which is longer than most weather apps I’ve seen.

Page | 60

If you open the sidebar menu, there are options for a Daily forecast, 36-hour forecast,

Weekend forecast, Hourly forecast and Maps. It will also let you manually refresh the

data and quickly jump back to the Weather Settings menu.

The Maps functionality is what sets this add-on apart from the rest. You can toggle

between maps showing Precipitation, Clouds, Temperature, Wind, and Pressure.

Page | 61

More Resources

Are you interested in finding out more about Kodi, or reading my other articles for some

tips, tricks and tweaks?

Look at these to help you get started:

How to make Kodi look more like Netflix

How to fix issues when Kodi is zoomed in too far to see the screen

How to fix Kodi buffering issues

Kore: The official Kodi remote

Yatse: One of the most popular Kodi remotes

10 “Must Have” features for your next Android TV box

Conclusion

This is by no means an exhaustive Kodi setup guide. To do that would likely double or

triple the length of this article. There were topics that I touched on only briefly, and

others that I didn’t mention at all.

However, this guide should help you get a Kodi 16 Jarvis installation up and running

from scratch and get you to the point that you can start enjoying your media.

If you’d like further resources, two of the best places to get more information are

the Kodi Forums and the Kodi Wiki. There you can search different topics and see

comments and tips from some of the developers who created Kodi, or people who have

been using it for years.

My advice is to follow this guide, but then to start playing around. Tweak. Modify. Ask

questions. There is so much that Kodi can do. Enjoy!