14 DAY TRIAL // The Kodi Foundation announced today the general availability of the long-anticipated Kodi 18 "Leia" open-source and cross-platform media center software that lets users enjoy all of their media, including movies, photos, live TV, games, and more in a single place.
Dubbed "Leia" to honor the late Carrie Fisher, the Star Wars actress who played the iconic character Leia Princess in the acclaimed franchise, Kodi 18 is a major release that comes almost two years after the Kodi 17 "Krypton" series with numerous new features, improvements, and other noteworthy changes.
Probably the biggest change in the Kodi 18 release is the implementation of support for gaming emulators, ROMs, and controls, allowing users to transform their media center into a genuine retro gaming console. The implementation also brings support for gamepads, and joysticks, and platform-specific controls.
"This is a significant topic in its own right, so look out for future posts on this, but suffice it to say at this time that you now have a whole world of retro gaming at your fingertips, all from the same interface as your movies, music and TV shows," reads today's announcement.
Here's what's new in Kodi 18 "Leia"
The Kodi 18 "Leia" release brings numerous new features and enhancements, among which we can mention DRM (Digital Rights Management) support to allow you to play a whole lot of media content, an improved Music Library with new ways to explore and enjoy your entire music collection, as well as RDS (Radio Data System) support and Live TV improvements.
The Blu-ray support, as well as video and audio playback, were also improved in Kodi 18, which adds enables you to play 4K, 8K, and HDR content without hiccups. Moreover, Kodi 18 adds Bluetooth support, compatibility with the Android TV interface to display the contents of your library, and support for binary add-on repositories on Android, macOS, and Windows.
Also improved in the Kodi 18 "Leia" release is the default "Estuary" skin, which received various changes to the GUI and skinning engine to make your Kodi experience more enjoyable. Android users also get SD card support and speech-to-text support, BSD users get better overall support, Linux users get Mir/Wayland support, and iOS users get support for iOS 10 and better VDADecoder support, and Windows users get 64-bit binaries.
Of course, there are numerous other smaller changes included in this major release of the popular Kodi media center application, and you can study them all in the official Kodi 18 changelog wiki page. Meanwhile, you can download Kodi 18 "Leia" right now for Linux, Android, macOS, Windows, and numerous other supported platforms from the official website.