Raspberry Pi with a heatsink case sitting on top of a TP-Link network switch

Kodi Download: Install on Windows, Mac, and More

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Kodi turns almost any device into a media center for your own files — movies, series, music, photos — with library art, resume points, and remote control apps. It is free, open source, and available for practically everything with a screen. Two things decide whether your Kodi experience is good: installing the right version from the right place, and staying away from the “loaded” builds that get the software a bad name.

Last checked: September 2026. Current stable: Kodi 21.3 “Omega”; Kodi 22 “Piers” is in beta.

Which version?

Install 21.3, the maintained stable branch. Kodi 22 reached beta over the summer of 2026 — tempting, but betas are for testers; on the machine your family actually watches TV with, stability wins. When 22 goes final, Kodi updates cleanly in place and keeps your library.

Downloads per platform — kodi.tv only

  • Windows: installer from kodi.tv/download, or the Microsoft Store build (same app, auto-updates).
  • macOS: the .dmg from kodi.tv — pick the Apple Silicon build on M-series Macs.
  • Android / Android TV: Google Play, or the APK from kodi.tv for boxes without Play.
  • Linux: your distribution’s repo or Flatpak; kodi.tv lists the commands.
  • Raspberry Pi: the pleasant surprise — a Pi 4 or Pi 5 runs Kodi beautifully via LibreELEC, a minimal OS that boots straight into Kodi. Flash it to an SD card, plug the Pi into the TV over HDMI, and you have a silent media center for the price of a pizza night.
Raspberry Pi keyboard with two Raspberry Pi boards on a dark surface
Raspberry Pi boards: LibreELEC turns one into a dedicated Kodi box. Photo: SimonWaldherr / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

First setup that pays off

  1. Add your media under Settings → Media → Library, pointing at folders (local disks, USB drives, or network shares via SMB/NFS).
  2. Name files sensibly (Movie Title (Year).mkv; series as Show/Season 01/S01E01.mkv) — the scraper then fetches posters, plots, and cast automatically.
  3. Install the Kore remote app (official, by the Kodi team) on your phone; it beats any TV remote.
  4. For subtitles, add a subtitle service from the official add-on repository that ships with Kodi.

Troubleshooting

  1. Crashes or a black screen at launch (Windows). Update the GPU driver first — Kodi leans on hardware acceleration. Still bad? Rename the userdata folder (%APPDATA%\Kodi) to force a fresh start and re-add sources.
  2. Stutter on high-bitrate files. Usually the network, not Kodi: wired beats Wi-Fi for 4K remuxes. On borderline hardware, allow adjusting refresh rate (Settings → Player → Videos) to cut judder.
  3. Library missed items. Check the naming pattern above; then Library → Update. Files the scraper can’t parse simply don’t appear — they aren’t lost, just unmatched.
  4. Buffering on network shares. Prefer NFS or wired SMB to Wi-Fi; if you must, increase Kodi’s cache via the official advancedsettings.xml documentation on the Kodi wiki rather than a random pasted config.

About “fully loaded” builds — a plain warning

Kodi itself is legal everywhere and contains nothing but a player. The pre-configured “builds” and third-party add-on repositories promising free everything are piracy layers strapped on top: they break constantly, some carry cryptominers, and they are the sole reason Kodi has a shady reputation. Install clean from kodi.tv, use the official repository, point it at media you own — that setup is fast, legal, and never mysteriously “stops working.”

Featured image: Raspberry Pi — a favorite Kodi machine — Photo: RAIL P (FLUFFTECH.NET) / Wikimedia Commons, CC0