The Kodi Foundation has released the alpha 2 version of Kodi 22, aptly named "Piers," as part of its ongoing updates. This upcoming major release introduces significant enhancements, including support for FFmpeg 8, which optimizes media handling, along with HEIF/HEIC image format support.
New features in this alpha build include organizing the Library/Sources with sections for Season Plot and Movie/TV Show Original Language. Additionally, Kodi 22 alpha 2 introduces a new Weather Skinning API and a dialog that clarifies microphone permissions for Android users.
The latest alpha also enhances fanart functionality, improves audio channel handling, and resolves issues that affect streaming with numerous audio, video, or subtitle tracks. Improvements have also been made to subtitle selection for forced-only subtitles and enabling multiple Kodi instances on Windows devices.
Enhancements extend further, with better video version importing, fixes for Daylight Saving Time changes in Personal Video Recording (PVR), various improvements for the Home widget and Weather window, and a solution to high CPU usage problems on macOS.
For LG webOS users, this version addresses a unified media pipeline, vivid subtitle displays in HDR/DolbyVision playback, and the occasional subtitle display failures. A critical fix was also implemented which previously halted scanning when local NFO files were detected. Moreover, Python support is now upgraded to version 3.13.7.
Users interested in testing out Kodi 22 "Piers" can find the alpha 2 release available for compilation on the project’s GitHub page. As a reminder, this version is still a pre-release and should not be used on production machines.