Kodi

Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub that can be installed on Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls.

Basic module usage

The NixOS module for Kodi sets Kodi up as a desktop session. With this configuration Kodi will run automatically on boot:

{
  services.xserver.enable = true;
  services.xserver.desktopManager.kodi.enable = true;
  services.xserver.displayManager.autoLogin.enable = true;
  services.xserver.displayManager.autoLogin.user = "kodi";
  services.xserver.displayManager.lightdm.greeter.enable = false;

  # Define a user account
  users.extraUsers.kodi.isNormalUser = true;
}

Access from other machines

For this to work Kodi's remote interface must be enabled in the Kodi configuration. Kodi uses by default udp/tcp port 8080, which must be allowed in the firewall:

{
  networking.firewall = {
    allowedTCPPorts = [ 8080 ];
    allowedUDPPorts = [ 8080 ];
  };
}

With Wayland

Especially on less-powerful ARM boards the wayland variant is faster. In this example cage, kiosk compositor for Wayland, will run Kodi as its only application:

{ pkgs, ... }: {
  # Define a user account
  users.extraUsers.kodi.isNormalUser = true;
  services.cage.user = "kodi";
  services.cage.program = "${pkgs.kodi-wayland}/bin/kodi-standalone";
  services.cage.enable = true;
}

Plugins

There are two different ways to install plugins. You can either set the relevant option (search pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix for "wrapKodi" for a list) through NixOS or home-manager:

nixpkgs.config.kodi.enableAdvancedLauncher = true;

or override Kodi to include the plugins (see pkgs/applications/video/kodi/plugins.nix for a list or search in the kodiPlugins namespace):

environment.systemPackages = [
	(pkgs.kodi.withPackages (kodiPkgs: with kodiPkgs; [
		jellyfin
	]))
];

Or if using as the startup desktop service:

  services.xserver.desktopManager.kodi.package =
    pkgs.kodi.withPackages (pkgs: with pkgs; [
    jellycon
	]))
];

Note: you may need to enable addons in your addons manually once installed.

Windevine Content Decryption Module (CDM)

Some addons such as Netflix or ORF ON require Widevine CDM, which can be downloaded manually via Kodi. However, we have Nix, so why not provide the CDM in a declarative way? With Home Manager, this can be achieved like so:

  home.file.widevine-lib.source = "${pkgs.unfree.widevine-cdm}/share/google/chrome/WidevineCdm/_platform_specific/linux_x64/libwidevinecdm.so";
  home.file.widevine-lib.target = ".kodi/cdm/libwidevinecdm.so";
  home.file.widevine-manifest.source = "${pkgs.unfree.widevine-cdm}/share/google/chrome/WidevineCdm/manifest.json";
  home.file.widevine-manifest.target = ".kodi/cdm/manifest.json";

This assumes that your Kodi home directory is ~/.kodi and you have the Nixpkgs packages with unfree licenses available at pkgs.unfree.