Kodi

Kodi is a free, open source media center: it plays videos, music and pictures on a TV, from local files, network shares and add-ons. It runs on almost anything; a Raspberry Pi behind the TV is the classic setup.

Kodi has its own remote apps, but they are built to browse Kodi's library, not to send it what is on your computer. I wrote three small tools for that, each for a different place the thing you want on the TV comes from:

None of them needs anything installed on the Kodi box beyond what this page describes.

All three talk to Kodi over its web server, which is off by default. Turn it on in Settings → Services → Control:

• Allow remote control via HTTP: on.
• Port: 8080 by default; all three tools assume it.
• Username and Password: kodi and empty by default. Set a password if anyone else shares your network, and give it to the tools.

Kodi plays links to media files and streams (.mp4, .mp3, .m3u8...) by itself. A web page like a YouTube video is not a media file, so it needs an add-on that turns it into one. Both are optional; install them from Kodi's add-on browser or their repositories.

send2kodi and browser2kodi send YouTube through the YouTube add-on by default, and through SendToKodi if you ask them to (--ytdlp, or the YouTube option).

Kodi's web server speaks JSON-RPC: a POST to http://KODI:8080/jsonrpc with a method and its parameters. This is enough to play a link:

$ curl -s -u kodi: -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"Player.Open","params":{"item":{"file":"https://example.com/video.mp4"}}}' \
    http://192.168.1.50:8080/jsonrpc

Everything else is deciding what to put in file:

The rest of the work is in the details: Playlist.Add to queue instead of play, Player.Seek to start at the time in a YouTube link, Player.AddSubtitle for subtitles, and Player.GetActivePlayers to check that Kodi really started playing.

Kodi decides how to play something by the extension of its path: a picture without one, like the thumbnails of an image search, goes to the video player, which flashes it and stops. send2kodi serves such pictures under a .jpg name; browser2kodi, which cannot serve anything, sends them through the wsrv.nl image proxy.

• A file on your computer (a film, a folder of episodes, an album, holiday pictures): send2kodi. It is the only one that can, by serving the files to Kodi itself. Subtitles next to a video go along with it.
• A link you have in the terminal or the clipboard: send2kodi (send2kodi URL, or send2kodi -C).
• Something on the web page you are looking at: browser2kodi. Right-click it, or click the toolbar button to send the page.
• Anything that is not a file or a link (slides, a demo, a video call): wl2kodi, which mirrors the screen.

send2kodi and browser2kodi make Kodi fetch the media itself, at its full quality, and leave your computer free: you can close the laptop once it plays (send2kodi has to keep serving local files until Kodi has played them). wl2kodi streams what your screen shows instead, with 200–500 ms of latency and, for now, no audio.

send2kodi and wl2kodi are also in the pm user repository; browser2kodi installs like any other browser extension.

send2kodi and browser2kodi have the same settings: address, port, user, password and how to play YouTube. wl2kodi takes the address with --tv, and --user and --pass if Kodi has a login.

• Can't reach Kodi: check that Kodi is on, the address and port are right, and Allow remote control via HTTP is enabled.
• Links play but local files don't: Kodi cannot reach your computer. Check that a firewall lets send2kodi's port (8765) through.
• A web page does not play: install SendToKodi, or try the other YouTube option. Pages behind a login do not play: Kodi fetches them without your browser's cookies.
• wl2kodi shows nothing: look for failed to configure renderer in Kodi's log, and wait ~30 s after restarting Kodi before streaming.

• Kodi's JSON-RPC API
• send2kodi, browser2kodi and wl2kodi