How to Fix Kodi Won’t Play Videos Issues? [4 Methods]
Can’t uninstall or delete Kodi addons
At times, you may find a build or a specific Kodi addon causes a conflict with your Kodi installation. If this occurs, you may try to load up Kodi, only to have it crash every time. Thankfully, Kodi addons can be deleted from outside of your Kodi interface.
If you need to delete a Kodi addon, you can do some from your %APPDATA%Kodiaddons folder.
To find it on your system, do the following:
If you’re unsure which plugin is causing the issue, try deleting your most recently installed addons or repositories and loading Kodi to see if it works. If worst comes to worst, you can delete as many addons or repositories as necessary without causing any harm to your base Kodi installation. You may, however, need to reinstall your addons again later.
Kodi keeps crashing, freezing or pausing
Remove recently installed addons, updates, or builds
If Kodi is consistently crashing or freezing, it’s a sure sign that something has gone wrong. First, consider when this problem began and what your actions were just prior to the problem beginning.
If the issue started after you installed a particular addon, try uninstalling it and see if the problem persists. Likewise, if you just installed an addon update or customized Kodi build you might want to uninstall this to remove it as a potential cause. Note that certain some older addons may not have been updated to work with Kodi 19; if you haven’t used Kodi in a while, it may be better to start over instead of manually reinstalling every addon you’ve ever used,
Disable hardware acceleration
Hardware acceleration is one of the main causes of Kodi crashes, particularly on Android. You could try turning this option off to see if the issue goes away. Doing this is simple: from the Kodi home screen, click the gear icon to go to the settings menu.
Next, click Player settings. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find another gear icon with the word “Basic” beside it. Click this three times and it should turn to “Expert”. Now highlight the Video tab, scroll down to the bottom of the list on the right and disable the Allow hardware acceleration – DXVA2 option. Restart Kodi and see if the crashing persists.
Clear Kodi’s cache
When Kodi plays streaming videos, it downloads a few seconds at a time to the cache. This allows for faster access and smoother streaming. However, when the cache fills up entirely it can cause Kodi to behave erratically. Choppy video is a tell-tale sign that the cache is getting full and although the cache usually empties itself, sometimes it needs to be flushed manually.
Kodi doesn’t have any built-in tools that allow you to do this, so you’ll have to install a maintenance tool such as EZ Maintenance+. Once installed, click the Maintenance tab, then Clear Cache.
Reinstall Kodi
If the steps above haven’t solved your issue, you might want to consider a fresh Kodi installation. You can either do this manually by downloading your preferred version from https://kodi.tv/download or by using your maintenance tool’s Factory Restore option.
Kodi is unable to connect to a source
Kodi repositories are usually installed by providing a path to the source. Sometimes you might find that once the source has been added, you’ll see a popup telling you that it couldn’t be accessed.
This is usually because the source address is incorrect. Check it and make sure you’ve entered it correctly. Common mistakes include misspellings, not using the proper letter case (e.g., inserting upper or lowercase letters where they don’t belong), forgetting to include “http://” at the start, and in some cases, missing the repo’s file extension.
If the address has been entered correctly, more often than not, the repository has gone offline or been moved to a new address. You can test this by opening the source address in your browser; if the folder is empty or not found, that’s the root of your issue. Try researching the repo to see if it has been moved but bear in mind that alternative hosts are not always trustworthy.
If you’ve managed to install a repo, but an addon fails to install, there are several possible causes. The addon may be outdated or no longer supported by its developers. In this scenario there’s very little you can do. Older versions may still be hosted elsewhere, but these aren’t guaranteed to work and the older an addon gets, the more risk it poses to your system when installed.
It’s also possible that the addon has uninstalled dependencies. These are additional addons that are required for the initial addon to work. That said, addons that have these dependencies are not official and pose a significant risk to your system’s security. For this reason, we’d advise against installing them in the first place.
