Browsing Favorites

If you have several submenus in Favorites (e.g. Movies and TV) and you enter one of them and then press back, you are taken to the OSMC home screen instead of back to Favorites. That feels a little unnatural. It feels like you should be taken to Favorites with the first press of the back button and then to the home screen after the second press.

Bumping this, since it wasn’t addressed with the 18.1 update.

When you press back and exit a Favorites item, you should be taken to Favorites, not all the way to the Home screen.

Have you taken this up with the the Kodi forums? Or is it only an issue when using the OSMC skin?

@bmillham I’ve stopped using Kodi after purchasing a Vero 4K and don’t know if this problem is also present in vanilla Kodi builds.

Hu? You are using Kodi on the Vero. Kodi is the software, Vero is the hardware and OSMC is the linux distribution. So your problem is with Kodi most likely. As I asked is it only a problem with the OSMC skin, or with all skins?

Thanks for the education, I am fully aware that Vero is the hardware and OSMC is the software. I meant that I’ve stopped downloading and installing my own builds of Kodi and custom skins and just use whatever the official OSMC updates install on the device. That was the purpose of getting a Kodi box that comes with its own software, to stop worrying about what’s going on in the bigger Kodi world.

You still don’t understand, Kodi is not developed by Sam and his team. We are dependent on what Kodi supplies. If there is a bug or shortcoming in Kodi, there is not a lot we can do at times.

So I’m guessing from your answer that you have not tried any other skin to see if it’s unique to the OSMC skin?

It’s a little presumptuous of you to assume that I don’t understand the basic fact that Sam doesn’t develop Kodi. I am reporting the issue here since OSMC/Vero is what I use, and I assume the default OSMC skin is what most Vero owners (and developers) use.

I don’t think it’s fair to ask the users who are taking the time to report an issue whether it’s also an issue in other skins or builds. Do you expect all Vero buyers to have a vanilla build of Kodi and other skins installed just so they can troubleshoot OSMC issues? That seems more appropriate for developers, not end users.

I have not tried any other skins. I never use them and I don’t even know if I have them installed.

Ok, sorry that I asked you to help solve or narrow down the problem. I won’t ask again.

I think it had more to do with the general tone of your comments than the contents :wink:

I did just try the Estuary skin, and it seems to work differently from the OSMC skin. In Estuary, you can see the contents of Favorites in the preview panel even without pressing select. In OSMC, you don’t know what’s in Favorites until you select it, so it requires an extra button press. When you press back in OSMC, you are taken to the home screen and have to enter Favorites again. In Estuary, you are sort of already in Favorites after exiting a favorite item (such as Movies, for example).

So if you’re asking whether it’s a skin-related issue, one can argue both yes or no, but I would address it for usability. It just makes UI sense not to be taken two steps back when you only press back once.

Great, that’s the kind of useful information that can help us. I will pass this on to @Chillbo since he is our skin expert and is making major improvements to it.

Thanks :slight_smile:

Correct me, if I’m getting you wrong. From what I understand you’re wondering why you’re thrown back into the home menu after e.g. watching a movie via the favorites window. And as a second issue I can see that you like the way Estuary is offering a preview of the favorites directly on the home screen.

The first issue is easily explained… I’ve put work into making the favorites dialog(!) look like a window. The reason for this is simple: from a design perspective it didn’t make much sense to have home menu entries leading to windows only and one single entry that opens a dialog. The issue is: Kodi has decided that favorites should be a dialog. And dialogs, unfortunately, behave differently in one specific way: If you open or play an item inside a dialog, the dialog will close in the background. And from a skinning perspective, there’s nothing I can do to change that. So, making favorites look like a window is a compromise that has this little drawback you noticed.

Regarding the preview on the home screen: You may add a custom widget to the favorites home menu entry via the skin customisation option under Settings/Interface/Skin/- Configure skin…/Home/Customise home menu.
The reason why this is not the default for favorites is simple: It didn’t make much sense to me to offer a home menu entry with a widget that would basically be a redundancy to the home menu entry itself. But that’s what customisation is for. If you prefer a widget next to it showing the same content, you can add it yourself :+1:t2::slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi Chillbo. I actually don’t particularly like the way it’s handled in Estuary. I agree that Favorites should be a window and not a dialog. But since it’s a window in OSMC, then it should also behave like a window. So if from the Home screen, you select Favorites, then Movies, and then press back, you should be taken back to Favorites (one step back) instead of being taken to the Home screen (two steps back). Does that make sense?

It does, of course. But that’s the last issue about it I couldn’t change… The normal behavior of windows - you return to them when pressing return in a subwindow or after a playback initiated inside that window is stopped - is controlled by Kodi. There’s, unfortunately, no way for me to override this on the skin level. I’d love to change this, believe me.

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Thanks… I understand it now. Can’t we trigger a script to re-open that dialog on the skin level when certain conditions are met? That way we would be emulating “returning” to the Favorites screen (when in reality we would be going Home and opening the Favorites dialog again).

I’ve thought about that idea. But it would be quite complicated as there are actions as well overriding that behaviour even in windows: e.g. when you press the home button during playback. You won’t return to the previous window then.

As much as it also annoys me, realistically I have to say: I don’t have enough time to spare to spend this much energy on this one dialog. Best thing would be, if Kodi would make favorites a window. :rofl:

I can test one thing that just came to my mind. But I’m not sure, if that’ll work in every situation.

Did you participate in the discussion when that decision was made? Could you paste a link here if you have one?

Nope, I didn’t - I’m not a member of team Kodi, just OSMC. Don’t know for how long favorites has been a dialog, if not always. In my experience, such decisions are not made in public and they are mostly not discussed on the Kodi forum.