I know other skins can do it, but I really like the light weight OSMC skin hence the question. Would it be possible to change the background wallpaper or use poster while browsing through the main menu?
The other question is, how easy it is to increase the size of posters displayed in main menu widgets?
Cheers
What do you mean exactly? There will be an option soon to select an image folder as a background slideshow…
Not trivially as the widget layout and size is depending on a lot of code that would need adjusting for this. But it might be a request for the future that might be worth considering: making the widget size adjustable in (maybe three) steps. 
So say, you have 5 items in the main menu:
Movies
TV Shows
Music
Youtube
Settings
I would like to select different background for each menu item, this background could be either predefined image or a random poster from your library/smart playlist. So as you scroll down/up throughout the menu, your background changes.
Sounds good 
That would technically be possible, but probably very difficult to implement. Other skins like Titan rely on python scripts for this. Honestly, I wouldn’t want to make our skin rely more on scripts than necessary - that’s a big disadvantage of skins like Titan IMHO 
I’ll keep it in mind, but it’s low on the list…
The widgets are a different thing. Those are not absolutely perfect yet, but I haven’t had time to look at them again.
Skin does something similar already, when moving between items in the widgets, so once certain poster /movie/Tv Show is highlighted skin changes background to artwork from it… so I thought is should be relatively easy to implement
I am using this for long time on multiple skins - mimic, aeon, bello. I have different backgrounds when I select each item in main menu - movies, tv series, etc. Backgrounds are showed randomly, as slideshow and they depends from my library. So only fanart of movies I have currently on storage for playback is displayed.
To achieve this, the skin itself mus support to set background for each main menu item. Like you can set widgets for those items. Its realized mostly through plugin like skin.helper.backgrounds or skin itself does it. If supported, you can select from multiple background choices like random tv series fanart, random movie fanart, etc. I can provide screens to better understand.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about… Those backgrounds rely fully on scripts - basically the skin helper script.
When testing the functionality with the Titan skin, it was not very reliable - sometimes the path for the “folder” (putting folder in quotes as it’s not really a folder that is used when choosing library fanart as changing backgrounds) was simply not used when selecting it.
That’s the reason why I chose to implement this with Kodi built-ins only for the time being. But if there’s a way to implement this more reliably, I’m open to changing things.
I might have a look at the skins you’ve mentioned soon. Are those all working under Kodi v18? And are they relying on the script versions from the Kodi repo or some other beta/custom repo?
I won’t be using any scripts that can’t be pulled from the official Kodi repo.
I have seen functionality problem only once - with Bello skin. It sometimes needs addon script.skin.helper.backgrounds-1.0.21 installed. I think its official one, its aleady in kodi repo:
http://mirrors.xbmc.org/addons/krypton/script.skin.helper.backgrounds/
After installing, it have those options like “random tv show” or “random movies” to set.
If I remember good, I have used Bello, Mimic, Arctic zephyr, and Aeon nox silvo skin without problems. All of them are also for Kodi 18.
I’ll have another look at this. Not sure though whether I can implement it and, if so, when… WIll let you know here 
Would be nice IMHO gives you a “premium” look
I’ve been looking into this now and got it implemented basically… The only issue I’m having atm is that the dialog which should let you choose from different background options (single image, whole folder or fanart from the library) is refusing to show the library fanart. This issue is also present with the Titan and Bello skin (for v18), but it’s quite random. Sometimes it did work during testing, but most of the time it didn’t.
Trying to figure out why it doesn’t most of the time, but the option to set custom backgrounds per home menu item will probably already make it into the next update. Will fix the library fanart option, if I’m able to find the culprit here.
EDIT: Have posted the issue over at the Kodi forum… skin helper service
This is now on our staging repo…
I’d appreciate it if you could test this and provide feedback before we potentially release this as an update to other users. To test this update:
/etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://apt.osmc.tv stretch-devel main
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && reboot
Please see if the issue is resolved.
I also recommend you edit /etc/apt/sources.list again and remove the line that you added after updating. This will return you to the normal update channel.
just had a quick trail run, and all looks to be working correctly. Haven’t played with multi-images yet, tough.
The very first run through home menu looks to be taking few ms to load, not an issue I don’t think, after that skin is silky smooth again.
Will play a little bit over next couple of days and tell you more.
Cheers!
Multi-images on a button do not work yet. It’s been fixed it just hasn’t been pushed out yet.
The fix is now available for Multi Images. Update again as previously instructed.
multi-image appears to be working as well now, BTW, not sure if this is a feature or a bug but you can get stuck in ‘cancel’ button if accidentally you hit right arrow on the remote while browsing for files?
Interesting. Will have a look what that could be… Bug reports are always welcome
I’ve checked this again. Is this happening with the individual background option for home menu entries?
I’m struggling to reproduce the issue. Here, I’m always getting back to the list from the cancel button by pressing up.
BTW… This feature is now part of our June update. Just the skin helper backgrounds need some more attention. But I’m not sure I can do much about the issues of that addon.
in the Customize Main Menu for example, you go to change action for any menu item, then hit right arrow
Thank you for the explanation! I could reproduce the issue now. Will see what can be done 
EDIT: Have fixed the issue. The fix should be available in staging in about an hour.
Thanks for the feedback! 