[TESTING] New OSMC skin for Krypton

Hi

With hard work from our graphics developer @simonbrunton and @BobCrachett, we’ve a new skin to show you.

To test the new skin, you need to be running a recent @gmc test build for Raspberry Pi or one of the official OSMC Krypton Beta Builds.

If you update from the current stable release to one of these test builds, you will find that the new skin is automatically installed and available to select from Settings. If you have been using one of these builds before we announced the skin, then you’ll want to run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
reboot

Please note the above commands will only work if you have been running Krypton test builds already. If this is not the case, you’ll need to change your /etc/apt/sources.list file depending on the version that you would like to install.

We’re looking forward to your feedback and improvements.

Cheers

Sam

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You have to enable the Skin as you would an Addon, just FYI. It’s not just there… :wink:
If I want to do some changes myself for personal use, where would I find the Skin on the SD (it isn’t in the default Addons folder) and is there a source available somewhere?

The latest test builds don’t have this problem, and users using the old skin will be able to update straight to the latest version.

The source is available via our Git repository. If you make some changes and think they’d be beneficial to others, we’d like to see them.

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Did an update on my pi, did see the upgrade pulling the new Skin but upon reboot, it’s nowhere to be found. I click on “Get More” but I can’t seem to find it anywhere…

Check in Addons → Skin → if it is enabled

Our current test builds don’t guarantee the skin is enabled.

Newer @gmc builds have a patch to ensure the skin is enabled that has not been added to our Krypton beta builds yet.

You need to go to Add-ons from Estuary screen; available add-ons; Look and Feel and find the OSMC skin. Then you need to enable it.

Working now. Thx

Here’s a few things I noticed while playing with the new skin.

While customizing the Home Menu:

  • No longer able to remove items from main menu. (the delete button is no longer there)
  • Configuring the default widget take forever to return the option list (Initial run only)
  • Icon size is listed as Square but only return Wide and Tall as option.
  • Dependencies for widgets are not installed by default.

Highlight the menu item you want to delete in the list on the left, and bring up the context menu.

Yes, the list has to be generated first time.

Nice spot. Added to to-do list.

All the widgets that are used by the skin by default should have no dependencies. If you install additional widget providers then their dependencies should be installed by Kodi automatically.

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Customising the menu requires Skin Shortcuts. We have made sure this is now optional :slight_smile:

Thanks! Keep up the good work. I will make sure to send more feedback as I have more time to test the different area later today.

On the whole, the new skin is lovely.

1 minor niggle
The un-selected font is too light to read from a distance
The larger, darker yellow font of selected items is great!

3 icky show-stopping niggles
1 - the skin must be re-enabled via the Add-Ons screen upon each reboot
2 - Only the ICON view is available… kiddos and the elderly require the Big Icon / Grid view (see New Kiddos vs Old Kiddos)
3 - Custom menu shortcuts now persist from a backup recover… However rather than being persistent and view-able to the right (see Old Videos) you MUST press left to see the shortcuts (see New Videos) which are otherwise hidden from view.

Old Video Menu, ‘Videos’ highlighted/selected

New Video Menu, had to press left from ‘Videos’ before sub-menus became visible. Not intuitive to navigate

Lovely Grid view on the original OSMC skin that shows a bunch of movies / page graphically

Sad panda that only a list view exists on the new skin… little girls disconcerted

Thanks for the feedback Chris. I’ll leave it in more capable hands :slight_smile:

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I haven’t installed the test build but one thing I would love to see is for the “cleaning library” message to be made less invasive. In the current skin it pops up a modal so if I run a clean while a video is playing it is very disruptive. Something more like the “scanning” message in the bottom right would be perfect.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

Wrong visibility condition on the wall view - will be fixed.

Consistent with how the new skin displays such menu’s (the sub-menu is treated the equivalent of the context menu), but added to my to-look-at list.

Thanks for the feedback.

Not a skin issue. This would have to be changed in Kodi itself.

New skin looks good so far! I’m testing on a Pi3. I did have a bit of trouble while doing video calibration. My cursor wasn’t showing and the arrows to adjust the screen kept disappearing. Also the screen was black instead of blue with grey instead of white arrows, screen, subtitles. No Kodi logo in the middle of the box. I switched back to default Estuary skin for a sec to fix it. Osmc crashed to :frowning: screen shortly after. I haven’t really messed around with it much yet. I notice the background keeps resetting after restarting the Pi. I know it’s still in development and there are a few things that I miss from the old one (like “My Osmc” main menu side tiles) but overall it’s a breath of fresh air from the old skin. I’ll be sure to post anything else I find and I look forward to watching the progress of this new skin.

Thanks @BobCrachett

Historically If a user clicks OK on one of the Main Categories (Videos, Shows, Music, System) nothing happens. They press right and down/up to highlight the shortcut they are interested in. To me, this is intuitive.

Pressing left on one of the Main Categories to make the Shortcuts visible is not intuitive… however pressing OK on one of the Main Categories to make the Shortcuts visible would be perfectly acceptable :slight_smile:

Having the Shortcuts hover OVER the Main Categories (like the Maintenance/Context Menu) makes it rather difficult to read from the couch. If the shortcuts may no longer be persistently visable and navigable to the right of the Main Categories… would it be possible to move the ‘Context menu’ to the right?

@sam_nazarko will it be possible to keep the OLD OSMC skin as a user selectable option while any wrinkles are ironed out on the NEW OSMC skin for the initial Krypton release? The NEW OSMC skin is very pretty

Just to be clear I have the following main menu structure
Videos
-Children (Folder Shortcut 1)
-Comedy (Folder Shortcut2)
-Etc
Shows
-TV (Folder Shortcut 1)
-Music Videos (Folder Shortcut 1)
-TED (App Shortcut 3)
Music
-Music (Folder Shortcut 1)
-Pandora (App Shortcut 2)
System
-My OSMC
-Settings
-Power
-Etc

Video calibration dialog added to to-do list, and thanks for the bug report :slight_smile:

Known bug with Kodi, should be fixed soon. Edit: Fixed in Kodi whilst I was typing this post :slight_smile: fix skin settings loading on skin reaload by tamland · Pull Request #10751 · xbmc/xbmc · GitHub

If nothing’s happening when one of the Main Categories is being clicked, it probably shouldn’t be visible (for example, a link that takes you to the Movies library won’t do anything if there are no movies in your library.) Most likely an issue with the Skin Shortcuts script.

From the menu customiser, ‘Change action’ > ‘Custom item >’ (last item in the list) > Type ‘SetFocus(9001)’

Options are being considered :slight_smile:

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TVAddons isn’t supported here.

Please see the rules on piracy. We will assume this applies to other add-ons here.

Obviously the skin has diverged over time, and the image posted was an older version.

thank you !