What's new in 0.14.0
- Subtitles you can read from the sofa. Four sizes and an optional dark box behind the text, kept for each screen. Forced and downloaded subtitles follow it too.
- Two subtitle languages at once. A second track at the top of the picture, remembered for each film or show.
- Several copies of one film are now one title with versions. For example 4K and 1080p, or a director's cut. A "Version" button beside Play lets you pick one, and Kinema remembers the choice. The first time, it plays the copy that suits your screen. Settings → Library lists what you have more than once.
- My list. Keep a film or show handy with "+ My list" on its page (or L on a card). They show up in a row on Home.
- Play something. For nights when nobody can choose: one button on Home (or S) suggests an unwatched film or the next episode of a show you're in the middle of. Press Another for a different one.
- Pictures already in your folders are used. poster.jpg, fanart.jpg and the like, left there by Kodi, Jellyfin or tinyMediaManager. A title kept without a match gets a picture from its own file.
- Sound delay for each sound device, in 10 ms steps, for a receiver or TV that puts the sound out of step with the lips. Set it in the player or in Settings.
- A chapter list in the player, and shuffle and repeat for playlists.
- Plain words throughout. Scanning, Needs attention and subtitle tracks that look alike are now described in plain language.
- Help with network shares. A computer that shares no folders yet now tells you so, with steps to share one. Typing a folder path instead of a share name gets a clear explanation.
- Titles matched without TMDB move over to TMDB, with its pictures, once a TMDB key works.
Your library is upgraded the first time you start 0.14.0. Kinema saves a backup copy first. Once upgraded, an older version of Kinema can't open it.
Windows
Installer: download kinema-windows-x64-setup.exe
and run it. It installs for your Windows account only (no
administrator) and adds Kinema to the Start menu. Uninstall it
from Settings → Apps: it removes the program, its shortcuts and its
"Open with" entries, and asks before deleting your library and
settings.
Portable: or download kinema-windows-x64.zip,
extract it anywhere, and run kinema.exe. Nothing is written
outside the folder and your app data.
Windows 11. Needs the WebView2 runtime, which ships with
Windows 11; on a PC without it the installer fetches it from
Microsoft, and the ZIP needs it installed first.
Windows will ask once whether to run it
Kinema is not code-signed, so the first time you open it Windows
shows "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then
Run anyway; Windows remembers. To check that the file you
downloaded is the one that was published, run this in PowerShell
in the folder you downloaded it to:
Get-FileHash .\kinema-windows-x64-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256
Get-FileHash .\kinema-windows-x64.zip -Algorithm SHA256Expected: bd993c768ace1d9ef543931f1f3ab25c7d693143ecbb8da03982e590f7575b29 for the installer,
40f9fd4b5ae5287c333234b17d9f22757404b3f84bec9e1091d712a6473e8637 for the ZIP.
The two must match exactly. Each file also has a .sha256 beside it.
Linux
Kinema uses your system's mpv and WebKitGTK; the packages install
them for you. For x86-64 PCs take the amd64 / x86_64 files,
for ARM the arm64 / aarch64 ones.
Ubuntu 24.04 or later, Debian 13:
sudo apt install ./kinema-linux-amd64.debFedora:
sudo dnf install ./kinema-linux-x86_64.rpmAnything else: unpack kinema-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
and run ./kinema; its README.txt names the two libraries (mpv
and WebKitGTK) to install. HDR on Wayland needs mpv 0.40 or later — Ubuntu 26.04,
Debian 13, Fedora 43 and Arch have it.
To check a download, put the file and its .sha256 in one folder
and run sha256sum -c <file>.sha256 there.
Android (early version)
For Android TV boxes, installed by hand (sideloaded): download
kinema-android.apk, copy it to the device and
open it (Android asks once to allow installs from that source).
It is an early version, tried on one TV box and the emulator; a
phone has not been tried. See the README for what has been tested
and what is still missing. Check the download with
sha256sum -c kinema-android.apk.sha256; the
certificate it is signed with is named in the README.
First run
Kinema asks where it will be watched and where your movies and TV
folders are, then scans — with a few skippable setup pages while it
does. Posters and descriptions come from TMDB through a key Kinema
carries, so there is nothing to sign up for; a free key of your own
can be entered in Settings instead.
The Windows ZIP bundles an unmodified LGPL build of libmpv, which
you may replace; on Linux the system's libmpv is used; Android uses
Google's Media3 (Apache-2.0) — see NOTICE.md.
Something not working, or it works on a device the README does not
list? Say so: bug report
or device report.