bittor7x0/kodi.script.autoruns

Disable startup services on Kodi

Autoruns: Disable startup services on Kodi

Overview

Some Kodi add-ons are service add-ons, which will be automatically started when Kodi starts.

Kodi does not allow you to disable these services to use the add-ons with their services disabled and if you have a lot of service add-ons installed, Kodi startup will be very slow because they will be using system resources (CPU, memory, network, hard disk, etc.) and some service add-ons will be using them while Kodi is running.

This Kodi add-on lists the services add-ons and allows you to disable them (and enable them if you had disabled them before), improving Kodi internal speed because the add-ons with their services disabled will only run when you access them.

To achieve this, Autoruns add-on modifies the addon.xml file of service add-ons commenting the xbmc.service extension point, so you must restart Kodi after disabling them and when they are updated you will have to disable them again because the addon.xml file will have been restored to its original state.

Most add-ons work properly with their services disabled, but you should be aware that some add-ons use their services for some functionalities, for example, plugin.video.youtube uses it to play MPEG-DASH VODS.

Installation

• Download the latest release (script.autoruns-<VERSION>.zip)
• Copy the zip file to your Kodi system
• Open Kodi, go to System -> Add-ons -> Install from zip file
• Select the file script.autoruns-<VERSION>.zip

History

In 2013, fightnight created this add-on replacing the xbmc.service extension point with the fake variable xbmc.pass in the addon.xml file of the service add-ons you want to disable. fightnight updated the add-on to 2015.

This dirty hack no longer works with Kodi v19 Matrix, because it parses the addon.xml file and if this file isn't a valid XML (with xbmc.pass isn't valid) the add-on is disabled and it cannot be enabled until the addon.xml file is valid (modifying it manually or reinstalling the add-on).

So in 2021 and because the fightnight add-on was abandoned, Jon Bovi updated the add-on to disable the services commenting the line <extension ... xbmc.service ...> in the addon.xml file.

This new approach does not work if the add-on has the xbmc.service extension point in multiple lines (for example KCleaner) because it generates an invalid XML file.

Because I did not find this add-on on GitHub and cannot contact these authors to fix it, in 2022, I released this add-on based on fightnight's latest version, but now the xbmc.service extension point is commented parsing the addon.xml file, this way, it works with all the add-ons because the XML is always valid.

This version is compatible with Kodi v19 Matrix and Kodi v20 Nexus and I will update the add-on to work with future Kodi versions and accept pull requests with improvements.

License

Autoruns add-on is GPL v3 licensed.
You may use, distribute and copy it under the license terms.