Beta channel and beta features

NZB-DAV ships through two channels of the Appz4Fun Kodi repository. Stable gets only full releases. Beta gets every release, including pre-releases. This page covers what the Beta channel gives you, how to join it or leave it, and how to report problems.

Where each channel is today

Channel	Version	Released
Stable	1.2.3	2026-05-08
Beta	2.0.0-beta.2	2026-07-18

The full release list is on the GitHub releases page. Any release marked Pre-release there goes only to the Beta channel. The release workflow sets that flag automatically for any version tag with a hyphen, such as v2.0.0-beta.2.

Beta means beta

The 2.0.0 line changes a lot at once: a new download backend, a rewritten settings screen, and reworked fallback and recovery. It's used daily, but expect rough edges. If something breaks, please report it.

What's in the beta

These features are in 2.0.0-beta.1 or 2.0.0-beta.2 and are not in Stable 1.2.3. The full notes are in the changelog.

New features

Feature	What it does	Details
NZBGet backend	Use NZBGet instead of nzbdav. NZB-DAV submits the NZB, shows download and post-processing progress, then plays the finished file from your completed-downloads folder.	NZBGet backend
Smart Duplicates failover (NZBGet)	Other same-name results are queued as backups. If your pick can't be repaired, NZBGet switches to a backup and playback follows it.	Smart Duplicates
Exact season-pack episode reuse (beta.2)	A finished season pack plays the episode you asked for, not the largest file. Later episodes from the same pack play from it without downloading again.	Reuse a completed season pack
Indexer manager	Add, edit, and remove direct Newznab indexers from a preset list of known indexers, with searches that respect each indexer's capabilities.	Search and indexers
TVDB-aware TV search	With an optional TMDB API key, NZB-DAV looks up the show's TVDB id and searches indexers by id instead of by title.	Search and indexers
Read-ahead buffer	While a stream plays, and while it's paused, NZB-DAV reads ahead of the playhead so a pause builds real buffer. Default 256 MB.	Settings reference
Stall wait and starvation notices	A slow backend gets a patience window (default 120 s) instead of a dropped stream, and a notification tells you what's happening instead of a silent black screen.	Playback
Queue-clear prompt	When you start a new download, NZB-DAV can clear nzbdav's queue: Ask (default), Always clear, or Never. It never cancels the job for the title you're starting.	Settings reference
Help text for every setting	The settings screen was rebuilt on Kodi's newer settings format, so every setting and category shows a help line.	Settings reference

Improvements

• Fallback streams match alternate releases in tiers and search more widely for same-content peers. For files of 1 GiB or more, the byte-fingerprint check samples 100 points instead of 20. See Fallback streams.
• SMB playback is checked before it starts (beta.2). A file that lists over SMB but can't be read yet is retried until it can. If it never becomes readable, you get a "restart Kodi" hint instead of a failed player.
• The results dialog scrolls long labels on the focused row, has zebra-striped rows, and keeps remote focus inside the list.
• Large MKVs start faster. The proxy pre-reads the end of the file, where Matroska keeps its seek index, before playback starts.
• Prowlarr results are read from Prowlarr's native search API.
• Security: every XML parser that reads network data now goes through one hardened parser.

Changes on main that aren't in a release yet are listed under Unreleased at the top of the changelog.

Joining the beta

New install: follow Install the add-on and choose the Beta repository zip (repository.appz4fun.beta-<version>.zip).

Already on Stable: Kodi only updates a third-party add-on from the repository it was installed from, so adding the Beta repository isn't enough on its own.

1. Install the Beta repository zip (Settings → Add-ons → Install from zip file).
2. Open Settings → Add-ons → My add-ons → Video add-ons → NZB-DAV → Versions, and pick the newest version listed under Appz4Fun Repository (Beta).
3. Optionally uninstall the Stable repository add-on (Appz4Fun Repository). It no longer affects NZB-DAV.

Your settings stay in place. The 2.0.0 settings screen adds an NZBGet category, and every new setting starts at its default.

Switching channels

To go back to Stable, use the same Versions list: open NZB-DAV's add-on info, choose Versions, and pick the version listed under Appz4Fun Repository. You have to do this by hand: Stable (1.2.3) is a lower version than the beta (2.0.0-beta.x), and Kodi never downgrades an add-on on its own. See Going back from Beta to Stable.

After you switch either way, check that Auto-update is still on in the add-on info page.

When 2.0.0 final is released

Kodi reads a version like 2.0.0-beta.2 as the base version 2.0.0 plus an extra suffix, and it ranks a version with a suffix above the same version without one. So Kodi treats 2.0.0-beta.2 as newer than a final 2.0.0, and won't offer that update on its own. If a final release has the same base number as the beta you're running, install it from Versions. Any later version, such as 2.0.1, updates normally.

Reporting beta problems

1. Turn on Settings → System → Logging → Enable debug logging, reproduce the problem, and save kodi.log. On CoreELEC and LibreELEC it's at /storage/.kodi/temp/kodi.log.
2. Remove API keys, passwords, and server addresses from anything you share. NZB-DAV redacts credentials in its own log lines, but other add-ons may not.
3. Open an issue on GitHub. Include the NZB-DAV version (shown on the add-on info page), your backend (nzbdav or NZBGet), your platform, and the relevant log lines.

See Troubleshooting for common problems and fixes.