I’ve mentioned that I’ve been running a XBMC (Kodi) media server at my house for quite some time now, and in fact, I just upgraded to the relatively recently renamed Kodi version of this venerable media server a couple of days ago.

Now although a wireless keyboard and mouse works perfectly fine for controlling the Kodi media server, sometimes you don’t really want to sit will all that bulk lying about your coffee table (not that I have one mind you), which is exactly where the cleverness of remote control apps come into play.

Sadly, the first iteration of the the official XBMC remote control Android app wasn’t a particularly well written, or well supported venture, meaning that the need and thus door for good apps was there – resulting in quite a few being written by enterprising individuals. Indeed, one of the standouts is/was Tolriq’s Yatse XBMC Remote, a fine piece of app development in its own right.

However, the newly refreshed Kodi team saw the lack of love for the official Android remote app and approached developer Synced Synapse with the request for their Kore remote app to become the Kodi project’s new official remote control app – and after downloading and playing with it for a day I can see why!

xbmc foundation kodi android remote control app kore

From the official download page, the Kore team describes the app as:

“Kore is a simple, easy to use and beautiful Kodi / XBMC remote that lets you control your media center from your Android device.

With Kore you can:

  • Control your media center with an easy to use remote
  • See what’s currently playing, including relevant information about it (movies, TV shows, music, pictures and addons)
  • Check and manage the current playlist
  • Change and sync subtitles and audiostreams
  • View your media library, with details about your movies, TV shows, music and addons
  • Works with Kodi and XBMC (Frodo and Gotham)
  • All in a nice and easy to use interface, with multiple themes.”

As far as I am concerned, the app is beautifully designed, elegant but modern, fully featured and an absolute joy to work with. It is responsive, handles any errors seemingly gracefully, and on the whole is just a really well thought out and even better delivered app experience.

If you haven’t tried Kore out yet, then you really ought to do yourself a favour and download it from Google’s Play store in order to give it a spin.

You definitely won’t be sorry!

Goodbye wireless mouse and keyboard then – it looks like I won’t be needing your services any longer.

Related Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.kore