[Amedeus]

Since December, I've had to reinstall Kodi on my Fire Stick 4K roughly every month. It works perfectly fine until inevitably at some point I'll try to start it up and it seems to immediately crash back to the home screen. After that, it simply sits either at a black screen or a grey gradient. Rebooting the Fire Stick doesn't help, nor does force closing. If I clear the cache, I see the Kodi start-up screen where it says it's setting things up or preparing Kodi or something. Then back to the black/grey once it's done. Once I reinstall Kodi, reinstall my add-ons, and transfer a few pieces of data (primarily my YouTube settings, the "MyVideos" files, and my "favourites" file), the process starts anew and a few weeks later it does it again.

I had read something about one of the Twitch apps/add-ons possibly causing issues like this with Kodi. I've tried not installing the Twitch add-on, and using the FireTV Twitch app instead (through the home screen, not through Kodi). I've also tried leaving the FireTV app uninstalled and using only the Kodi one. I'll try neither this time and see if that does it, but I'm doubtful.

I'm installing the latest main download of Kodi every time, and the Fire Stick is running Fire OS 6.2.7.1.

[fritsch]

It should at least recover with 18.6 - though reconfiguration might still be needed.

[Amedeus]

It should at least recover with 18.6 - though reconfiguration might still be needed.

I've only just upgraded to 18.6 with this latest reinstall, so I'll see how it goes from here on. When you say reconfiguration might still be needed, do you mean on your end, or do you mean like I'll still have to put my data back in if it happens?

[fritsch]

Your data is gone when this happens. I could not find the root cause, as it magically happens never for me on FireTV 4K and could not reproduce. So therefore I decided that kodi at least comes up.

[Amedeus]

Your data is gone when this happens. I could not find the root cause, as it magically happens never for me on FireTV 4K and could not reproduce. So therefore I decided that kodi at least comes up.

That's scary. The main reason I use Kodi is because it keeps track of what I've watched and where I left off, and because the Favorites tab is so handy. I'd definitely rather have to reinstall than lose all that info, so I might just drop back down to 18.5 and power through.

I'm sure you've got a lot on your plate already, so this is merely a suggestion, but it would be really handy in this case to have some sort of automatic backup of the userdata folder. Maybe once every hour or 5 hours or something, when a video's not currently playing, copy that folder to a location of the user's choosing. And start the feature switched off by default, so if Kodi does reset itself like that, it doesn't overwrite the old data. Then when it resets, all the user has to do is reinstall their add-ons, copy the backup back, switch auto-backup back on, and continue on as usual. Just a thought off the top of my head.

[FXB78]

Honestly just copy the addons & userdata folders yourself periodically, say once a month or whatever. Copy them using a file manager to another location and if needed just copy them back. Occam's Razor. People are always looking to automation when sometimes it's just better to do it your self

[Amedeus]

Honestly just copy the addons & userdata folders yourself periodically, say once a month or whatever. Copy them using a file manager to another location and if needed just copy them back. Occam's Razor. People are always looking to automation when sometimes it's just better to do it your self

In other words, do exactly what I've been doing, just with more risk of losing a lot of data now and then.

I use Kodi far too much to only back everything up once a month. If I was losing a month's worth of data every month, there'd be no point to using Kodi over individual apps for each service. I'd have to back it up every couple nights instead, and when you factor in what a pain ES File Explorer is to navigate on a Fire Stick, it would still be less effort to just copy my files over, download the latest version of Kodi, reinstall Kodi, reinstall my add-ons, copy my info back, and readjust some settings once a month than it would be to do that.

[FXB78]

Your black screen issue is most likely due to a corrupt guisettings.xml file, usually caused by Kodi not closing down properly. You could just take a copy of this file which when restored would most probably fix your issue. Next time it happens try deleting guisettings.xml and it will likely boot up leaving you to just re-do your skin settings. Closing down & replacing the guisettings.xml with your backup should then restore your previous settings.

This crash you are talking about doesn't corrupt the whole setup so using 'Clear Data' in Android is complete overkill and not required.

[Amedeus]

Your black screen issue is most likely due to a corrupt guisettings.xml file, usually caused by Kodi not closing down properly. You could just take a copy of this file which when restored would most probably fix your issue. Next time it happens try deleting guisettings.xml and it will likely boot up leaving you to just re-do your skin settings. Closing down & replacing the guisettings.xml with your backup should then restore your previous settings.

This crash you are talking about doesn't corrupt the whole setup so using 'Clear Data' in Android is complete overkill and not required.

I could try that. The only GUI settings I have are a screensaver turned on and some main menu items turned off, so just deleting a file now and then would certainly be a far more convenient option if that turns out to be the issue. Thank you for the suggestion.