[Joejim]

When exiting/shut down Kodi, what is proper/best way?

Click on power button gives options like Exit, Power Off System, Reboot.
Then window screen has Red X close option on upper right corner.

When I click Red X to close, Kodi closes fast.
But when I click on Exit, it takes few more seconds. It seem like it's doing something.

[PatK]

These are software switches, Kodi takes that instruction and runs with it, closes out various background functions, attempts to close out waiting for URL's, 3rd party plugins, de allocates memory and a host of housekeeping, and writes the last of the log file log (wiki) most of the details are in the debug log with time stamps. If you want to see the back of Kodi, you start here before tinkering.

I'm a little unsure where the 'Red X' is coming from, might be skin specific and is that in windowed mode? Sounds like some sort of fast escape and curtails a normal shutdown procedure (and if that is the case, some of your settings might not be saved).

[Joejim]

"where the 'Red X' is coming from" ?
It is the typical window box that one can drag on screen, min/max, stretch size, move back/forth between main monitor to external monitor like lcd tv. I have Kodi on windows mode so I can drag it between two monitors that I have.
On upper right corner there are three buttons: min, max, close(Red X).

Question is what is best way to close Kodi? and not possibly damage it.
Is it ok to click Red X?
or must use power button with options in Kodi.
then which option is best? Exit? Power Off System?
BTW reboot option reboot the entire PC, so I don;t think that's a right option to close Kodi.

[DarrenHill]

If you close Kodi down via the menu then you're giving it time and notice to shut down properly - writing stuff to its database, saving any changes made and stuff like that.

But if you're force-closing it by closing the Window (the red X) then you're not doing any of that, and so if you've updated anything or made any configuration or settings changes, or indeed if you've watched stuff then there's a good chance that those changes may not be saved as Kodi updates on exit (this being what it's doing to take a few more seconds that way). There could also perhaps be the risk of file corruption and settings getting lost by force-closing if Kodi happened to be writing to one of its settings files at the time.

So the best way is to use the menu option for Quit within Kodi itself, and give it the time to shut itself down properly. You can think of it as the difference between telling Windows itself to shutdown or just pushing the power button on your machine and killing the power that way.

One other note, if I remember correctly there was a bug in some versions of Kodi where if you were in full-screen mode then the quit option didn't work (clicking on it didn't do anything at all). If that happens just go into Windowed mode (press F11 on the keyboard) and then it works fine.

[jac55]

The "Power off System" is a very useful option if like me, you use Kodi for music, and do not want a monitor switched on. I control the play back with an iPad or Android tablet. It is very useful to "Power Off System" from the iPad at the end of a music session.