[BobCratchett]

Give me 24 hours, and I'll identify the exact build in which it began (though it has begun within the last 5 builds, as thats the last time I updated...), but there's a new behaviour in these builds whereby when lists whose content is set directly to a plugin (<content>plugin://plugin.name/</content>) now show the busy dialog when they are being refreshed.

Whilst this does actually help with one issue I've previously reported on Trac (#16635) it causes issues with the default skin when using the on screen keyboard with the autocompletion script enabled - every key press causes the autocompletion script to reload and so show the dialog, and with 3rd party skins - I've observed the behaviour with my own Conq skin mod (I know issues should only be reported with the default skin, but I'm confident the skin is up-to-date with all the changes given in the relevant forum thread), and read one complaint regarding Nox 5 - it causes issue with their home screens, where widgets are generally provided in this way.

See the comments on PR9778 which sound vaguely similar. If this is the same issue, not sure if it's a core issue or something that addons/skins now need to change.

The behaviour began in build 508, so 9778 does indeed look to be a likely candidate.

I don't believe there's any way for plugins to tell Kodi not to display the busy dialog when loading them, and skins have no idea why the busy dialog is displayed in order to make it invisible (which I believe would still lock the GUI until its done), so my understanding is this is a behaviour that would have to be changed in core. (The workaround sualfred mentions on the PR doesn't affect the display of the dialog, but works around a bug displaying the home screen when pre-loading lists directly filled from plugins)