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Hi everyone,
I would like to know if there is a (hidden) feature in Kodi to hide unavailable library items.
I've stored media files on several external hard drives.
When i connect a hdd and refresh the library, the contents are added to the library.
But when i remove the drive, the contents remain in the library but (obviously) i cannot play them.
Is there a way to hide the unavailable library items?
The only work-around i could think of, is installing the "watchdog" add-on.
But then contents are removed from the library and it takes a long time to refresh the library when connecting a external hdd again.
Therefore it would be better if it was possible to simply hide the unavailable items instead of removing them.
I'm using Kodi 17.6 on Windows 7 by the way.
Thanks!
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DaVu
Team-Kodi Member
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Not that I know of any hidden feature like that
Moved to feature request subforum
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nickr
Retired Team-Kodi Member
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Just get a proper file server and put your drives in it.
If I have helped you or increased your knowledge, click the 'thumbs up' button to give thanks :) (People with less than 20 posts won't see the "thumbs up" button.)
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The problem may be how would Kodi actually know if it's available or not without actively going and checking each individual item and confirming?
With a large library that would take a very long time and would need to be done every time you open up a library, or at least when you put the selection on each item in turn. That would significantly cripple the user experience by inducing delays, especially as a time-out would be needed to allow for legitimate and accessible media to be correctly read from drives that may need time to spin up and be available.
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It would depend on how often you updated the library, as of course servers and connections can come and go much more quickly than many people will update their libraries.
And if you allow a 10s time-out, a normal screen full of items could take a couple of minutes or more to check depending on how much could be done in parallel. Also processing through a large library (multi-thousand items are not uncommon for some users) would still be time-consuming.
It's certainly an interesting idea and something that could be useful to some people though.
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nickr
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The beauty of kodi is that you can contribute this if you want it.
If I have helped you or increased your knowledge, click the 'thumbs up' button to give thanks :) (People with less than 20 posts won't see the "thumbs up" button.)
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I agree that connections can come and go much faster than people update their libraries.
My initial thought was to detect the availability of items when the update library function is triggered. Users can trigger this manually, at startup or periodically using a (watchdog) plugin.
It doesn't have to be updated real-time.
In the event that a source is not available but was not updated yet, it can still report the error like it does now, but then the user is triggered to manually update the library.
Unfortunately I don't have much experience programming such advanced software as Kodi, and also don't have the time (recently bought a house which requires some work), otherwise I would attempt to build this feature myself.
But i think it is a bit out of my league.
