How to remove and add features from OSMC and Openelec on RaspberryPi?

Question

I am exploring OSMC and OpenELEC for RaspberryPi. Menu options available in OSMC are:

• Videos
• Music
• Pictures
• My OSMC
• Favorites
• Programs etc..

Please help me how can I remove any of the menu options without affecting the rest of functionality. For e.g. I am interested in removing Music, and Pictures.

Answer 1

From what I know OSMC is based upon Kodi.

The hard way

You can remove features using skinning. If you're trying to remove a feature from an embedded skin such as Confluence the file system on which it resides might be read-only (this is true with OpenELEC, for instance). In that case, you'll have to re-package the skin in a ZIP file with your modifications and install the modified skin from a USB stick, for instance.

Kodi skin addons have a file named Home.xml, which defines the controls, animations and styles of the home page. Run the following instruction to get a grasp of how windows are activated from the home page:

# grep -Rni ActivateWindow Home.xml
37:                <onclick>ActivateWindow(Videos)</onclick>
123:                <onclick>ActivateWindow(Music)</onclick>
164:                <onclick>ActivateWindow(Programs)</onclick>
255:                <onclick>ActivateWindow(1102)</onclick>
307:                <onclick>ActivateWindow(Settings)</onclick>
336:                <onclick>ActivateWindow(Favourites)</onclick>

In Home.xml find the line where window Music is shown. You'll probably find something like this:

    <control type="group" id="4250">
        <include>Window_OpenClose_Animation_Zoom</include>
        <posx>560r</posx>
        <posy>165</posy>
        <include>VisibleFadeEffect</include>
        <control type="button" id="4251">
            <onup>Control.SetFocus(4241)</onup>
            <ondown>Control.SetFocus(4261)</ondown>
            <onleft>Control.SetFocus(4201)</onleft>
            <description>Music Button</description>
            <posx>0</posx>
            <posy>0</posy>
            <width>540</width>
            <height>130</height>
            <font>-</font>
            <texturenofocus >home_4.png</texturenofocus>
            <texturefocus border="5">home_4_p.png</texturefocus>
            <onclick>ActivateWindow(Music)</onclick>
        </control>
        <control type="image">
            <description>Music Button Image</description>
            <posx>140r</posx>
            <posy>30</posy>
            <width>80</width>
            <height>80</height>
            <texture>music2.png</texture>
        </control>
        <control type="label">
            <description>Music label</description>
            <posx>170</posx>
            <posy>22</posy>
            <height>90</height>
            <width>250</width>
            <label>Music</label>
            <align>center</align>
            <aligny>center</aligny>
            <font>font40_title</font>
            <textcolor>FFFFFFFF</textcolor>
        </control>
    </control>

In the above excerpt the "Music" button is part of a group, which is to be removed. Add an XML tag <visible>false</visible> to the group, like this:

    <control type="group" id="4250">
        <include>Window_OpenClose_Animation_Zoom</include>
        <posx>560r</posx>
        <posy>165</posy>
        <include>VisibleFadeEffect</include>
        <visible>false</visible>
        <control type="button" id="4251">
        ...

Also note that in the above example <include>VisibleFadeEffect</include> is meant to apply visibility effects, which is useless here and can safely be removed.

Where to add the <visible>false</visible> tag depends on what skin you're modding. For example, in OpenELEC, you will find Confluence skin's Home.xml in directory /storage/.kodi/addons/skin.<skin name>/720p/. You can also search through OSMC for that file:

find / -name Home.xml

The file location includes the active skin name. Use nano or any available editor on OSMC to edit the file and apply your modifications.

EDIT: If you modify a skin that is currently in use you'll have to reload the skin for your changes to take effect:

kodi-send --action="ReloadSkin()"

The above command needs to be run on the Pi itself.

The easy way

Some skins, such as Amber have additional settings to configure which home buttons are visible.

Answer 2

to make it short and easy:

if you use the default (kodi-)skin Confluence, you can simply choose via skin-settings which options should not appear.

this settings may also be present at some other skins...