Martijn Kaijser
We all know the default skin which XBMC comes with in 13.x Gotham. It’s designed to be simple and lightweight to support even the least powerful media device. More importantly to be new user friendly, without all bells and whistles. Some like it, some might not. However the power of customisation in XBMC let’s you install about any skin out there which is designed for this specific 13.x release series. Be it through through our build in repository (this is where add-ons are installed from), using third-party repositories or by simply installing the .zip which skinners (as we call these developers) provide. We’re not talking about a different colour or some small layout changes. Most of them are totally unlike any other. Some of these skins are as lightweight and simple to use as our Confluence skin, while others go all the way and provide a full blown customisable interface for you to tinker with, until you get it how you like. At this moment there are a whopping twenty-one different skins available from our repository, which should be enough for the average users. Even more so are available through our forums or any other place out there.
As we are very grateful to these awesome developers who create these magnificent skins, it was time to give them some homage by letting them know how many installed skins there are. As we only log the amount of downloads and not the actual individual users we have no idea how many there are are, only the amount of individual updates/installs. Sadly due to the way these are logged we can only do this for skins and not for other add-ons, due to the vast amount of downloads every day. This may change in the future to give all the add-on developers an idea about their user base. We only log the amount of downloads, no personal information is kept.
The stats
So without further ado, here are the numbers for Gotham 13.x skins:
**Skin** **Version** **Downloads** **Start date** **Note** ace 6.0.2 89.580 8-6-2014 no full data aeon.nox.5 5.1.2 105.602 8-6-2014 no full data aeon.nox.5 5.1.3 129.682 28-7-2014 aeonmq5 6.0.2 110.235 8-6-2014 no full data amber 1.6.0 74.908 8-6-2014 no full data amber 1.6.0 74.908 8-6-2014 no full data back-row 5.0.0 65.607 8-6-2014 no full data bello 2.0.4 65.844 26-6-2014 blackglassnova 1.2.0 33.431 8-6-2014 no full data blackglassnova 2.0.0 67.159 4-7-2014 cirrus.extended 3.1.0 19.282 8-6-2014 no full data cirrus.extended 3.1.1 28.795 28-7-2014 conq 1.0.0 3.914 13-8-2014 conq 1.0.1 4.029 17-8-2014 hybrid 2.3.1 40.130 8-6-2014 no full data hybrid 2.3.7 59.313 21-7-2014 maximinimalism 1.0.3 18.799 8-6-2014 no full data maximinimalism 1.0.4 46.066 18-7-2014 maximinimalism 1.0.5 50.321 22-7-2014 metropolis 2.8.0 49.164 8-6-2014 no full data neon 3.0.6 36.925 11-6-2014 neon 3.0.7 36.653 16-7-2014 neon 3.0.8 32.505 8-8-2014 quartz 4.5.1 69.079 8-6-2014 no full data rapier 6.0.2 11.347 11-8-2014 refocus 1.3.3 35.515 18-6-2014 re-touched 2.1.1 46.578 8-6-2014 no full data sio2 2.3.7 35.858 8-6-2014 no full data transparency 6.0.6 32.408 8-6-2014 no full data transparency 6.0.7 97.240 30-7-2014 xperience1080 2.2.0 56.908 21-7-2014 xtv-saf 1.4.5 31.916 8-6-2014 no full data *(time period 8 June 2014 till 21 August 2014)*
Above you see the amount of downloads for each skin, the specific release version and the release date. Because the counting only started at 8 June 2014, we cannot provide full data for those. However it can give some indication of the growth for these skins.
As you can see, adding a skin to our repository gives our vast audience a change to try out these wonderful creations. Letting tens of thousands enjoy the power of our product in the way the like it most. As for some where we do have some data on multiple version, you also see growth in the amount of downloads.
Conclusion
We can only encourage you to try out some of these skins and see if they appeal to you. You don’t like the one you installed? No problem, just pick another one and un-install the other. When switching skins you will keep all the settings you previously made so you don’t have to worry about doing it all over again. You can always find help, share your thoughts or suggestions for a specific skin in our forum skin help and supportsection. You can of course also simply drop by and say thank you to the developer who has put countless hours of his time, providing you a better HTPC experience.
Important notice
Creating a skins for XBMC takes many months of designing, coding, testing, tweaking and a lot of patience to get it just right. However with every major XBMC release there is the problem of skins becoming incompatible due to various code changes. So for every release people who put a lot of effort creating these skins, need to adapt it for the next XBMC version. This could mean that your favourite skin doesn’t work in the next XBMC version. We hope you understand that although you like a perticular skin quite a lot, it’s possible it won’t work in the next version. So let’s all thank the developers again for their hard work they do for the community.