New Skin on Kodi Unusable - How to Reset or Change?

Question

I switched to a new skin (Titan) with Kodi (17.1) running on OpenELEC (8.0.0). Once I dropped out of the system config menu though all I got was a blank screen. I could hear the remote moving things around, clicking, but I can't get any other screens to appear and so cannot change the skin back with the UI and remote.

How can I change the skin to something that works or reset it if I cannot see and access the UI?

Answer 1

On another machine on your network (in this example I assume Windows based) browse to the IP address or hostname of your openELEC box. In my case I did so by hitting Windows Key + R and then typing \\192.168.1.113. You will then have a list of folders to navigate.

The folder you need to access is called Userdata. Open this and there will be a file called guisettings.xml. You will need to edit this file, so open with your favorite editor (I recommend Atom if you don't have one).

You are looking for a section that looks like this:

  <lookandfeel>
        <enablerssfeeds default="true">false</enablerssfeeds>
        <font default="true">Default</font>
        <rssedit default="true"></rssedit>
        <skin>skin.titan</skin>
        <skincolors default="true">SKINDEFAULT</skincolors>
        <skintheme default="true">SKINDEFAULT</skintheme>
        <skinzoom default="true">0</skinzoom>
        <soundskin default="true">resource.uisounds.kodi</soundskin>
        <startupwindow default="true">10000</startupwindow>
        <stereostrength default="true">5</stereostrength>
    </lookandfeel>

Edit the 5th line to select a different skin (estuary is the default so should be an option for anyone, but in this case I went for good old confluence instead):

        <skin>skin.confluence</skin>

Save the file and reboot (power cycle since you cannot use the UI to reboot cleanly) and your box will come back with a usable skin once again.