How to Add Content to the Adults Only Tab in Kodi

Kodi is one of the most flexible media centers available, and part of that flexibility is its ability to organize content into categories — including a dedicated Adults Only section. If you've noticed this tab in your Kodi interface and wondered how to populate it, or if you're trying to set one up properly, the process involves a few specific steps that aren't always obvious from the main menu.

What Is the Adults Only Tab in Kodi?

The Adults Only tab is a content category within Kodi that can appear in supported skins and add-ons. It's designed to separate mature content from general library content — useful for households where different viewers use the same device.

This tab doesn't appear automatically in every Kodi setup. Whether you see it depends on:

• The skin (theme/interface) you're using
• The add-ons installed on your system
• Your content ratings settings within Kodi's media library

Kodi itself doesn't host or stream any content — it's a media player and organizer. What appears in the Adults Only tab comes from local files, network shares, or add-ons that you configure yourself.

How Kodi Handles Content Ratings

Kodi's built-in library uses metadata scrapers to pull in information about your media files, including content ratings. When you add a video source and scrape it with a service like TMDB (The Movie Database) or TVDb, rating information gets attached to each title.

Kodi can then filter or categorize content based on those ratings. This is how mature-rated content can be grouped separately from family-friendly titles — but only if your setup is configured to recognize and sort by rating.

Step-by-Step: Adding Content to the Adults Only Tab

1. Enable the Adults Only Section in Your Skin

Most default Kodi skins don't show an Adults Only tab out of the box. Skins like Aeon Nox, Arctic Horizon, or other community skins often include this feature natively.

To enable it:

• Go to Settings → Interface → Skin
• Open Skin Settings (the options vary by skin)
• Look for a section labeled Adult Content, Adults Only, or Mature Content
• Toggle it on and optionally set a PIN for access control

If your current skin doesn't support this, switching to one that does is usually the first step.

2. Add a Dedicated Video Source

To populate the tab, you need a content source assigned to it:

• Go to Settings → Media → Videos (or through the main menu: Add Videos)
• Click Browse and point Kodi to your content — this can be a local folder, a network share (NAS, SMB), or a supported add-on path
• Give the source a recognizable name
• When prompted to set the content type, choose Movies or TV Shows and select a scraper

The scraper will pull metadata, including MPAA ratings or regional equivalents, which Kodi uses to categorize content.

3. Use Smart Playlists or Filters to Route Content 🎯

If your skin's Adults Only tab is driven by smart playlists, you'll need to create or edit a playlist that filters by rating:

• Go to Music or Video library → Playlists → Add Smart Playlist
• Set a rule: Rating is / contains → enter the relevant rating (e.g., NC-17, X, 18, R depending on your regional standard and content type)
• Save the playlist and assign it to the Adults Only tab through your skin settings

This is where setups diverge significantly. Some skins automatically link their Adults Only section to a specific smart playlist filename. Others let you manually assign any playlist to that menu item.

4. Configure Parental Controls (Optional but Recommended)

If you're using the Adults Only tab in a shared household, Kodi's Master Lock system adds a layer of access control:

• Go to Settings → System → Master Lock
• Set a PIN
• Assign the lock to specific menu items or the entire settings area

This doesn't encrypt content, but it prevents casual access without the PIN. 🔒

Key Variables That Affect Your Setup

Common Reasons the Tab Stays Empty

• Scraping didn't complete — check the library update log
• Ratings weren't detected — some file formats or scrapers miss this metadata
• Smart playlist filter is too narrow — the rating format in your filter must exactly match what the scraper returned
• Skin setting is enabled but not linked — the tab exists visually but has no playlist assigned to it 🛠️

What This Looks Like Across Different Setups

A user running Kodi on a Windows PC with a local media library and Aeon Nox skin will have a fairly straightforward path — the skin handles most of the tab logic natively, and scrapers work reliably against local files.

Someone running Kodi on a FireStick with streaming add-ons and a lightweight skin may need to manually build smart playlists and may find that certain add-ons don't pass rating metadata into the library at all, leaving the tab perpetually empty regardless of settings.

A LibreELEC user on a dedicated Kodi box sits somewhere in between — full library support, but skin options are sometimes more limited depending on what's available in the repository.

The right approach depends entirely on your combination of device, skin, content sources, and how your library is organized — which makes this one of those Kodi tasks where the concept is straightforward, but the exact execution varies more than most guides acknowledge.