It’s been exactly a year since I bought my first TV with Android TV. That experience and have not stopped investigating the operating system This made me realize that, as my colleague Eva already said, this is the best operating system for televisions that exists.
Unlike a cell phone or computer, the TV is made for what it is intended for, which is watching content. However, Even for such widespread use, I find significant benefits on Android TV. And then I’ll tell you what advice that I discovered and which are now essential in my daily use.
Configure shortcuts on controller buttons
Of all the tips that I am going to comment on, I have no doubt that it is my favorite. This involves using an application to assign new functions to the TV remote control. The app I call it ‘Button Mapper’ and is available on the Google Play Store on Android TV. And free.
Due to the fact that My TV remote has several buttons with no clearly assigned functions, I take the opportunity to configure shortcuts. For example, I configured these now-classic colored buttons so that each one opens a different app, allowing me to navigate between apps more quickly without having to go to the main menu.
Use your cell phone as a TV keyboard
If there’s anything I hate about Android TV and any other TV operating system, it’s its on-screen keyboard. The one on my TV works well, but in the end it’s much more tedious and slow than writing on my mobile. SO, when voice input is not availableI use “Google Home” to write on the television from my mobile.
“Google Home” is available on Android phones from Google Play and even on iPhone via the App Store. Simply download it, sign in with the same Google account as the TV and, once connected to the same WiFi network, click on the TV name. There is not only the possibility of using the mobile keyboard, but also other scrolling functions and actions How to increase or decrease the volume.
Use a file manager
In the absence of a native application allowing manage files on the TV itself (or those on connected external memory), I specified “FX File Explorer”, another free app available on the TV’s Google Play Store. Although there are also others who do the job well.
The fact is that having such a manager helps me to be able manage the videos I add to the TV memory myself. Even if there is a use for which such a manager is essential, it is be able to install APKs from third parties not on Google Play, which are stored in a download folder inaccessible by any other means.
Have a good internet browser
Browsing the Internet on a TV is uncomfortable. And in fact, I never do it and I doubt anyone does. Not at least frequently. However, can be useful on certain occasions
Recently (thanks to my colleague Iván Linares) I discovered a browser that weighs less than 3 MB. It’s called “Vita Browser” and it must be downloaded from the Internet, so another browser is needed as a preliminary step for its download (then you can delete the other one). It’s available on GitHub and I have to admit that it works wonderfully.
Take advantage of the recommendations
Actually, my TV’s operating system is Google TV, which is still an Android TV launcher and with identical functions. However, it offers a interface based on film and series recommendations that I explode to the maximum. In fact, this interface is already added to some “pure” Android TVs.
In my opinion, the beauty of this interface lies train her by telling her what we like and what we don’t like. We have previously published a tutorial dedicated to managing Google TV recommendations, but generally everything is about always marking the content that is recommended to us according to whether we like it or not and accessing the “Content Preferences” from the settings. and reject content that does not suit our tastes.
Deleting the cache (and restarting the TV) every now and then is miraculous
As is the case on mobile phones, the process of clearing the app cache on Android TV brings two main advantages: optimization and space saving. And the latter is particularly important on televisions equipped with Android TV which have little available space.
Although the main idea is that use is smoother without slowdowns own which are generated with the storage of data in this memory. If we also take into account the processes running in the background, it is advisable to restart the system at least once a day. And I’m not talking about turning the TV off and on again, but restarting it from the settings so that a real, complete system shutdown occurs.
That I’m tired of seeing the same thing? Well, a launcher
One of the coolest benefits I’ve seen when switching from Apple TV to Android TV is that You can customize the interface a lot. Not perhaps natively, beyond moving apps, but with one of the many launchers for Android TV that exist.
On Google Play we can find some that support various display configurations and that serve in some way to feel the sensation of being with something new. They can be configured so that their interfaces take priority over the native interface, but then simply uninstall the application to return to normal mode.
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