Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Android TV devices are receiving new content tabs on the home screen via a server-side update.
- These new tabs add “Top Selling Movies,” “Popular Movies and Shows,” and “Trending on Google” to the home screen.
- There’s no way to opt out of the update, so users who dislike the added clutter can consider switching to alternative Android TV launchers.
Android TV, as a platform, is still very much around, but it has been overshadowed by Google TV, a content engine that sits on top of the platform. Users have frequently complained about updates from Android TV to Google TV turning their TV and streaming sticks into a lag fest, and you can blame their probably low-specced hardware and the intrusive ad-ridden platform for it. Android TV has managed to stay relatively clean from these changes, but it seems the content engine is coming for it too.
Reddit user aniruddhdodiya spotted that their Android TV was recently updated to feature three extra tabs in the home screen. Their TV already came with a Play Next tab, but now they also had tabs for Top Selling Movies, Popular Movies and Shows, and Trending on Google.
I have received the new tabs on my Sony Bravia X80H, which runs on Android TV 10 with the December 2024 security patch. The content tabs are similar in category to those on Google TV. Unsurprisingly, the content tabs surface recommendations even from apps I don’t have installed, so I need to subscribe to new services to view them.
What makes this change even worse is that some of these categories already exist on the home screen — on my Sony TV, I already have a dedicated Top-selling Movies row on the home screen, so now I end up with two rows of the same content ads.
Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority
This change is very likely rolling out to Android TV devices through a server-side update of either the Android TV Home app or the Android TV Core Services app, so there’s no way for you to avoid it unless you change the launcher.
Many people who have stuck with Android TV will hate that their home screen now has more clutter and more monetization surfaces for Google to push “recommendations” through. Some people may like the change, though, as it would let them discover new content right on the home screen, though one can argue there were already plenty of ways to do so.
If you have received the new tabs and hate them, you can consider switching to alternative Android TV launchers like Projectivy Launcher that let you ditch the recommendations for a cleaner TV experience. You’ll probably even get a faster and sleeker experience than the stock launcher, so try it out.
