How to

Your own home screen for your Android TV

The home screen of an Android TV is just an app too: the launcher. You can replace it with another one. VYS TV puts a light home screen on your TV that you arrange completely yourself.

Why the standard home screen is slow

The standard home screen loads banners, previews and recommendations from all kinds of services, and keeps streaming apps running in the background for that. On a TV with little memory something always has to give way, and you notice that as a menu that stutters. A home screen that only shows your apps does not have that work (see also Slow Android TV: causes and solutions).

What you set yourself

• Rows: drag apps into a row and in the right order. Each row can have its own name.
• Text under a tile: if you leave it empty, the app name is shown.
• Title and subtitle at the top, for example "Welcome home".
• The clock on or off.
• Tile style: Rows, Grid, Large or List.
• Background photo: choose your own photo.
• Apps that are in no row can be shown at the bottom.

Arranging from your iPhone or in the browser

You arrange the home screen with the Layout tab in the VYS TV app. It also works in a browser on a computer or phone on the same network: the bottom of the TV's home screen shows the address (for example http://192.168.1.24:8080) with a six-digit code. Open that address, enter the code and click Save to the TV when you are done. After five wrong codes the page locks for ten minutes.

New apps

If you install an app from the TV's store or via VYS TV, it appears on your home screen by itself. Then you put it where you want. How to install an app that is not in the store is explained in Install an APK on your TV.

Questions

Further reading