How to

Removing ads from the Google TV home screen

The home screen of Google TV and Android TV is mostly a shop window: large banners, previews that play by themselves and rows of films and series from services you may not even have. Your own apps are somewhere in between.

Why the home screen is so full

The standard home screen keeps fetching new recommendations from Google and from the streaming apps on the TV. For that, those apps also run in the background. That costs memory and internet, and makes the screen restless. On TVs with little memory you notice it as a slow menu (see Slow Google TV: what happens and what helps).

What the TV itself allows

• In the home screen settings of many models you can turn off the previews and the row of recommendations per app. The exact menu differs per brand and version.
• On many models Google TV has a mode with only apps. It removes the recommendations, but also turns off other features of your Google account on the TV.
• The large banner at the top and the sponsored rows can usually not be removed on the standard home screen.

A home screen with only your own apps

VYS TV replaces the standard home screen with its own: rows with the apps you choose, in your order, with your own titles, a background photo and the clock. There are no recommendations, banners or ads. The old home screen is turned off, and the streaming apps no longer run silently in the background. How to arrange the rows is explained in Your own home screen for your Android TV.

How to turn it on

1. Turn on the developer options and USB debugging on the TV (see Enable developer options on your TV).
2. Connect the VYS TV app on your iPhone to the TV.
3. Under Set up, tap Optimise TV speed.

If you want the old home screen back, choose Back to original (see Restoring the original home screen).

Questions

Further reading