I found an app that finally cleans out all of Google TV’s mess ‣ Diverse Daily

My wife and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but it’s always interesting when we sometimes look at the same thing and see something completely different. Where my wife enjoys the Google TV home screen experience, I find it cluttered and poorly executed, and that’s even before we consider the ads and recommendations. I prefer Apple tvOS and Roku’s implementation of a home screen, but here’s the great thing about Google: they let you change your home screen.

Yes! With Google TV, you can change what it looks like because it’s still running Android TV OS underneath. That’s because two different things are at work here. At its core, my TCL TV runs the Android TV operating system. Android TV 14, to be exact. Google TV is layered on top of the Android TV OS, and that’s what you interact with most every day. That’s the piece I don’t like. So, let’s solve that for you and for me, and my wife can keep her Google TV overlay. Okay? Let’s do it!

Enter: Projectivy Launcher

Declutter and customize your way

Ultimately, what is a user interface? Well, it’s all the little elements of using a device that you don’t think about until a company changes them, as Apple did recently with their new (to them and iOS users) Liquid Glass interface. It’s the way your app icons are arranged on your home screen. It’s the icons themselves: their shape, color, transparency, and whether they use a label or not. The way those icons animate when you tap on them. It’s how you access features and settings. It’s widgets and your ability to customize them. And likely most people’s favorite part is your ability to use your own photos as wallpaper on your home and lock screens.

Well, Projectivy Launcher allows you to do all of that, with one caveat: you’ll need to pony up a one-time fee of $7.49 to customize the wallpaper with your own images, along with a few other features. That said, for most people, the free version has all of the features they’ll need unless that wallpaper thing is very important to you. For software this well-made, I think the fee the publisher is charging is more than fair.

The setup

Activating Projectivy Launcher on your computer

There are two ways to get the app onto your Google TV: download it directly from the Google Play Store on your TV, or download and send it to your TV from the Play Store app or webpage on your mobile device or computer.

Once you’ve installed the app on your Google TV, open it and go to Settings. What you want to do is set it up so that when you hit the Home button on your remote control, Projectivy will be the default “Home.” If you don’t take this step, everytime you hit the Home button, it will take you back to your old Google TV cluttered interface. To reconfigure Home, go to the Settings menu:

Tap on General
Override current launcher
Follow the prompt to open Accessibility settings
Scroll to the bottom of Accessibility settings and toggle Projectivy Launcher ON

Now, when you press the Home button on your remote, the TV will go to the Projectivy launcher’s home screen instead of the stock Google TV home screen. And, that’s it. If you just want to stop here, you could and would be just fine. You’ll have less clutter on that home screen, no ads, and no recommendations. But what fun is that? Let’s go further!

Playing with what’s possible

Here are some basic features to consider customizing right away

First things first, if you’re really serious about making that TV yours, pay for the premium unlock. You can do that directly in Projectivy by scrolling down to the About section at the bottom of the app, then tap the Projectivy Launcher card. You’ll see the Premium upgrade option. Select that, then follow the prompts. In order for this method to work, you’ll need to already be logged into the Google account you use for Play Store purchases.

Some Google TV users have posted on Reddit that this process doesn’t work. If you experience this, you can go directly to Projectivy Launcher’s website and purchase your license from the developer. Then you’ll just enter the license number in the app.

Once you have that premium activated, let’s change the wallpaper! Go to:

Settings
Tap on Appearance
Scroll down to Wallpaper and tap on it
Tap on Launcher wallpaper to expand its menu then choose User defined
Tap on Pick image/video then choose the folder where you have pictures or videos that you’ve loaded onto the TV stored, then select the picture or video that you want as your wallpaper.

If you don’t have an app for that, make sure you read my article about my favorite Google TV apps, here. You’ll need a file manager and maybe another app like LocalSend.

Now that you have your favorite pet photo, or that cherished pic of you and your loved one on an anniversary date night as the backdrop to your home entertainment, there are a couple other things to check out.

Set up the categories so that they show as a vertical scrolling menu on the left side of the interface. You can choose to hide the ones you don’t want and even create your own categories. Projectivy makes it simple to customize each default category that shows up by pressing the remote d-pad left until the category settings cog is highlighted, or until the up/down arrow that lets you reorder the categories is highlighted. Currently, I have mine set up so the Watch Next category sits at the top, followed by my streaming apps, then music apps, then some miscellaneous categories below.

You can also adjust the size of the icons, their spacing, and how they’re formatted. In terms of format, you can have them all in one row or switch to a grid-based layout, which is my preference. I have my current streaming apps set up as a grid of two rows.

So, that’s where we start. That’s where your journey to setting up your entertainment hub, on screen, begins. Now, go have fun and set up custom holiday-themed interfaces or seasonal colors. The sky’s the limit!