How to configure the screen of Android TV to eliminate everything that does not interest us

One of the things I like the most about an Android phone is the chameleon capacity it has and that makes customization easy. A process that can also be carried out on Android TV, although with nuances. And is that we can adapt the aesthetics of the screen to our daily use habits, something that we will now see how to do.

We can configure the screen of Android TV to our liking, either that of a television or that of a set top.box. The process is simple and we can remove content that appears and is not of interest to us so that what we really want to see comes to the fore.

Applications to our liking

Android TV allows change the look and all the suggestions it offers on the screen, from the initial banner to the existing channels. We just have to dive through the different options of the settings and play with the keys on the remote control.

The first thing we are going to do is organize the different bands with options that appear on the screen. Some are fixed, in the case of YouTube, Google Play Movies … and others vary depending on the services to which we are subscribed. So we can have Netflix, Prime Video, Disney + … we can move them up or down by moving the cursor to the far left of the screen. We will see two arrows (up and down) and the word move. We can now organize that row, if we want it to appear sooner or later.

What’s more we can move to the right or left each application of the bar. Just press and hold the “OK” button on it until a context menu appears. On the far right there is an access to a kind of drawer where the rest of the applications that are not in the bar appear.

We continue now, but going to the menu “Settings” by means of the cogwheel that we can find in the upper right part of the screen.

Within the “Settings” we have to look for the section “Device Preferences” and then locate another titled “Starting screen” or some similarly named menu (may change on some devices).

We are going to look at the section “Customize channels” we can establish which of those services we want to appear on the home screen.

We can also activate “My list”, a bar that what it does is group the content that we have been accessing in a single place. It is therefore based on our use.

Through the checkbox, we can determine which services we want to activate so they appear on the home screen. For the tests I have deactivated Google Play Music since I do not use it.

Also, if we click on “My List” we can organize the channels which are then displayed in the rows of the screen. There may be cases that within some we have more options that we can activate or deactivate our whim.

The case of YouTube is a good example, as we have sections such as “Subscriptions”, “Trends”, “Recommended” and “Youtube music”. We can choose which one we want to see and which one we don’t.

Now we return to the section “Starting screen” within the “Settings” to change the banner that appears at the top. We have two options:

• “Enable video previews”
• “Enable previews with audio”

We can enable or disable any of them to alleviate the content displayed on the screen and not be so burdensome.

We can choose what we like more or less

And among the options that appear in the upper banner, we can configure what we want to appear according to our preferences. That’s what the section is for “Customize services” within “Starting screen”. If we click on it, it will take us to some of the platforms and applications that we have installed and to which we are subscribed.

We mark the one that interests us to see in the upper banner of the main screen and then in “Confirm”. We will see how it appears content that we can confirm, skip or deny. According to what we are marking, related content will appear in the banner of the main screen.

Under these options appears the possibility of “Rearrange applications” and “Rearrange games”With this option what we do is establish the order in which we want the apps to appear in the “Applications” tab of the home screen.

The options “Rearrange applications” and “Rearrange games” they do the same. The changes can be seen in the “Applications” tab.

With all those options we can adapt the home screen of a device or television with Android TV to our liking so that it shows only the content that interests us and that it also does it in the proper order.

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The news

How to configure the screen of Android TV to eliminate everything that does not interest us

was originally published in

Engadget Android

by Jose Antonio Carmona.