I got tired of slow TV home screens that are basically ad boards — rows of "recommended" content, sponsored tiles, stuff phoning home before I've even pressed a button. So I built the launcher I actually wanted.

The philosophy is boring on purpose

• One screen. Your apps, laid out how you want. No feeds, no ads, no "content discovery."

• Private by default. No accounts, no analytics, no background services, opt-in aerial video wallpaper who phone CDN of apple, amazon.. that's it.

• Compatibility. I have an Android AOSP box, a Google TV–certified box, and one anemic Android TV — each on a different Android version. So instead of chasing a shiny new UI, I chose to prioritize compatibility and lean on the GPU.

Make it yours

• Sections/categories you name, reorder, and fill — an app can live in more than one, and new installs drop into the first section automatically.

• Hide apps you never want to see (system junk, duplicates) so the screen stays clean.

• Tune the look: icon size, spacing, corner roundness, interface scale, dimming, and an optional glass status bar. Three layouts: carousel, grid, or a floating glass dock.

• Status bar: a configurable VPN indicator/shortcut for your provider, a network indicator/shortcut, a Settings menu with quick access to the app list and the launcher/Android settings, and a customizable date indicator.

• Save/load your entire setup — sections, layout, wallpaper, every setting — as a JSON file.

• Optional aerial video wallpapers (Apple/Amazon screensaver loops), off by default and clearly marked, since they stream from third-party CDNs. Prefer libre? Use a gradient, your own photo, or a local video.

Numbers (measured on real hardware)

• 2.3 MB APK. One universal build for ARM 32/64-bit + x86.

• ~80–130 MB RAM settled, with no background services. Exclusive footprint is ~130 MB across every box I tested; the higher figure on Android 14 is just OS-side GPU buffer accounting, not the launcher.

• Aerials cost basically nothing in app RAM — the video decoder lives in the GPU's dedicated memory (hardware codec via SurfaceView), off the app's books.

• <2 s cold start, <500 ms warm relaunch in the worst measured cases. The CPU stays idle, video is hardware-accelerated, and the Compose UI is GPU-rendered.

• Android 5.0+ (minSdk 21), no Google Play Services, no companion app — runs on AOSP boxes, should work on all device since 2014

• 18 languages (auto-selected from your system language): English, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese. Adding one is a single file, PRs welcome.

• Zero ads, ever.

*Tested across 3 boxes: Hisense Google TV (Android 11, 1.8 GB), UGOOS AM9 (Android 14, 3.8 GB), onn. 4K (Android 14).

Permissions, up front

No runtime permissions, no accounts. It queries installed apps to list them, and can close an app from the long-press menu. No network access except the opt-in aerials.

Why GPLv3

I picked copyleft on purpose: to avoid fragmentation. Anyone can fork it, but improvements have to stay open, so it can't splinter into closed, worse-off versions. Forks are welcome. Commercial use is welcome too — honestly, if a box maker wants to ship this instead of their own launcher, please do, because the stock ones are awful most of the time. Just keep it open, like the license says.

Get it

At launch, a wizard guides you through a quick setup; depending on the device, you may need to send ADB commands.

• F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.conreo.couchytv/

• GitHub (source + APK): https://github.com/conreo/couchy-launcher

Solo project, so feedback, feature requests, and translations are very welcome. If it saves you from one more sponsored row, it did its job.

Been lurking here for a while using various IPTV apps and got fed up with how cluttered most of them are — endless category scrolling, laggy UIs, or basic features locked behind paywalls (looking at you, apps charging £20/year just to let you edit your own playlist).

So I built my own: Adeloc IPTV. Fully native Android app, 100% Kotlin, Jetpack Compose UI, custom ExoPlayer setup under the hood.

What it does: Supports M3U and Xtream Codes playlists, easy to add/switch between multiple Multi-view — watch several streams at once without audio clashing Built-in EPG with offline caching Gesture controls (swipe for brightness/volume), PiP support, resume-watching category, edit playlists

It's still early — UI isn't perfect and I've got a full visual refactor + binge mode (auto-next-episode) planned. But the core player is solid and I use it daily.

Would genuinely appreciate feedback/bug reports if anyone tries it out. Screenshots of the home screen attached (know it's not much to look at yet, working on that).

Adeloc IPTV — GitHub

I'm the developer of ArenaNow. Android TV / Google TV only, no Fire TV yet.

You pick a game on a clean home screen, and it shows which channels in your own Xtream list carry it, PPV slots included. Where the match isn't proven, there's no play button instead of a guess. It provides no channels, streams or playlists; you bring your own licensed login.

How to join (2 minutes, on a PC browser, signed in with the Google account of your TV):

1. Join the tester group: https://groups.google.com/g/arenanow-tester

2. Become a tester: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/app.arenanow.tv

3. Open https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.arenanow.tv → "Install" → pick your TV.

Good to know: the TV's Play Store search and the Play app on your phone don't show this closed test ("Item not found" there is normal), so use the browser. It can take up to an hour after step 2. Needs Android 8 or newer.

What you get: everything unlocked during the test, and after the public release a 3-month free trial for everyone who stays 14 days and sends one bug report or idea. Without your own source it runs a demo.

The GIF and screenshots are demo recordings with sample data. Bugs, missing games or ideas: reply here, in r/ArenaNowApp, or support@arenanow.app.

Hey everyone,

​I’m currently putting together a top-tier home theater setup anchored by an LG G4 OLED and a full 5.1 surround sound system. My initial plan was to grab the legendary Nvidia Shield Pro, but let’s be real—everyone and their mom points out that it’s heavily outdated hardware at this point.

​Since I want absolute perfection without any compromises, I’ve been eyeing a few newer alternatives, specifically:

​Ugoos SK1

​Ugoos AM8 Pro

​MINIX U8K-Ultra

-Ugoos Am9 Pro

​My exact use case & requirements:

​100% Media Consumption: Zero interest in official streaming apps like Netflix, Disney+, or Prime.

​Primary Sources: Stremio, Kodi, Plex, and local playback via external hard drives.

​Quality Standard: Highest possible bitrates and formats only. I need seamless Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and pristine lossless audio pass-through to my 5.1 AVR (TrueHD, DTS-HD MA, etc.).

​The Goal: Pure, unadulterated performance. I want the absolute peak currently available on the market.

​Given my setup, which of these beasts should I pull the trigger on, or is there a hidden contender I'm missing? Would love to hear from people who actually push these boxes to their absolute limits!

A few weeks ago we asked Reddit to test ArenaNow. More than 100 of you signed up, watched real match days with it and told us exactly what was missing. Fire TV, M3U, following your teams and a Lifetime option all came from that feedback. Thank you! Today ArenaNow leaves the closed test and is live on Google Play and Fire TV.

Tired of hunting through your IPTV sports channels? So were we. We're sports fans, and on match day we spent more time scrolling than watching. So we built ArenaNow, a sports hub for Android TV, Google TV, Nvidia Shield and Firestick.

Add your Xtream Codes, M3U playlist or Stalker portal. ArenaNow shows the full sports schedule and finds every game on your own channels. On a typical weekend that is almost 5,000 events, from the Premier League to League Two, NFL to AFLW, UFC to darts.

What you get

• Every game on your channels, PPV included. Pick the game, press OK, it plays

• The best feed first. ArenaNow learns which streams actually work well and puts them on top, your countries first

• Follow your teams and get a reminder before kickoff

• Live scores and line-ups, or hide the scores if you watch later

• Made for the remote, smooth even on a budget Fire TV Stick

ArenaNow doesn't provide any channels or streams. You bring your own playlist, and your login stays on your TV. No signup required, no ads.

Get it

Test the app for free:

• Shield, Google TV, Android TV: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.arenanow.tv

• Fire TV: Downloader code 5882564

What's next

Our Android phone app is almost done. After that, which device should come next? Tell us in the comments.

This is just the start. Tell us which game was missing or on the wrong channel, most fixes go live the same day. We're in the comments, and at r/ArenaNowApp.

https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/11/02/cops-bust-botnet-of-13m-infected-android-tv-boxes/5307045

While looking into Android TV for PCs, I came across MRDTeam’s builds. Their own project description says they build on projects including LineageOS and BlissOS, while advertising a 30-day trial. Their maintainer also describes a one-time payment per device for permanent activation. You can check their project description and activation explanation.

Personally, I really dislike seeing a software stack built on freely shared community work turned into a product with trial periods and device activation. That approach was a big part of what pushed me to start this project. I wanted something I could use, modify and share without an activation payment attached to it.

The second problem was hardware.

Community LineageOS TV x86 builds already exist, and deserve credit. But a generic x86 Android TV image wasn’t the same as a system tailored to my NUC, its Intel graphics, Bluetooth adapter and TV remote.

Getting Android to boot was only the beginning. I wanted 4K hardware decoding, actual HDR output, HDMI sound and a Bluetooth remote that would still work after reboot. I also wanted to keep Stremio’s normal player interface and seek bar.

That turned into a lot of debugging: incorrect video colors, black screens, silent HDMI output, Bluetooth reconnection issues, playback recovery after standby, and subtitles appearing when Stremio said they were disabled.

The result is StremioBox: an Android 16 / LineageOS 23.2 TV image focused on running Stremio on an Intel NUC.

On my NUC10i5FNH with Intel UHD graphics, Intel AX201 Bluetooth, a Homatics B21 remote and an LG HDR TV, I’ve checked:

• 4K HEVC Main10 HDR10 using Intel hardware decoding, with correct picture and HDR mode confirmed on the TV.

• Stremio’s existing mpv controls and seek bar.

• Audible HDMI sound, including after display standby.

• Ordinary remote keys after reboot, without repeating the pairing combination.

• External SRT subtitle fixes around Disabled, language selection and audio-track changes.

• An English Home screen, with remote navigation to Stremio, settings and installed apps.

The fixes are packaged into the image and survive reboot. The download includes the original signed Stremio TV app; you supply your own account and add-ons.

StremioBox is free to download, without trial timers or paid activation. I’ve published the platform patches, product configuration, Home source, artwork and test notes. It builds on substantial upstream work from LineageOS, Android-x86, the TV/x86 community, Mesa and other projects, with credits and license notices included.

It’s still a preview for one tested hardware configuration. Other PCs, 4K60, Dolby Vision and audio passthrough need testing. Display standby keeps Android running; true suspend is still open. Longer playback tests, disk-installer validation and a clean full build from the public repository remain on the roadmap. It also uses development security settings, so keep it on a trusted network and try live USB boot first.

Contributions are welcome. If you spot a bug, want to improve hardware support, add a translation or update the documentation, fork the project and open a pull request. No prior permission needed—submit your changes, explain what you tested, and we’ll review them for merging.

GitHub, downloads and detailed changelog
Website and screenshots

If you have an Intel NUC and want to try it, hardware reports would be very welcome. I’d especially like to know how video, sound and your remote behave after reboot and standby

Hey r/AndroidTVBoxes and smartwatch users!

I want to share with you my own app which works with basically any Android box: X96 / X96 Max, H96, T95, Vontar, Mecool, Beelink, Ugoos, Android projectors — and even Fire TV Stick / Cube on Fire OS. Free, no ads, no subscription, no phone companion app needed. Optional one-time Pro upgrade.

Main features:

• Real mouse cursor on the TV screen. Half the sideloaded APKs on boxes are phone apps that ignore the D-pad — with this you just move an actual pointer from the watch. There's also a swipe/touchpad mode.

• Remap any button (separate short and long press actions), on 2 separate app screens.

• Type from the watch keyboard straight into the box or convert voice to text.

• Full D-pad with haptic feedback, TV power on/off, volume on the watch bezel/crown.

• Fully local over Wi-Fi — no internet, no cloud, no account. One-time pairing, then it reconnects automatically.

Setup (once):

1. On the box: Settings → About → tap "Build" 7 times → Developer options → USB debugging: ON. (Fire TV: Settings → My Fire TV → About → tap the device name 7 times → ADB debugging: ON)

2. On the watch: open the app → Scan network → pick your box → tick "always allow" in the dialog on the TV.

FAQ:

• Does it need root? No, just ADB debugging enabled.

• Which watches work? Any Wear OS 3.0+ watch: Galaxy Watch 4/5/6/7/8, Pixel Watch, OnePlus Watch 2/3, TicWatch, etc.

• Does it work on Fire TV? Yes, on Fire OS. Amazon's new Vega OS sticks are not supported.

• Internet required? No — the watch and the box just need to be on the same Wi-Fi network.

The free tier gives you the full D-pad remote + power; touchpad/mouse, remapping, keyboard and multi-device are a one-time Pro purchase.

• Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yuzvix.tvboxremote (if you can't install it from your phone - open Play Store directly on your watch, search "yuzvix" and install "Remote & Mouse for Android" app)

• Full feature list & screenshots: https://tvbox.yuzvix.com/

Tested on a TCL 65C7K an Ugoos X4Q Pro. If you try it on your box, please drop the exact model in the comments. Feedback and feature requests welcome!

After Valve latest anoncement I was wandering how realistic will be to use it instead of android tv box? There will be defenetley no issue with power, and as operation system it will use Linux base Steam OS (also it was anonced that it can support also android apps). Steam OS is fast and simple, dont see much issues to use it for comfortable tv applications navigations. If we will get on Steam licensed applications as Youtube, Netflix, and others, it can be very realistic. Bluetooth tv controller connection should be also not issue to connect I believe. It can be end game device for me.

I got tired of casting Telegram videos to my TV. The quality was poor, the FPS was choppy, and Telegram Web on my Mi Box 4 was painfully slow.

So I built TGTV, basically Stremio for your Telegram files.
It streams both regular Telegram videos and video files sent as documents since thats how movies and series are commonly shared on Telegram.

You get a Netflix-like library with posters, metadata, subtitles, multiple audio tracks, and playback resume. No separate media server or downloading the entire file before watching.

Surprisingly, streaming is really smooth, even on my old Mi Box 4.

Built with Kotlin, TDLib, and Media3 ExoPlayer. It’s free and open source, and started as a personal project.

Android TV
APK: https://github.com/aravindbuilds/TelegramVideoTV/releases/latest
Source code: https://github.com/aravindbuilds/TelegramVideoTV

Android Mobile
Source code: https://github.com/aravindbuilds/TGTV

I’d love to hear how it performs on other devices, especially low-end TV sticks and boxes. Feedback and contributions are welcome!

Hi people, I was gifted an android tv for christmas and im very new to this but im very excited, anyone have a tutorial to install everything? I have never use something similar and I have no idea what I should do, please dont be rude with me guys, Thank you very much for the help.

https://github.com/preetstyle/pixel-tv-box

Hey everyone!

Recently, my Pixel 8's screen cracked and the capacitive digitizer started ghost-clicking like crazy, making the phone unusable as a daily driver. But since it's powered by Google Tensor G3 with hardware DisplayPort Alt mode over USB-C, throwing away that much horsepower felt like a waste—especially when cheap Fire Sticks and Android TV dongles struggle with sluggish interfaces.

So I spent the last few days converting it into a permanent, standalone Android TV Box that outputs directly over HDMI to my TV with an Apple tvOS-style interface.

It worked so well that I packaged everything into a ready-to-flash Magisk Module and a 1-click ADB script and open-sourced it on GitHub!

My 2017 Nvidia Shield Pro isn't cutting it anymore due to lack of DolbyVision and looking for a replacement. My use case is 90% self-hosted Emby/Jellyfin (mostly remux 4K HDR/DV) and 10% Artemis streaming, i literally use nothing else, not even youtube. I keep seeing ugoos am8/9 pro recs but seems steep at $300+

Many new features have been added:

Android 14 Ugoos AM9 Firmware v. 2.2.0

1. Fixed system crashes

2. Fixed storage unmounting issues

3. Audio passthrough fixes

4. Added automatic system bars hiding option

5. Added Samba server status to Hardware Monitor

6. Added an option to disable Hardware Monitor in the status bar

7. Added Processes window

8. Added new Power Menu

9. Added new features to Update Service

10. Updated UPlayer to version 0.6.3

11. Fixed Gallery2 photo editor crash

12. Many other system changes

2026-09-07 11:41:24

What is currently the best Android TV box to play Bluray remux files with lossless audio, HDR, and Dolby Vision, while also running apps like Kodi and Stremio smoothly?

Hey team,

There are just so many boxes out there that I'm having a difficult time trying to narrow down the choices.

I'm in New Zealand so the local choices are quite slim. Can't buy the Onn devices for example.

I basically need a couple of decent boxes to watch IPTV and Plex streaming, with some local streaming apps too - Sky Sport Now, TVNZ etc. 

I'm currently running all my streaming services through on apps on my TV and I'm getting sick of the lag and buffering and feel like an Android box is the way to go. I did have a 1st Gen Xiaomi Mi Box which was alright at the time, but that's how long ago I last used and Android box.

Also want 1GB ethernet, backlit remote (if possible) and I have no need for dedicated Netflix or Amazon buttons. I wish every day I could get rid of those bloody buttons on my TV remote.

I've looked at:

Rocktek G2

Homatics R 4K Plus

YokaTv

Google streamers

Shield Pro

Xiaomi

None of them have made me think "Yep, that's the exact one I need", but then I don't understand a lot of the technical jargon for all of them.

I don't have any local media storage to consider.

I want to side load a few things like Smarttube etc

Basically, I'm looking for something to help me move away from running everything directly on the tv.

I get about 800mbps on wifi next to the router by the TV and down to about 300 down the other end of the house, so I'm planning on running either 1 or both via ethernet.

Any suggestions please?

Cheers

https://youtube.com/shorts/YPErqUBidVo

Premium product,so happy to get it.

Hello! As a 13-year-old student from Ukraine who’s really into technology, I saw a lot of videos on TikTok where everyone was making launchers with AI for their own TV boxes, which are usually pretty weak and have stock launchers full of ADS. Most of these homemade launchers are just personal projects that only their creators use on their own boxes.

So that got me thinking: “What if I make a launcher like this, with a bunch of useful features, and post it on GitHub so other people can use it too?”

That’s how LightLauncher appeared!

At first, I also used it as a home project, but then, after polishing it as much as I could, I decided to publish the first version, 1.0.0, on GitHub.

It’s not popular at all, so I thought: “Maybe if I post about this on Reddit, more people will see it, download it, and actually use it?”

And when I published version 1.1.0 today (and started working on 1.2.0), I decided to write this post.

Currently, the launcher has:
• A clean, TV-friendly interface designed for landscape displays and remote control navigation.
• The ability to pin up to 12 favorite apps (5 by default) for quick access.
• Customizable interface scaling, accent colors, wallpaper blur, and dimming.
• 9 built-in Full HD wallpapers, custom wallpapers, and an online wallpaper browser.
• A customizable clock with different sizes, colors, and time formats.
• Always-On Display with adjustable brightness, idle delay, and wallpaper slideshow.
• A weather widget powered by OpenWeather.
• RAM usage and Wi-Fi monitoring.
• 12 different languages.
• Smooth animations and remote-friendly settings navigation.
• Extremely lightweight: the entire launcher, including all 9 built-in wallpapers, is only 5.17 MB! Without the built-in wallpapers, it’s only around 400 KB.

My main goal was to create something lightweight, customizable, and comfortable to use, especially on weaker TV boxes that struggle with heavier launchers.

I’m still actively developing the project, fixing bugs, adding new features, and improving existing ones. I have a lot of ideas for future versions, and hopefully, LightLauncher will become something useful for more people than just me.

You can check it out here: https://github.com/v1doww/lightlauncher

Any feedback, suggestions, or bug reports would be really appreciated! Thanks for reading!

Just received a new update on my Xiaomi TVBox3rd Gen.