If your Google TV-powered streaming player is feeling a little peppier, you’re not imagining it. A recent update enables some key performance improvements that should make Google TV devices feel more responsive as well as substantially roomier.
Announced this week in a Google community post, the Google TV update is rolling out now and may already on your compatible streaming player, Google says.
This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best media streaming devices.
Among the improvements in the update are ones designed to boost responsiveness. For example, the update should cut down on the time it takes for Google TV devices to register button presses on the remote.
Wake times should also feel shorter, as well as the loading animation that appears when you’re rebooting your player, Google says.
Besides responsiveness, the Google TV update should clear some additional storage space on your device thanks to a new App Hibernation feature.
The new feature flags apps that haven’t been used in more than 30 days and puts them in hibernation, essentially (as 9to5Google explains) offloading them from your player while keeping your user data intact.
Your device will need to be running on Android 12 or better for the app hibernation feature to work, 9to5Google notes. That includes Chromecast with Google TV players but not all TVs and third-party streaming players.
In another space-saving measure, Google says it’s now employing Android App Bundles, an open-source publishing format for Android that can cut the size of apps by up to 25 percent, on Google TV devices.
The update comes on the heels of Google TV navigation makeover that added a Family page for streaming content with a rating of PG or lower, an Español page with Spanish-language titles, and separate pages for Movies and Shows.
The Google TV navigation revamp also saw the profile switcher move to the top-left corner of the screen, while Search scooted over to the top-right corner.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he covers smart speakers, soundbars, and other smart and home-theater devices. You can follow Ben on Twitter.