Google TV started rolling out its new homescreen late last month and, despite the fact it might take a while to reach everyone, Chromecast with Google TV is getting the update now.
The new Google TV homescreen is a reasonably minor refresh, with its big change being that app icons are now circular and much smaller than they were before. This comes with the advantage that the homescreen can now show more apps at once. Just shy of 10 apps are in view are compared to seven before.
The “Your Apps” row also now shows all alls rather than requiring users to open up an app drawer to access anything that wasn’t visible on the main homescreen. At the end of the list you’ll find two new buttons – “Reorder” and “Add apps.”
That first button allows you to move apps around in the list while the other opens up the “Apps” tab where you can discover new apps to install. Sadly, it doesn’t open the Play Store as we’ve been asking Google to do for years now.
These changes are rolling out now to all Google TV devices but are showing up more widely this week, particularly on Chromecast with Google TV. Google says the redesign will head to all compatible devices over the “next few months.”
Notably, this homescreen update arrives completely independently of the latest Chromecast system update which started rolling out in late February.
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Top comment by Greg
I would LOVE to be able to force stop from this screen. As in, hold the ok button on an app, see settings and then go in and force close. This would save so much time over going to the settings screen, finding the apps section, going through and force stopping there.
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