After being announced earlier this month, Android TV’s new “movie highlights” – aka Homescreen ads – are now spreading to Android TV users, including sponsored content, “Staff Picks,” and more.
Thanks to the latest updates from the Android TV Home and Android TV Core Services applications, Google has launched these new homepage ads for everyone. Some users have been getting these updates in the last week or so, but from what we can tell, the updates seem to be widely available since the beginning of this week.
So, what do these home screen ads consist of? When you launch your Android TV, you’ll see a new row at the top of the home screen sponsored by content as a “Google Play Staff Pick.” There is no audio or video with auto-play and your app range is still highlighted, but the new ads take up a large portion of your screen as pictured.
In my case, the series shows an ad for “Love in the Time of Corona” by HBO Max, “Moana” on Disney +, “Intelligence” on Peacock, and “American Pickle” on HBO Max. I also see various “recommendations” on various Android TV devices in my house.
Personally, I hate this not only because the visual design is interesting and relatively clean – at least this is not Fire TV or Roku people – but I wish the user had some choice in what is displayed, perhaps filtering out content they do not want to see.
How to turn off the ‘TV’ series of highlights (for now)
I have now been following users on the Android TV subreddit for a few days now regarding this change and, of course, initial reactions there and in Google Play reviews have not been positive. No one is a fan of ads that are dumped on their home screen without permission, and worse, Android TV offers no way to disable them. Well, at least officially.
Fortunately, there’s a way to remove the “highlights” rule on Android TV to get rid of “Staff Picks” and other home screen ads. To do this, just go to Settings, Going to Apps, and tap “See all apps. You have to then show system apps and search “Android TV Home. “Once you have found that application, click on it and search”Remove updates. ”
When you go back to your Home Screen, you will find that some of your preferences are reset, but you will also find that the ads are gone. After that, you need to go to the Google Play Store settings and disable automatic updates. Otherwise, you will simply end up with the ads re-enabled within a few hours or days.
This is net a permanent method and surely Google will eventually force the updated version, but in the meantime this should do the trick.
More on Android TV:
FTC: We use revenue-generating links for auto-affiliate. More.
Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news:
