[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
hey guys this is paige from vm.com and i
know you guys haven't seen me in a video
since a couple of weeks and more
and that's because of kobe 19. yep 2020
sucks
long story short i am back anyway
android tv has been getting very very
popular in india and a lot of you guys
i'm sure are using an android tv
or a tv with an android tv box setup so
which are the absolutely must-have
apps for an android tv well i'm gonna
tell you exactly that today so
let's begin
so most android tvs come with fairly
compact remotes but
a lot of tvs come with remotes that look
like this
yeah that's a lot of buttons and if
you're using just the android tv
platform
most of these buttons are kind of
useless but that's where button mapper
is so useful
with button mapper i can just add say
this button and customize it to open an
app
then i can set this button to trigger an
action like taking a screenshot
now here's me taking a screenshot from
this button yeah that's cool right
now that's not all button mapper also
lets you set actions for double taps as
well as long presses
and not just for these additional
buttons even the default android tv
buttons like home
back volume buttons etc so i can set the
volume up button to change tracks on
double press
i mean that is cool right now as you
must have noticed that i'm using this
app with my tv at home and that's
because the app did not work with the tv
at the studio
so yeah that's something you'll have to
check
so tv usage is a digital well-being app
for android tv
and it's handy because it's much much
more than that
as you can see it shows you the duration
of time you have spent on different apps
my data here is pretty lean and nice
because this is a tv from the studio
that i don't really use
now i can also check out the details of
the app usage which is great but if you
have say
kids at home the app lets you set screen
time and usage hours to limit their
usage
you can even go further and lock a
certain app with a pin
so there's no way to access it and yeah
your kids will hate you but yeah this is
actually useful for everyone using
android tv now one thing to note the app
shows you the usage details for
free but if you want to put limits or
lock an app you'll have to make a
one-time purchase of 300 rupees
android tv android both basically have
the same code yet
there's no way to send files between
them which is strange
anyway the app i think a lot of people
use and i use to send files which is
mostly apks from my android smartphone
to the android tv is send files to tv
it's a super simple app all you need is
your phone and the tv connected to the
same wi-fi network
now you can just select send on the
phone and receive on the tv
then select the file select the tv and
that's it the file will be set
to note that this works fine for smaller
files but i did notice that it kind of
slows down at times with bigger files
but yeah for apks and other small files
this is very good
so i like most android tv users was
using puffin browser in the past and it
was
great until they started a subscription
service
to use the browser without any time
limit
yup a subscription to use the browser
i mean the rating says it all anyways i
was looking for another browser and
that's when i came across
tv bro now i found the ui to be not so
intuitive at first
but once i got used to it i really like
the whole feature set and the browser
first of all let me make it clear i like
the name tv bro
second it loads up all the websites i
use very well and it's very
fast and smooth something very important
plus navigating the web pages
or going through the different menus is
responsive with the dvd mode
which again is very important and as for
the features it has download manager
voicethread support
and it is open source so it's free and
nice so
yeah tv bro bro
a file manager app is definitely a
must-have for android tv because you
need to access files like apks
local files etc and there are a lot of
file managers available for android tv
but
my favorite and i think it's the best
file manager app for android tv
is fx file manager now there are a
number of reasons i think that i
personally think it's android tv ui
looks good especially because it's clean
and navigation is very good
and like that most of its features from
its phone version is here
there's support from multiple windows
with split screen view
so you can move files between different
folders easily
there's built-in video player music
player image viewer text viewer and
editor
it supports creating and packing
archives such as zape 7zip and rar
so it has all the features and its free
version has no ads no privacy issues
and all of the important features i use
so yeah it's got to be perfect for most
people
[Music]
see play store android tv has a lot of
popular apps but i think it's still
pretty limited
and side loading apps on android tv is
still a little bit of a hassle
and that's where i think alternative app
stores come in really handy
now aptoide tv is the app store to
install an android tv because this
tv aimed version has all the different
android tv apps you need
apps like prime video in case you have
one of the older android tvs that don't
have prime video support
it has apps like the smart youtube tv
app which i know a lot of people use
the point is there are a lot of apps on
approach tv that i think you'll find
handy
so make sure to check it out
so by default the stock android tv
launcher does not show
side loaded apps in the apps list so we
have to use apps like side load launcher
to access these apps
well there's an app to get these apps on
the default android tv launcher it's
called nebula manager
and it just works it's very simple just
open up the app and it shows the
different third-party apps here
now i can just select tabs that i want
to see in the app drawer
like say tv bro or aptoide tv which i
have side loaded
that's it now they're here in the app
drawer and i can even add them to the
home screen
i know it's a very simple app but it's
very handy if you side load a lot of
apps
one thing i don't like about android tvs
is that there's no way to switch between
different apps
there's no way to see the apps running
in the background yeah some tv is
allowed
but mostly most android tvs don't have
this functionality with the latter the
ability to see background apps
is fixed by this app called background
apps and process list
so this is again a very easy to use app
that shows you all the apps running in
the background i know the ui looks kind
of basic but it gets the job done
anyway so you can see all the apps here
and also kill apps right here
the process to key labs isn't the most
intuitive because even when you use the
close all button it opens up the app
info page of
each app one by one where you have to
press four stop for every single app
so it's kind of an annoying process so i
choose to only kill the app that i'm not
using for the time being
overall it's not the best solution to
kill apps in the background but at least
it's a solution so yeah check it out
so the last app kind of the bonus app i
want to talk about is google home now i
know this is not an android tv app
but i think with google home you can do
a lot of cool things with android tv
now there's obviously the fact that you
can cast songs or you know cast videos
to android tv
but there's a lot more so there's the
cast my screen option to mirror your
android phone screen to the tv to maybe
show photos do a presentation or
anything else
i also like the ambient mode which you
can find here and it lets you customize
the screen saver on the tv
there's the google photos option the art
gallery option which includes some
really cool photos
and even photos captured from pixel
phones there's also the experimental
mode which lets you set photos from
facebook and flickr
and also enable a low bandwidth mode as
for other options you can hide whether
or choose to show it in celsius or
fahrenheit sure hide the time there's
also a different google photos options
and the option to set the slideshow
speed so yeah these are some interesting
options and yeah this
is an app that google will always
improve with more and more features so
yeah this
is a must-have now apart from one of
these apps there's one more thing that
you should maybe try
fano tv is transitioning to google tv
but if you want to experience the google
tv home screen
right away we have a detailed guide on
the same so check it out anyway those
are some of the must-have android tv
apps that you should be using on your
android tv
and the links to all of them are in the
description down below so go ahead check
them out and if you think there's
another must-have app that
we kind of missed out on make sure to
comment below so that everyone else
knows
also give this video a thumbs up if you
enjoyed it make sure to
share it around and yeah subscribe to
our channel for more amazing tech videos
well as me signing off thanks for
watching and i will see you in the next
[Music]
one
[Music]
you