Comment on “Awful”: Roku tests autoplaying ads loading before the home screen

ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I got to know more about your setup. How much was the device and what software are you running?

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  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Sure. The device I use is an Onn streaming a Android TV box. I think I got the 2023 4k streaming version and it was about $20, from Walmart. You can probably get cheaper models, but I wanted one with an Ethernet port.

    Then I installed a couple of alternative launchers from the Play store on device. I also loaded F-Droid as well (though I had to do that directly through an apk). I can’t remember which launcher I went with in the end, but it was either FLauncher or Projectivity. They were both good.

    The wrinkle here is that the OS defaults back to the default launcher (which has ads and a lot of clutter on it). But I used a free command line tool called adb to switch the default launcher off.

    I’ve been very happy with the new setup. My kids (who use it all the time) occasionally complain that an app will crash while they are watching something, and take them back to the home screen/launcher. But I haven’t run into that, and it’s probably just them accidentally hitting a remote (which I know they accidentally do a lot).

    I documented the process and posted them here, in another thread a few months ago.

    Additional note: The default YouTube app isn’t very conducive to quick profile switching, which can be annoying. To switch profiles you basically have to go back to the OS level and do it there, then go back into the YouTube app. It’s an Android TV quirk. But I discovered that if you side-load the Amazon Fire version of the YouTube app onto the device, you can switch profiles within that version of the app, and it works just fine.

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