Google TV features are coming to Android TV, including Watchlist, improved recommendations, and detail pages, and users will start seeing the new features this week. Google TV was announced as a new interface based on Android TV in September 2020, and subsequent smart TV models came with the Google TV user interface. Older models running Android TV were then updated to make the interface look more like Google TV and now these features are meant to take the experience a step further. Google shared the development on its Android TV community forum.
Google’s Android TV community manager Aamir F. posted that new features are coming to Android TV to make the experience “more immersive and helpful than ever.” These features include Watchlist, recommendation tuning, and immersive detail pages. Watchlists will allow Android TV users to create a list of shows or movies that they can add to a list and save them for watching later. The Watchlist will appear as a row on the Discover tab and users can add content to their watch list from a phone or laptop using Google Search or Google TV mobile app.
To add a show or movie to your watch list, long-press on the content from the Discover tab and selecting Add to Watchlist. It can also be accessed from the details page.
The Improve your recommendations option will help you get better recommendations that are more-fine-tuned based on what you like to watch. You can find it in the Discover tab or head to Settings > Device Preferences > Home Screen > Content Preferences. Here, you can select ‘Less like this’ or ‘More like this’ for the content you are presented with. You will then see content more suited to your preferences in the Discover tab.
Lastly, the detail pages have been updated to give a cinematic experience. Trailers will now play automatically and this feature is similar to what Netflix does on its platform. It can be turned off as well and to do so, head to Settings > Device Preferences > Home Screen and turn off ‘Enable video previews’.
These new features have already started rolling out and Android TV users should see them starting this week.
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