I miss how my shield used to work

google was originally successful because they didn't fill their homescreen with crap, maybe they forgot

They didn't forget, they are now exploiting their monopoly after they killed competition.
- It's not a safe monopoly at all, though. Most of my "question"-style queries now go directly to an LLM-based alternative, on account of how much Google search results have dropped in quality for that type of query. I only really use Google directly for stuff like finding something that I specifically know what I'm looking for, but don't know the exact link to.
- "Enshitification"

Devices running Android TV can have all kinds of different apps sideloaded onto them, including alternative launchers. I suggest using one.

Please enlighten me to how google tv devices can have the launcher replaced
- Projectivy is in Google play. It can't get much easier.
- I found this https://xdaforums.com/t/how-to-disable-google-tv-launcher-install-3rd-party-launcher.4601397/
- You can use adb to do it. First, install a third party launcher, then run these commands after connecting to adb over network or USB:
  
  adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.tvrecommendations adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.tvlauncher
  If you run these commands before installing a third party launcher, you will just get a black screen, and will have to install the launcher over adb.
  You can also uninstall other bloatware using the same command, but replacing the package name with whatever you want. If it breaks something, or if you just want the package installed again, you can re-enable it with adb shell cmd package install-existing com.name.of.package
  I'd recommend LeanbackOnFire for a third party launcher.

Projectivy Launcher.

Fucking amazing launcher
Just installed this on my shield. Ty for this.
Only thing I miss from the default launcher is holding the back button to bring up settings so I can hit sleep but it's been great otherwise.

I am shocked a service named after the advertising company that owns it would do this

Shocked, I say!!

watches the majority of the market use Chrome as their default browser

Firefox <3
Firefox is far from perfect though, and in fact it is so far that I do not blame people for not using it. I mean, I still do on my phone, but even there I keep wondering when I will get around to trying alternatives someday. When I do switch though, I will probably always keep a copy of Chrome handy, just in case.
As an example, if you use a PIV card (for work or whatever), Firefox has long-standing bugs from YEARS in the past where it will just keep querying it, over and over again, every five seconds, all day, every day. Not to visit websites that might need it mind you but just b/c. You cannot both keep a PIV plugged in and have Firefox open, unless you go in and do complicated stuff to remove the driver inside Firefox - which removes the option to use it when you do need it - and then even you have to keep doing that all over again each time you restart it (unless you tinker around and do even more complicated stuff - at which point why don't I just switch to LibreWolf or some such?).
Anyway, I still somewhat like Firefox - I use it daily and exclusively on my mobile - but again, it is not perfect, so I understand when others may make a different choice.
Edit: Yup, I am downvoted into the negative, without a single explanation as to why, even though I mentioned how I use Firefox literally daily and wholly exclusively on my mobile, where the majority of their development efforts seem to be going lately, but b/c I do not support it "hard enough" this is "bad"? Lemmy is extremely authoritarian when it comes to such matters as this - agree with me or else. Oh well, I don't mind if people choose to think differently than me, I just wish we could discuss it civilly - anyone want to try to explain?

https://florisse.nl/shield-downgrade/

next they'll release Google TV Premium without ads then Google TV Lite with less features, eventually we'll just circle back to normal TVs again

My libreelec tv box bit the dust today (not permanently I hope). After twitch freezing the whole machine on midroll ads that now appear eevrywhere, now youtube doesnt play anymore either because it thinks I‘m on a android client… now I need to update and hope that this is not a permanent problem.

anboid tee viii