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I turned my streaming stick into a dumb app launcher, and that's all it should be
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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What?
I’m just saying that Apple TVs are already a simple app launcher interface with basically nothing else.
Can I use an apple TV without an account? Arr there good YouTube apps with adblock, and how is the kodi and jellyfin support. If good I will switch
Jellyfin works well enough with swiftfin, but does have some annoyances e.g. subtitle and audio track support is tied to the player configured (native vs other).
It's the more reliable client app I've experienced as long as you stick to 1080p though. 4k is a hit or miss, but that could be my network or server (although I do direct play when possible, but it still has the occasional issues).
You’re not wrong in it being a fantastic app launcher, but it being locked down makes it useless for many, sadly.
Being able to sideload is crucial for me at least, and the day google locks that down on Android devices is the day I will build a mini-PC for the living room.
I can assure you there's a whole lot of telemetry and. Teaching in those. It's not "and nothing else."
Apple is the least awful about data privacy. Owning your hardware and stack is still better for privacy.
Yes but isn’t this article just about installing a custom launcher on a Google device? Presumably this does not solve data harvesting by Google, which would make this solution, while effective for app launching, probably worse than using an Apple TV device.