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I turned my streaming stick into a dumb app launcher, and that's all it should be
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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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Congratulations, you just made a copy of Apple TVOS, on much worse hardware.
Love them or hate them, the Apple TV is the best streaming box around. I’ve got One and a shield tv, and the Apple TVs level of polish and performance is on a whole other level.
Yeah, let's get more close ecosystem shit. Stop buying things you can modify because you own them. Think of the executives, what's wrong with you people?
What?
I’m just saying that Apple TVs are already a simple app launcher interface with basically nothing else.
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 tracking 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.
*edit: others have bored this is still using Google hardware with only a custom launcher, not a unique firmware or os environment for data sovereignty. That Sudha, and the lettuce still remains that we need more open hardware vendors, or legislation that let's us unlock our own purchased devices to modify further. *
But the article is about using a GOOGLE TV stick……
It’s not about “owning your stack”.
Right, this isn't accommodating that, but I still contend that needs to be the goal.
I dint own this device or an AppleTV, while I've owned both in the past.
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.
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).
I also prefer using an AppleTV as my TV media player, but as long as the UI is snappy and it it’s capable of decoding HEVC, AV1, and other modern codecs smoothly, this solution is perfectly cromulent.
I haven't used other streaming boxes lately, but I find this hard to believe, mainly because of the shitty AppleTV remote with the godawful touchpad that everybody decided to implement different gestures for and which is notoriously difficult to gesture properly with and only when intended to
otherwise, I do agree that the AppleTV itself is quite polished. I use it for any streaming services that I may have, which is not many lately but was quite a few in the past, Plex, and YouTube primarily. also used to do some Zwift on it before I changed to using an iPad.
besides the absolutely horrible remote that for some reason doesn't have actual buttons for arrows and confirm, the rest of the experience actually is quite good and generally anything that is not is to do with the apps themselves. for example, Sportsnet is just a fucking terrible app no matter what platform you're on.
The current remote has physical buttons that have a track pad over the surface of them. You can completely disable the track pad and gestures and just use it like a plain old remote if you want. The gestures-only remote was replaced years ago, thankfully.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mw5g3am/a/siri-remote
This is the old one that I assume you’re talking about?
It's ironic how the only place to reliably navigate back on an Apple device is through the Apple TV remote.
The remote is shit, yes, and there’s an alternative to it. I can’t recall whether or not they’ve fixed that on the newer AppleTv remotes or not, but I detest that there’s no mute, either.
That said, it’s still pretty good, especially compared to the alternatives. The Roku keeps enshittifying harder and harder
You must also be thinking of the older one which was crap. This is the current one which has clicky physical buttons that also can act as a gesture pad, and a mute button.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mw5g3am/a/siri-remote
This was the garbage one before that:
I have a shield tv from forever ago. It’s still plenty fast enough. All the apps we use come right up. I use a third party launcher so I can declutter the screen a bit and it’s just fine. These things done have to be blazing fast.
The shield tv is still by far the best Android box in the market. It’s insane how it’s still supported by Nvidia, and still better than anything else out there.
The Apple TV is “decluttered” by default.