What is the Best Google TV launcher in 2026?

Our conference room TV was the kind of device everyone quietly hated. Opening Netflix meant sitting through fifteen seconds of auto playing trailers and ad banners before anything became clickable. Nobody complained out loud they just pulled out their laptops instead. When I finally dug into the problem, the fix turned out to be a third party launcher called Projectivy, and the difference was immediate.

Google TV’s default home screen is designed to surface content recommendations, which in practice means surfacing ads. Background processes keep those trailers and banners alive even when you are not actively browsing, quietly eating into the devices processing headroom. Projectivy replaces the entire home screen with a clean, self contained launcher that cuts those processes dead.

“The first time I booted Projectivy, the TV’s home screen loaded in under two seconds. That alone would have been enough. Everything after that was a bonus.”

Installing Projectivy takes about four minutes:

Unlike some custom launchers that require sideloading APKs over USB, Projectivy is available directly in the Google TV Play Store. No developer mode, no command line.

1. Open the Google TV Play Store and search for “Projectivy.”
2. Download and install the app.
3. Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the initial setup.

The setup wizard walks you through assigning it as the default launcher. Once done, the old Google TV home screen is gone not hidden. Every tap after that is noticeably snappier.

What you can actually configure:

In our company, we configured three TVs with Projectivy in a single afternoon using the free backup and restore tool. You set up the layout once, export a config file, and push it to every other device. That alone saved roughly forty minutes compared to doing each one by hand.

The layout options are more granular than they look at first.

A step by step guidelines here.

• Build custom rows and categories group apps by use case instead of letting Google decide what’s “relevant.”
• Scale icon sizes and swap wallpapers without leaving the launcher settings.
• Add HDMI input tiles directly to the home screen, so switching sources takes one press instead of three menu navigations.
• Drop a hardware monitor tile onto the screen to see CPU and memory usage in real time surprisingly useful for diagnosing slowdowns.

Key setting:

Enable “Boot on Power” and bind Projectivy to your remote home button. Without both, the TV will occasionally revert to the stock launcher after a restart.

The premium tier costs a one time fee under $10 and unlocks things like 4K UI scaling, dynamic color theming, and multiple profiles. For a personal TV its optional. For a shared office screen, the multi profile support is worth it.

Google Assistant still works:

When I tried this, I assumed voice search would break. It does not. Google Assistant and Gemini run as an overlay on top of whatever launcher is active, so pressing the voice button on your remote still pulls up search and smart home controls. The launcher does not own those features it just replaces the home screen beneath them.

If you rely heavily on the Google Home panel for device control, install tvQuickActionsPro alongside Projectivy. The two apps coexist without conflicts, and together they cover everything the stock launcher did minus the ads.

The one glitch you’ll hit:

Google TV occasionally revokes custom launcher permissions, reverting the home screen to the default. It’s uncommon but annoying when it happens.

The fix is fast:

• Open Settings
• Go into Accessibility
• Find Projectivy’s accessibility service, toggle it off, then back on.

Permissions restore in seconds. Some users also uninstall the stock launcher entirely, though that option depends on your specific device model.

If you would rather not install anything:

Google TV includes a built in “Apps only mode” that removes recommendation carousels and ads without requiring third-party software.

• Navigate to Settings
• All Settings
• Accounts & Sign-In
• [your profile]
• Apps only mode.

The tradeoff is real: enabling it disables universal search, voice commands, and the Watchlist. For most users, thats too much to give up. Projectivy keeps all of those features intact, which is why it’s the better starting point.

Other speed fixes worth combining:

A launcher swap handles the biggest source of slowdown, but a few built in tweaks compound the improvement:

• Animation speed: Unlock Developer Options by pressing OK seven times on your Build Number in settings. Set Window, Transition, and Animator scales to 0.5x. Navigation feels twice as fast.
• Autoplay trailers: Turn these off in your profile settings. Even with Projectivy installed, this prevents them from running in the background.
• DNS: Switching from your ISP’s default to Google DNS (8.8.8.8) improves response times. Ad Guard DNS blocks system-level telemetry if you want to go further.
• Hard reboot: The power button puts the TV in standby, not fully off. Hold it and select OK to do a proper restart and clear accumulated slowdowns.

After six months, three of our office TVs run Projectivy without issue. The fourth is still on the stock launcher as a control group, if nothing else. The difference is not subtle.

Originally published at newsinsides.com