A few years ago I bought the Chromecast with Google TV, which was one of the best purchases I ever made. An economical device that allows you to play any content we send from the phone in 4K (if your television allows). If we do not want to be dependent on the mobile phone, use the native system of this device: Google TV, Google’s own customization of Android TV.

During this time, I met friends and family who were using the same device (or Android TV devices with a very similar settings system) and didn’t quite know how to configure the device. Today I want to share with you how I configured it to get the most out of my Google TV.

Screen and sound. This is the first section to be configured in Google TV settings. The first thing I do is make sure the resolution and refresh rate are correct (4K 60Hz), because sometimes I see 4K TVs configured to 1080p.

The second point of configuration is not so simple and concerns HDR. The setting I’ve configured is to have HDR as the dynamic range format preference instead of HDR, but the key part is just below: “adapt to content”. As of today, there are some apps that do not work with HDR on Android TV, so there is no point in forcing the system to play in this format.

Leaving the “adapting to content” section, Google TV will switch between SDR and HDR at appropriate times.

Privacy. The next section I configured is privacy. I especially make sure that the location is completely closed. This is a personal decision and after all the internet connection itself already “knows” our location. However, apps on Android TV usually do not ask for this permission; so be suspicious if asked for permission (which clearly doesn’t need it).

I also keep a close eye on which apps have microphone permissions. This is a more compromised permission, so it is recommended to keep an eye on it every time we install a new application to guarantee our privacy.

Automatic updates. Google TV apps have one feature: They take up very little space. That’s why I always recommend having automatic updates enabled. This way, we don’t even notice that the apps are updating (they do it in the background) and so we always have the latest version.

Only I can control my TV. This option depends largely on whether we live alone, share an apartment, live with relatives, etc. It will depend. In my case, I configured that no one, including users connected to my WiFi network, can check the multimedia content I send.

This is configured in the system settings – “send”. We can always allow multimedia content to be controlled from any device, this is never possible or only possible when sending.

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