An interesting and unpleasant paradox can arise with your Smart TV: it has Android TV but no official Google app store, because the Google Play Store is only available for certain brands and models (fortunately, the majority). If this is the case, don’t panic because there is a solution and it’s easy: so you can have Google Play Store on Android TV.

How to have Google Play Store on a TV with Android TV that doesn’t come with it?

Firstly, several facilities. While reading the title, you might have thought about having the Google Play Store on any Smart TV (e.g. Samsung or LG). The official Google app store is really great for the quantity and quality of apps you’ll find, but Only compatible with Android TV/Google TV operating system. Likewise, you must have at least 100 MB of free storage space. Otherwise, you will need to free up space on your TV.

From here, the procedure involves downloading the APK from a trusted repository like APKMirror from Google Play Store and installing it on the TV. This can be done directly on your Smart TV with a browser and file explorer, but in practice it’s pretty easy. It is more convenient to download and transfer the file from a device such as a mobile phone, tablet or computer (Send Files to TV is a great app for doing this wirelessly or with a USB stick or cable).

Assuming you already have the file from Google Play Store on your TV, now it’s time to perform the installation. The first thing to run will be to allow the installation of applications of unknown origin, which you need to enable from the TV settings (gear icon). Then follow the route’Security‘ > ‘unknown sources‘.

It’s just a matter of finding the APK from the Google Play Store (again, a good file manager can help you if you don’t have your downloads folder handy) and tap on it to install it. Once the process is complete, Google Play Store should appear in the list of installed apps.

I tried to open Google Play Store but it gives an error. This is probably because the installed APK is not compatible with your Android TV version; In this case, you will need to download another version and repeat the installation process. To do this right, it’s a good idea to first check which version of Android TV you have (here’s how to find out this information).

via | Computer Today

Cover | Eva Rodríguez de Luis

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