Don’t miss this not-so-obvious Chromecast remote shortcut to quickly remove apps

Now that the new Chromecast with Google TV is fully rolled out and available online and in stores, there are many of us learning our way around a new UI and Chromecast experience. For those who used Android TV prior, some of the same shortcuts and workarounds are still present, but that group is a small one compared to the large number of users that will likely be picking up this new $49 dongle in the next few months.

With that in mind, we want to be sure to cover any tricks we find hiding in plain sight with the new Chromecast, and this one in particular is highly useful. After all, the new Chromecast has the ability to install applications when you invoke the Google Assistant (thought the Play Store isn’t exactly accessible for browsing around in) and that is a big departure from the way most of us interacted with our Chromecasts before this latest iteration.

Removing apps is simple with this shortcut

Out of the box, your Chromecast comes with a handful of apps already installed and after messing with it for a bit, you may end up with a handful more quite quickly. The problem? That $49 only buys you 8GB of total storage of which you only have about 4GB to store things on. A game here and a streaming service there and you have yourself a fully-loaded Chromecast with no space for new stuff.

The only way around this is to delete existing applications you don’t need any longer. While there is a way in the settings to dig a bit deeper and delete things, there is a much faster way to remove unwanted apps from your Chromecast’s tiny storage and you can do so right from the home screen.

Simply hover over the app you want to remove, long-press the center button on the top of the Chromecast remote, select ‘View details’, and then hit ‘Uninstall’. Simple as that! Again, in the apps section of the settings menu, you can navigate around and find the app you’d like to remove and do so there, too. I’ve simply found that the former method is much quicker to get to that delete screen and get me back to what it was I was doing before.

I really hope Google either offers an upgraded Chromecast down the road or simply puts a bit more memory in the next iteration of the streaming dongle, but at least there are relatively-quick ways to go about getting unnecessary apps off the minute storage when it becomes apparent that certain apps just need to go.