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In what may be the longest rollout in the history of Google releases, the long-awaited ambient mode screensaver for Google TV that features “proactive personal results” is starting to see a wider rollout and an official announcement on Twitter, as well as a mention on the Google TV Help page.
As spotted by 9to5Google yesterday, the feature went live on several of their Chromecast with Google TV devices within an hour when they noticed that the official @madebygoogle Twitter account had made an announcement. The feature seems to be rolling out only to first-party Google TV devices at the time, though previously, third-party devices saw a limited rollout as well. We have yet to see the feature go live on any of our devices at Chrome Unboxed.
The new screensaver features a refreshed UI with photos from your Google Photos albums as the background and smaller widgets across the bottom highlighting the latest sports scores, local weather, news, podcasts, and more. The Google Assistant glanceable cards can also change every time ambient mode goes into effect. Once it rolls out to your device, the feature will be enabled by default but can be turned off if desired. To access the setting, from your user profile icon, select Settings > Accounts & Sign In > your account > Google Assistant, and under “How personal results appear,” select “Never show proactively.“
Notably, the Google TV Help page discloses that this feature is only available on some Google TV devices in the U.S., though no specific brands are mentioned. Additionally, on Twitter, the @madebygoogle account responded to a user asking whether this was a U.S.-only feature by responding:
We appreciate your interest — however, we don’t have any details to share about the list of supported countries where this feature will be available. In the meantime, you can stay tuned for more updates and announcements.
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The “Personalized Profiles” feature also seems to be rolling out slowly, and we have already seen it on one of our TVs. Personally, I haven’t seen either of these two features show up in any of the three Chromecast with Google TV devices I have at home. It’s a bit frustrating having to wait so long for new features to show up, as I seem to always be on the last group, but such is the nature of staged rollouts with Google. Let’s hope these new Google TV improvements reach the rest of the user base sooner rather than later.
