Google TV gaining performance and storage-saving improvements

Google has shared today via a community post its plans to improve the experience for Google TV users by delivering a few overdue updates based on user feedback. Some of these have already been rolled out, while some are being promised to be delivered soon for Chromecast with Google TV and other Smart TVs with Google TV built-in.

Performance improvements

Google will be rolling out CPU optimizations and cache management improvements, which will shorten the time it takes for the Google TV home screen to load at startup and take up less RAM. Additionally, navigation has been improved so that scrolling within a tab and toggling between tabs is faster. The Live tab will load faster, too, so you’ll experience less of the tab-switching animation. Finally, once you’ve settled on what you want to watch, the Google TV UI will also move faster and be more stable due to the decreased RAM consumption. These changes have already begun and will become available to all Google TV devices over time.

Children’s profiles have also been updated with image caching enhancements which speed up switching to child profiles and viewing content. In addition, Google has removed the latency between loading a kid’s profile and opening an app.

Storage improvements

The app library on Google TV has grown to include 10,000 apps, and more app downloads are bound to occur with more options available to users. However, the more apps you download, the quicker you reach the storage limit on Google TV devices. Because of this, a “Free up storage” section was added in Settings to let you clear your cache and delete unused apps to save space.

This capability has already been rolled out to Chromecast with Google TV and will be on smart TVs with Google TV in an upcoming update. For those with a Chromecast with Google TV, this can be done by going to Settings > System > Storage > Free up storage.

Furthermore, Google TV has changed how it handles app installations by nipping storage-related issues in the bud and implementing an automated background process to free up space on the device. This allows users to install applications without receiving errors about needing to free up storage.

These announcements coincide with the recent leak about a closed-door meeting last month, where executives discussed Google TV entering the TV Fitness market and bringing Google TV into the “Better Together” initiative but needing to make improvements to the platform first to make all of this happen. If that is where these newly announced updates are coming from, I am very happy to see that it’s moving along and excited about the possibility of Google TV becoming a juggernaut in that space.