4 Essential Google TV Apps You Should Be Using In 2025

Google TV is one of the most popular smart TV platforms, available in the form of the Google TV streamer and in dozens of TVs from brands like Hisense, Sony, and TCL. It has a lot to like, such as its vast library of apps and games, an impressive recommendation engine, Google Assistant (which Gemini AI is slowly replacing), and user profile support. Additionally, you can use it to control select smart home devices or play live TV channels using Google TV Freeplay.

Although the out-of-the-box Google TV experience is solid, you can significantly enhance and personalize it using various apps available in the Google Play Store. You can install a new launcher to change the home screen look, stream games from your PC, browse the web, listen to podcasts, and so much more. However, it can be overwhelming to choose from the thousands of available options. So, we have handpicked some of the most helpful Google TV apps to get you started.

LocalSend is arguably one of the most useful Android apps. It's an essential app for your Android phone, and you'll be happy to know that it also works on the Google TV OS. It's an open-source app that enables you to transfer files, folders, and text between devices seamlessly. Thanks to its availability on all popular platforms, you can use practically any mobile device or computer to share files with your TV. More importantly, it utilizes your Wi-Fi network for transfers, ensuring that none of your data is stored on remote servers.

There is no uploading to the cloud, and you don't even need an active internet connection for LocalSend to work. It has a single requirement: both the sender and receiver devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi network. That's it. The app interface is fairly intuitive, and no complex setup is required to make it work. Simply install LocalSend from the Google Play Store on your Google TV to start receiving and sending files. This is mainly useful if you wish to sideload apps and games on your TV via APK files.

Google TV's home screen is reasonably user-friendly and slick; however, if you are not a fan of its recommendations or the included advertisements are getting on your nerves, it's time to change the launcher. While Google TV doesn't have the same diverse selection of third-party launchers, Projectivy Launcher is an excellent home screen replacement. It's an ad-free, customizable launcher that enables you to personalize your TV's home screen according to your aesthetic preferences and functional needs.

Projectivy Launcher includes support for personalized layouts, dynamic wallpapers, custom icons, parental controls, quick access to input sources, adaptive colors, and much more. More importantly, it works seamlessly and delivers an excellent experience, devoid of any major issues. It's also free to download; however, you may need to pay for some features, such as custom wallpapers, an extra user profile, and advanced icon customization. That said, for most people, the free version is more than enough.

If you want to play downloaded or recorded media on Google TV, VLC is a no-brainer. This open-source media player supports all popular audio and video file formats, eliminating the need to worry about whether a particular format is compatible with your Google TV. Apart from locally stored media, you can use VLC to play content from your NAS or other networked devices, which is great if you don't want to set up a Plex or Jellyfin server. It can also directly play content from a connected USB flash drive or external hard drive.

Other features include support for HDR, subtitles, multi-track audio, a built-in equalizer, audio passthrough, and more. Although it may not have the prettiest interface among media players, it's functional and intuitive. More importantly, VLC is free to use, it lacks advertisements, and it won't collect your data — something that can't be said for all media players in the Google Play Store.

Google TV devices — particularly televisions — come with remotes that have tons of buttons programmed for features that most people rarely use. Fortunately, you can make the most of these buttons by reprogramming them with an app called tvQuickActions Pro. Although there is a free version of the app, it's not as feature-rich as the Pro version, which only costs $4. Built specifically for smart TVs, tvQuickActions Pro allows you to remap almost all buttons on your remote to specific functions and tasks, such as toggling Wi-Fi, taking a screenshot, opening settings, clearing cache for all apps, and more.

One of its highlights is the ability to assign up to five actions to a single button — a feature not available in most other button remapping apps. Besides button remapping, the app offers a customizable app dock, sleep timer, screen recording, media control panel, and custom menus. Moreover, it can even remap the included Netflix and other streaming service buttons on select remotes.