The best part of the Chromecast refresh is the Google TV interface that comes along with it, but as with any Google product that UI is subject to change over time. This week, it appears that a slight tweak to the Google TV homescreen is being tested with smaller app icons.
A silent update to the Google TV homescreen has adjusted the size of the app icons to where they’re now significantly smaller in size. The Google TV homescreen lists apps on the “For You” main tab underneath two rows of content recommendations.
The difference isn’t easy to spot at a glance (which is probably intentional on Google’s part), but it’s clear when you take a closer look. The apps row has indeed shrunk the size of the icons, making room for more icons while also slimming down the overall size of the row. Since launch, this section has been able to show 7 complete app icons as seen in the image above, but with this change, it can show 9, as seen below.
Functionally, this doesn’t change anything, but it does take a bit of emphasis off of apps and refocuses it on the content recommendations that Google TV is so good at.
Right now, it doesn’t appear that this change is widespread, but at least a couple of users on Reddit report having seen the change over the past 48 hours or so. Notably, this doesn’t appear to be linked to the recent system update that rolled out to Chromecast with Google TV. No other UI updates appear to be a part of this test either.
Update 2/10: Over the past 48 hours, it seems like this change has rolled out much more widely. We’ve observed the change on three of our own Chromecast devices, and more Reddit users have noticed the change too. It looks like this may be a permanent change.
More on Google TV:
- TikTok is now available on Android TV, but only in select regions
- TCL will bring Android TV 11 to 2019 and 2020 models this year, Google TV UI possible
- Chromecast w/ Google TV ‘data may be corrupt’ issue affects some users, here’s how to fix it
Author: Ben Schoon
Source: 9TO5Google
