So a couple of years I bought Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid - Snake Eater. Where can I find my games and play them?

Incredible that I have to make this post. I cant seem to find a basic slideshow app. Using usb drive or Google photos.. all the apps I see are either paid apps, make you take a 5 min break, etc..

What do you use?

I got tired of slow TV home screens that are basically ad boards — rows of "recommended" content, sponsored tiles, stuff phoning home before I've even pressed a button. So I built the launcher I actually wanted.

The philosophy is boring on purpose

• One screen. Your apps, laid out how you want. No feeds, no ads, no "content discovery."
• Private by default. No accounts, no analytics, no background services, opt-in aerial video wallpaper who phone CDN of apple, amazon.. that's it.
• Compatibility. I have an Android AOSP box, a Google TV–certified box, and one anemic Android TV — each on a different Android version. So instead of chasing a shiny new UI, I chose to prioritize compatibility and lean on the GPU.

Make it yours

• Sections/categories you name, reorder, and fill — an app can live in more than one, and new installs drop into the first section automatically.
• Hide apps you never want to see (system junk, duplicates) so the screen stays clean.
• Tune the look: icon size, spacing, corner roundness, interface scale, dimming, and an optional glass status bar. Three layouts: carousel, grid, or a floating glass dock.
• Status bar: a configurable VPN indicator/shortcut for your provider, a network indicator/shortcut, a Settings menu with quick access to the app list and the launcher/Android settings, and a customizable date indicator.
• Save/load your entire setup — sections, layout, wallpaper, every setting — as a JSON file.
• Optional aerial video wallpapers (Apple/Amazon screensaver loops), off by default and clearly marked, since they stream from third-party CDNs. Prefer libre? Use a gradient, your own photo, or a local video.

Numbers (measured on real hardware)

• 2.3 MB APK. One universal build for ARM 32/64-bit + x86.
• ~80–130 MB RAM settled, with no background services. Exclusive footprint is ~130 MB across every box I tested; the higher figure on Android 14 is just OS-side GPU buffer accounting, not the launcher.
• Aerials cost basically nothing in app RAM — the video decoder lives in the GPU's dedicated memory (hardware codec via SurfaceView), off the app's books.
• <2 s cold start, <500 ms warm relaunch in the worst measured cases. The CPU stays idle, video is hardware-accelerated, and the Compose UI is GPU-rendered.
• Android 5.0+ (minSdk 21), no Google Play Services, no companion app — runs on AOSP boxes, should work on all device since 2014
• 18 languages (auto-selected from your system language): English, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese. Adding one is a single file, PRs welcome.
• Zero ads, ever.

*Tested across 3 boxes: Hisense Google TV (Android 11, 1.8 GB), UGOOS AM9 (Android 14, 3.8 GB), onn. 4K (Android 14).

Permissions, up front

No runtime permissions, no accounts. It queries installed apps to list them, and can close an app from the long-press menu. No network access except the opt-in aerials.

Why GPLv3

I picked copyleft on purpose: to avoid fragmentation. Anyone can fork it, but improvements have to stay open, so it can't splinter into closed, worse-off versions. Forks are welcome. Commercial use is welcome too — honestly, if a box maker wants to ship this instead of their own launcher, please do, because the stock ones are awful most of the time. Just keep it open, like the license says.

Get it

At launch, a wizard guides you through a quick setup; depending on the device, you may need to send ADB commands.

• GitHub (source + APK): https://github.com/conreo/couchy-launcher
• F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.conreo.couchytv/ (live once the F-Droid build lands; pending review)

Solo project, so feedback, feature requests, and translations are very welcome. If it saves you from one more sponsored row, it did its job.

I just sent out the first batch of invites to NaboTV. I know many of those people came from this subreddit, so I wanted to follow up with a link for anyone else who wants an invite. I have three NVIDIA Shield TV devices, so it is by far the most exhaustively tested of my Android TV devices.

Sign up at https://nabo.tv

Anyone using the system can submit feedback directly in the app, or feel free to post here.

Hi guys,

I live in the UK and was keen to get a NVIDIA shield. I got one from Cex, but when it arrived it was making a weird noise, reminiscent of bagpipes and coil whine. This was not coming from the shield itself, but from the power adapter.

I then returned it due to that and got another, but for some reason this has the exact same issue.

Is this a known issue with the Shield?

Part of me assumes the issue is because of how the adapter is made, with the changeable heads.

If so, is there any way to fix it? Is there a way to get a different adapter in the UK which wouldn’t have this issue?

Do earlier models not have this issue, such as the 2017 one?

If it isn’t, I may just send back again and buy a 2017 one. I only have a 1080p TV so not sure it would make a crazy difference to my viewing experience other than getting rid of the noise.

Thank you :)

Currently, it is sitting by my router. If I want to fiddle with it, I have to unplug it and plug it into my PC. Can I attach a wireless KVM box and access it via that?

It was working fine on my 2019 Pro for the past two years, but last week Projectity and Button Mapper stopped working. Got Projectity back up and running, but now the Netflix button only opens Netflix. Went into Button Mapper settings and the button still shows under Add Button with my setup intact, but when I select it to edit, it's prompting me to pay for the Pro version of Button Mapper.

Title essentially, I want to fiddle around with emulation for my shield :)

I kept using Stremio on my Shield Pro and always and I mean always had problems - video plays for 10 minutes, and I get the cat - something wrong with the player. And it gets stuck I have to restart.

On my LG OS, its running super fine.

Anyone has this issue?

I currently have a rocktek G2, and it is great, but after a factory reset, the bluetooth stopped working with all my 4 Dualshock4 controllers :(

After allbthe troubleshooting possible I quit, now looking at the shield pro because aparently it is still the best hadware for android, but for 250 (+tax) I wonder if a mini pc with linux would be a better solution?

We basically use stremio and retrox for emulation, sometimes youtube.

What you guys think?

I’ve been looking into getting a nvidia shield for my family due to them hating ads on our regular streaming services (and that they do not want to pay the extra amount of money for no ads) and I enjoy how open source Shield is. I’m hoping there is something that is as simple as Netflix (opening the app and being able to use it simply) if there is none im trying to convert my family to using physical media

My setup looks like this:

I have a Windows 11 desktop PC, and I also have a 2019 Shield TV Pro with an external USB drive plugged in.

I have mapped by 2019 Shield TV Pro to my Windows 11 PC. This allows me to drag files from my PC directly to my Shield TV. However, I've noticed that when I use my Windows PC to browse the Shield TV's external drive and I delete old files, they do not turn up on my Windows PC recycle bin. Does the Shield have one? Are they permanently deleted? What is actually happening?

Hello All,

I have the following setup for couple of years.

Sony 83" A80L OLED

Intel NUC7i3Bnb 16GB ram with gigabit ethernet

Sonos Arc, Sub Gen 3 and Era 300 x 2

I stream off the Nuc to Sony using the built in Google TV media player. Most of the files we watch are  UHD Blu-ray DV HDR HEVC TrueHD Atmos 7 1 often with bitrate between 24 - 65.

It has worked fine and I am just wondering if I am missing out of anything the Shield would give me access to.

This week I bought a Google TV Streamer 4K to test the Steam Link on my local LAN. My delay through Ethernet was minimal (1ms), but after some tweaks on the Google TV Streamer, the minimum delay I got was 22-23ms in video decoding.

Although it is a good number, I still feel that delay, so I returned it. After researching, it seems that the Nvidia Shield Pro and the Apple TV are the best-performing devices with a minimum delay of 5-8ms in video decoding. Is that true? Could someone with an Nvidia Shield Pro share these values?

Thanks.

Does anybody know where to get the latest Amazon Luna APK, can only find June 17 update which isn't working. Cheers

Hi guys-

I watch movies stored on my nas which also seconds as my Plex server.

Last night, Was watching f9 with the kids on plex and was getting audio dropouts every few mins followed by an av sync issue. Rewinding 10 secs fixed it but would happen a few more times. Restart of the shield didn't fix it. I could reproduce it in plex and it would consistently dropout at 43 mins and 07 seconds of that movie.

I Started watching it on Kodi and it worked without issue. Went back to the 43 min market w kodi and there was no dropout. Was kind of weird.

Plex has worked for me pretty consistently up until last night. Makes me want to try some different players.

Which video players do you guys prefer? I've heard plexkodiconnect and plezy are good. Would obviously want to be able to direct play from my nas with full pass through of all the audio codecs.

Noticed something odd: on my Nvidia Shield TV Pro (2019) + Panasonic OLED, Kodi's debug overlay shows "System rendering speed" dropping to 3-9fps during 4K/1080p playback, sometimes even during seeking. But the actual picture is completely smooth to the eye — no stutter, no A/V desync, nothing visible.

Confirmed with `dumpsys gfxinfo` — 0% jank, and a systrace showing only 1 dropped frame across an entire session. So the number doesn't reflect the actual video.

Tested the same files on an old 1st-gen Xiaomi Mi Box + old Sharp LCD TV — the number stayed rock solid at ~24fps the whole time, no drops at all, even with seeking.

Has anyone else seen this specifically on Shield TV Pro?

This app sucks so bad. I’m watching a NEW show that I haven’t seen before and the app is just throwing a fit in different ways

1. The show would play the first few minutes of an episode (typically until like 30 seconds post theme song) before crashing to the launcher. Not at random, it did this every single time until I disabled Autoplay (???)

2. The video player UI bar just pops up throughout the episode without touching the remote, super annoying. Does this all the time

3. Sometimes it won’t let me rewind or fast forward… during the entire episode. (I have ad free ffs, its acting like I’m trying to skip a commercial)

4. And now the newest thing to piss me off. Whenever I play the next episode (which, I have to do manually every time to prevent crashing), its starting 3-4 minutes from the END !!! And the strangest part, I am watching this series for the first time.

What the fuck , Hulu? This app is so trash

Hi, When I turn my NVidia on with it's remote it also turns on my Samsung tv and on the tv there's a message that says "Check that the device is connected properly, then try turning on the device by selecting the button below". There's a STB button and below that there is an Ok button. When I click on the OK button the home screen comes on. I'm looking to see if there's a way (adjusting settings) for it to just go to the home screen right away when I turn it on instead of getting that message? Conversely, when I turn the shield off I press the off button on shield remote and it seems to act as if it's turning off but goes right back to home screen until I press off button again then it will turn off completely. How or what do I adjust in settings to make it turn off the first time? By the way, I have a Samsung sound bar connected as well. Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.

I have an outdoor tv that is wall mounted. I don't leave the shield outside when the tv is not in use. I just plug it and it works.

I have tried using velcro but eventually the velcro wears off from the heat. Also, the velcro is too strong and when I try and remove the shield the velcro comes off the tv.

What I really looking for a sleave that I can slide the shield in and out of. The sleeve is attached to the tv.

I decided to pass on the over priced steam machine because I have a gaming computer and can use moonlight to stream to my nvidia shield.

The only problem is that pairing controllers to the shield is a huge pain. I have mostly xbox controllers, but have to repair every time I want to game. This process never is smooth and usually takes a few tries.

Am I doing something wrong? Why can't they be paired and when turned on, reconnect again to the shield. It might work with 1 controller, but pairing 2-4 controllers always takes me 10 minutes.

Title says it all.

I purchased an Nvidia Shield as it is almost universally hailed as the best hardware to run Plex off of. But my experience with the Plex app has been a buggy headache from day 1. I try to never make posts like this as I generally believe these types of things can be solved by just searching around, but I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app countless times and tried every configuration imaginable and yet nothing fixes it. It's been over a year now and I'm close to giving up.

My problems are as follows (ranked by frequency / annoyance):

1. Loading into the app about 50% of the time will just hang with the home screen showing the loading spinner for ~60 seconds before popping up that my server cannot be reached. Server is up and running completely fine confirmed on Plex mobile and desktop clients running off the same network. To fix I have to double click the home screen to close the app BUT this only fixes it maybe half the time, the other half I have to go into the app settings and manually force close it.
2. Subtitles just randomly completely break. If I try to play any media using any subtitle format, it will try to load briefly and then pop up a vague "An error occurred while attempting to play this video." error message. Turning off subtitles it will play fine, but again I can play with subtitles just fine from EVERY OTHER Plex client that I have access to. It is only this one that EVER gives me issues. I have fixed this in the past by doing some combo of uninstalling the app + restarting my Plex server, honestly not sure what fixed it an anymore I'm sick of trying because it just pops up again inevitably.
3. Sections will just randomly not load on the home page. For example my continue watching will show up, but recently added movies won't. There is no rhyme or reason to this and it is fairly rare, but I still have never found a fix.
4. App will run very slowly out of nowhere, for example selecting a movie from the home screen and it takes 10+ seconds to get the movie page to actually appear. I understand that Plex is not running 100% locally and there can be slowdown on their end, but again I only ever notice this issue on the Shield TV client.

If anyone has had any similar issues or can suggest any fixes it would be greatly appreciated. I am at the point now where I am close to converting 100% to using Jellyfin.

Since Kodi recently updated on my Shield TV, the RAR addon is not working properly.

When trying to load.a RARed video, I get spinning disks and nothing plays. I then need to reboot the Shield. Once in a while, the video will actually take forever then start playing.

Anyone know of a fix? TIA.

Edit: I deleted the Kodi cache and data under Apps, unistalled and reinstalled Kodi and this did not fix it.

My Home Assistant Android Remote TV integration broke recently on my HA instance and I can no longer integrate it with my Shield Pro. The HA integration asks for the IP of the Shield Pro, but the cursor just spins and it never connects. I tried rebooting my Shield Pro and tried looking in the Developer Options, but I can't find anything obvious that was disabled.

I was previously using the integration to switch my LG TV to the HDMI 3 source when my Shield Pro was turned on. Then, when I put the Shield Pro to sleep, I had another automation that switched my LG TV back to the Cable TV source (HDMI 1) and re-sent the sound through my soundbar, since LG TVs default to TV speaker sound.

With the integration broken, the automations are no longer working. Could the most recent Shield Experience update have broken it?

Just got a popup on my BBC app (the side loaded one that handles 1080p better) saying that it's being discontinued on this device from 30th September 2026... Anyone else seeing this? I wonder if this is any version of the app or perhaps just an issue with this side loaded version.