You can get the best part of the new Apple TV for your Google TV, and for free

Released Oct 21, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT

Pankil is a Civil Engineer turned independent author from Ahmedabad, India. As a veteran Windows and Android user, he has comprehensive understanding of both running systems and focuses on producing how-tos and repairing guides.

Pankil has actually been blogging about Windows, Android, and iOS given that 2021. He has actually edited 2000 short articles throughout trustworthy publications like MakeUseOf, Android AuthorityGuidingTechand TechWiser

Beyond his composing undertakings, Pankil is a passionate football fan and enjoys to prepare his worldwide journeys with his better half in his leisure time.

Apple television does a great deal of things much better than Google television, however if there’s something I’ve constantly been a little envious of, it’s the screensavers. Rather of fixed images, Apple television plays 4K video as a screensaver, and they simply look method cooler. I wasn’t about to purchase a completely brand-new box simply for that. I utilized a totally free app called Aerial Views to bring those very same screensavers to my TCL Google Television.

Google television’s screensaver video game is weak

Your television should have much better

Google television has screensavers, however they’re absolutely nothing unique. Sure, there’s a good library covering whatever from mountains and cities to art, however they all look quite uninteresting after a while. You can link Google Photos to see your own pictures, however that’s not something everybody likes to do. I definitely do not.

Apple television screensavers are a various story since they’re not fixed images. Apple television reveals aerial drone 4K videos, and they’re truly distinctive. You ‘d see top-down shots of cities, panoramas of national forests, and remote areas like the Grand Canyon. It truthfully does not matter what’s in fact on the screen. Each and every single among those clips seems like it deserves seeing.

Screensavers aren’t something everybody appreciates, obviously. Still, the ones you get on the Apple television in fact make you wish to keep your television on

even while you’re not viewing anything. Bring Apple TV-like screensavers to your Google television

Offer your Google television a glow-up

Bird’s-eye views is a totally free, open-source app that brings Apple television’s video screensavers to any Google television. It consists of 4K clips from Apple, Amazon, Jetson Creative and Robin Fourcade. You can choose your favored sources and even define what kind of material they reveal– nature, beach, city, sea, deep space, or countryside. These stream online, so they consume to 4GB of information every hour.

You can even pack videos from an Immich server, Nextcloud Memories server, NAS, or your PC. If you desire something that works offline, the app can likewise pack screensavers from regional storage or a USB drive. You can get the video loads for that from Aerial Views’ GitHub page

Video screensavers are just half the story. The genuine offer is all the bonus the app provides. Head to its settings menu and you’ll see choices to include overlays. You get 8 overlay slots, 2 per corner, and you can fill them with weather condition, a clock, the date, a countdown, or a customized message.

Heck, you can even manage the size and spacing of each of these overlays. If it’s a weather condition overlay, you can manage the system. For a clock overlay, you can select the time format. And if you’ve included a music overlay, you can define whether it reveals the artist name or simply the tune. It even lets you alternate the overlay positions if you’ve got an OLED television and are fretted about burn-in.

My preferred aspect of Aerial Views is that it lets you manage the video playback. You can utilize the D-pad on your remote to avoid to the next or previous video, change the playback speed, alter the brightness, stop briefly a video, or conceal overlays. It even lets you play a particular video that you like on loop without entering into settings.

You’ll likewise discover choices to establish a sleep timer, change the scaling, alter the shift in between videos, and a lot more. There’s undoubtedly no requirement to tinker each and every single alternative here, however it’s there if you desire. You can likewise sneak peek the screensaver from the app itself.

Setting it up takes some effort

The huge catch

Credit: Pankil Shah/ MakeUseOf

Bird’s-eye views is totally free and adjustable, however getting it dealing with your television takes a little bit of effort. This is in fact a Google television issue. Beginning with Android 12, Google TVs no longer let you choose a third-party screensaver app from the routine settings menu, so merely setting up the Aerial Views app will not do.

You’ll require to open the Developer Options menu and allow USB debugging. Go to the network settings menu and discover the IP address of your Television. From here, you require to utilize a phone or a computer system to run a couple of ADB commands. I personally utilized my Windows PC for this part given that I currently had SKD Platform Tools established there. You require to run these commands to set Aerial Views as the default screensaver alternative.

adb connect ip_address

adb shell

settings put protected screensaver_components com.neilturner.aerialviews/. ui.screensaver.DreamActivity

settings put system screen_off_timeout 600000

All of this does take some work, obviously. If you desire those video screensavers, Aerial Views is worth the effort. Their GitHub page has all the directions set out in information, that makes the setup smooth.