Everyone keeps saying it’s the best media player, so I’m interested in getting one, but I haven’t had a google account for many years now and don’t want to create a new one just for this.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to run one without a google account?
Edit: I would only want to use it for Plex and maybe youtube
SmartTubeNext (STN) is the Android TV equivalent of Revanced.
I did end up making a Google account just to get mine set up and for syncing subscriptions between STN and Revanced on my phone. I don’t use it for anything else.
As others have said, replacing the launcher with something like Sideload Channel Launcher 4 is a good option.
Other useful apps are Button Mapper (for killing the netflix remote button and for mapping the home button to your new launcher) and Send Files To TV to easily sideload apps without a ton of setup.
I suppose I could use someone else’s account for initial set up. I’ve had a look and it seems nextdns allows different profiles per device, so I’ll just block as many google domains as I can that way
Good thinking. I retired my Shield Pro 2015 about a year ago, precisely because I was ditching Google entirely. I have yo say, even after 8 years, few to no other streaming devices came even close to the performance of that beast.
Not really. STN is not a hacked-up YT app like Revanced, it’s an entirely independent FOSS re-creation like NewPipe. A major difference to NewPipe is that it is focused on android TV and uses the (private) YT API just like the official YT app.
That’s fair. I was commenting from more of a user experience perspective