**Customizing Your Google TV Experience**

If you have kids or roommates living with you at home, you'll want to take advantage of some customizations that can make your Google TV experience more comfortable and secure for everyone. To get started, head to Settings > Accounts > Sign in now. This will allow anyone with their own Google account to create a unique profile, complete with their own settings and preferences.

**Locking Down Content**

One of the biggest concerns when it comes to kids or roommates using your TV is the potential for them to access mature content that you don't want them to see. To address this, you can create a separate "kids" profile on your Google TV. This will already put some restrictions in place, but there are more parental controls available to help you further limit what your kids can watch. Head to Settings > System > Parental Controls to establish a PIN for security, lock down certain channels, set limits on screen access, and more.

**Disabling Tracking and Advertising**

If you're concerned about being tracked or seeing ads while using your Google TV, there are some options available to help minimize these issues. Under Settings > Privacy, you can turn off location sharing by default, which will use your Wi-Fi signal to determine where you are instead of tracking your physical location. You can also disable the use of Diagnostics sharing, which may have been accidentally set up during initial setup. Additionally, you can click on ads and delete the advertising ID periodically to prevent personalized ads from appearing.

**Customizing Your TV's Name**

One final customization that's worth noting is changing the name of your Google TV or Chromecast with Google TV device. To do this, head to Settings > System > About and click on "Device name". From here, you can enter a new name for your device, which will appear when you're casting content from your mobile device or PC.

**Screen Mirroring and Casting**

Finally, if you want to be able to control what's being played on your TV while watching from your mobile device or PC, you'll want to enable screen mirroring. To do this, simply click on the three dots up in the corner of your Chrome browser and select "Cast" - your TV's name should appear as an option. From there, you can mirror whatever is being played on your device onto your TV.

**Additional Tips and Tricks**

There may be other options available that we didn't cover here, depending on the brand of TV you have with Google TV built-in. Be sure to explore these additional features to get the most out of your device. If you do have a tip or trick that we missed, please let us know in the comments below - we'd love to add it to the list!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign get the most out of your Google TV or Chromecast with Google TV you've come to the right place welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Dennison and one of my resolutions this year is to focus on not making how-to videos that watch like an online cooking recipe you know what I mean don't you slap this video with a like if you do so let's not waste any time and get right to the good stuff just a quick heads up that will cover Google TV platform tips and tricks in this video so these work for everyone who has a Google TV I'll cover some Chromecast with Google TV specific tips and tricks that are a little more focused on that piece of Hardware in another video so the first thing I want to mention is that if you purchased a TV with Google TV built in be it a Sony Hisense TCL or some other brand then you have the option of not using Google TV at all one of the best things about Google TV is that you can disable the smart TV platform entirely if you want this option presents itself when you first set up your TV It'll ask you would you like this to be a Google TV or be in basic mode and if you want to just use your game console some other streaming box or stick on another platform former just cable satellite Blu-ray player just access your connected devices then you can choose the basic mode now if you've already set up your TV and when you did you opted into Google TV but you now want to turn it off well I'm set to report that I haven't been able to find a way to do that other than just full on resetting your TV to the factory default that means you have to start over completely which involves downloading an update adjusting all your picture settings again setting up connected devices Etc kind of a hassle but hey it might be worth it for you now going forward we're going to assume that you are using Google TV and want to get the most out of it or at least have it better cater to your interests with that in mind let's talk about customizing your home screen and the first thing I want you to know is that by default you'll get this version of Google TV that has several options up top and a home page that's loaded with content recommendations which I'll help you customize and control shortly if that's how you'd like to go but if you just want super straightforward access to your apps and nothing else Google TV does have an app-only mode so here's how to turn that on get into the settings menu click accounts and sign in you can also click your profile picture in the top right to do this then scroll down and second to the bottom is apps only mode now just toggle that on once you've got this turned on this is how your interface will work pretty straightforward right now I'll show you how to move apps around and get them in the order that you'd like in a little bit since it's the same whether you're in app only mode or the standard mode also if you want to go back to the standard mode as I need to do now you just have to unclick the app only option like this so now let's make sure Google TV knows what services you subscribe to this way it'll recommend content from those services and it'll make adding things to a watch list easier down the road to do this go into your account profile again and this time click on your services it should be second from the top and here we can turn on or off any Services you want Google to reference when suggesting content to you now if you don't see a service that you subscribe to here try adding the app from the Google Play store and see if it pops up here if it doesn't that means that Google TV can't make recommendations from that service subscription but fortunately the most popular options are supported now since we've been in this profile settings area let's just explore some of the other settings you might want to consider in this same spot settings lock does what it suggests it locks your settings up basically securing the TV and you'll need your Google password to both turn this on and later to turn it off if you need moving a little further down auto play trailers is here so that you can turn off that auto play thing that Google TV does when you're checking out content so if you hate autoplay you just turn it off here payment and purchases is worth exploring especially if you have kids as this allows you to control whether you can buy anything through Google TV or not or you can put this ability behind a pin if you want to and then finally if you're a little skittish about digital assistance listening you can disable Google Assistant here but you can also privatize personal results too which is kind of a buried feature I don't think enough people know about if you don't want guests to know what kind of stuff you're into might want to adjust these settings just say it Okay so let's continue customizing that home screen one of the best ways to do that is to order your apps to your preference to do this you can go to the my apps tab up top or you can do this from the for you section either way highlight the app you want to move then press and hold the select button and then this menu will pop up at which point you want to select move from there and then use the up down left and right arrows to place the app where you'd like it to be next let's talk about changing your Google TVs screensaver you have several options here you can either have Google pull images from the cloud and you can customize which type of images it pulls or you can have it use photos from your Google photos drive if you choose to let Google use third-party images you have a few different options so first you'd click settings then system then ambient mode and from here you can select art gallery and then further specify what kind of photo galleries you'd like Google to pull from now personally I'm a big fan of using my own photos for screen savers but if you're like me you have a ton of photos in Google photos and not all of them are going to make great screensavers so I created an album called Google TV photos which is a curated selection of photos I think will look great on the screen you can get even more specific if you like too and create one photos folder for all your beach photos or one that's all nature shots or maybe you use one that's all family photos use your imagination you can really brighten your room up this way anyway to use your own photos from Google photos you'll actually need to enable that feature from your phone or tablet so grab it then pull up the Google home app or download it and sign in if you don't already have it but you really should if you have Google TV anyway and once you get the Google home app Open click on your TV or whatever you've named your TV press the settings wheel then select ambient mode and then you can direct the TV to the correct photo folder or folders from there now aside from those two options you'll also notice there's an experimental option here right now this is just an option for low bandwidth photos which can reduce the amount of data your TV uses pulling photos down from the internet but we may see Google add some options in the future here point being if you're on a metered connection or you don't get a ton of data with your plan you might want to turn this on or just ditch the whole screensaver thing entirely now that's not all we can actually keep customizing the screen saver if we just keep scrolling down we can choose whether we want the temperature in our area listed or not and if so Fahrenheit or Celsius or both we can choose whether to have the time listed and customize the clock we can show or hide personal photo data you can include or exclude photos in portrait orientation change the slideshow speed so it lingers on a photo for longer or shorter I'm going to go with three minutes here instead of one anyway if you want a clean look I would suggest disabling the time and the temperature and the photos information that way you just get a pretty image on your screen but you do whatever you prefer next thing I want to point to is watch list now if you've ever found yourself wondering what was that show my friend said I absolutely had to watch but you can't remember then this feature is for you just add shows you want to watch to your watch list now I know the name of the show I want to add to my watch list but I don't feel like clicking a bunch of buttons to get there so I'll just use Google assistant and say Foundation there it is it's on Apple TV and there's the watch list option just click it now once you've watched a show and don't need it popping up on your radar anymore it's a good idea to click this watched it button that way it doesn't keep popping up in your recommendations also if you really liked that show and you want to see more recommendations like that one you can encourage Google to show you more just like that one by giving it an up or down vote now let's talk about some customizations that you might want to implement if you have kids or even roommates in the home the first thing you'll want to check out is under settings then accounts and sign in now anyone with their own Google account can have their own profile and all the customizations I've shown you so far will be unique to each account holder including the order of apps whether the interface is in app only mode or not and especially the recommended content and watch list sections so anyone who has a Google account can have access to their own profile but that doesn't mean they can hijack your TV remember I already showed you how to lock up settings behind a pin earlier in this video when it comes to kids though you don't necessarily want them having a Google account right but you also don't want them messing up your watch list recommended content or especially your YouTube suggested content anyone with a kid who's come over and hijacked their TV knows what I'm talking about right now so create a kids profile and encourage them to use it unless you end up with cocoa melon all over your feed hit this video with a like if you know what I'm talking about anyway one of the advantages to having a kids profile is that it already puts some restrictions on the content they can watch but there are more parental controls I encourage you to check out to get to those parental controls click settings then system then scroll down to parental controls where you can establish a pin for security lock down certain channels set limits to screen access and more next up I want to address some privacy related stuff if you don't want anything to be personalized you want a minimum of tracking done well then Smart TV might not be for you maybe go back to the basic mode for your TV but if you do want to use the built-in smarts for you know Netflix and stuff but without all the smart recommendations the voice assistant and stuff you can disable a bunch of that stuff under the Privacy tab so if we go to settings then privacy we can turn off our location by default it'll use your Wi-Fi to know where you are and this is great if you want to get the weather for your area but not great if you don't like being tracked you can also turn off usage of Diagnostics sharing here as well you may have accidentally said yes during initial setup but you can turn it off here if you change your mind now as for ads personally if I'm going to get ads I just as soon have them be personalized but if that creeps you out you can click on ads and delete the advertising ID periodically this just means ads will be super random and further below we'll see some account settings that we'd see elsewhere but because they're privacy related they're called out here again like you can turn off Google assistant or at least turn off personal results from Google Assistant you can even get super granular and uninstall unknown apps though I'd be careful here because some of these could be related to apps that you actually use and could change how those apps behave bottom line is if you have deep privacy concerns visit this privacy area and take the time you need to make the settings that you want oh also let's not forget that your Google TV is Chromecast enabled right that means that you can easily share or cast content from your mobile device or PC which also includes by the way your Chrome browser whether it's on PC or Mac you can even control the content that you're watching with your mobile device or PC just look for this icon whenever you watch video whether it's from Netflix or YouTube or Hulu and if you're on the same network as your TV you should see your TV's name pop up click that and what you're watching on say your phone will appear on your TV now if you're sharing from a Chrome browser on PC or Mac click on the three dots up here on the right then click cast then you're essentially screen mirroring speaking of which you may want to change what you've named your TV or your Chromecast with Google TV to do this click settings then system then about and look for device name click that then click change and put in whatever you want your TV to be called now depending on the brand of TV you have with Google TV built in there are probably a bunch of other options available that I didn't talk about and I encourage you to explore those too but I hope this list of Google TV tips and tricks has been helpful toward you getting the most and the best out of your Google TV experience thanks as always for watching everyone did I miss a super obvious tip or trick or maybe a hidden one that you don't think enough people know about let us know down in the comments and we'll add it to the list while you're at it please consider liking and subscribing I'll see you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like\n"