I made my Android TV feel like Roku without the ads, and it's the upgrade my living room needed

Published Jul 17, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT João has been covering the tech world for over 7 years, with a heavy focus on laptops and the Windows ecosystem. I also love all things tech and videogames, especially Nintendo, which he's always happy to talk about. Prior to joining XDA in 2021, he worked at Neowin: https://www.neowin.net/news/poster/jo%C3%A3o-carrasqueira/ I've had a Chromecast with Google TV (4K) for a few years that powers the TV in my living room. It certainly is better than the old webOS UI built into my aging LG TV, but it's a nearly six-year-old device, and the Google TV UI just feels cluttered and slow. Thankfully, you can replace it. Kyu Launcher is an Android TV app that can replace the default Google TV experience with one that feels much more like Roku's TV OS. Except here, there are no ads: it's just my content, and it runs way faster than the default launcher. The Roku experience, but better It's much better than Google TV Google TV may have a lot of thought put into it, but it's not a pleasant UI to navigate on this hardware. The Chromecast with Google TV has become quite slow on this interface, which takes a while to load and still stutters during navigation or when exiting apps. Plus, the Google TV UI is very focused on horizontal navigation, which can make it take longer to get to what I'm looking for. Kyu Launcher mimics the UI of Roku's own TV operating system, and it's great. I haven't used a Roku TV extensively before, but this does mimic the look very well. The main benefit here is that your content is very easy to access. You always see your categories off to the left, and your apps are shown in a three-column grid, so you can get to a specific one more quickly without scrolling endlessly. Unlike a proper Roku TV, there are no ads or suggested content I don't want here. The default groups include my apps and a list of content I watched before so I can pick up where I left off, and that's it. It's straightforward and, importantly, it's fast. My TV breezes through the categories and everything works as if the Chromecast was new. It changes how I feel about this device. Android TV doesn't let you change the default launcher by default, but by leveraging accessibility options, Kyu Launcher makes this easier. Simply enable the app's accessibility service, and it will intercept the Home button presses so you open Kyu instead of Google TV. There's an option to "enhance" Home detection, which I also enabled, and with these two options turned on, Kyu Launcher always responded perfectly to my Home button presses. It's also customizable Especially if you pay up By default, Kyu Launcher offers the "pure" Roku vibe with its purple theme, but there's actually quite a bit you can change to make it feel more unique. The free version of the app already includes many preset themes, some with photo backgrounds that really make your screen look nice. For readability, I like some of the darker themes, but there are plenty of options. You can also change the primary and secondary theme colors, which determine the background of items and the color of UI text. You don't have full control over things like transparency, so there are some limitations, but you can start off with a theme that has a transparency level you like, and change the color from there. If you want more options, you'll need to pay for the full version of the app, which lets you set a custom theme, including your own photo background. Plus, you can change app icons as well if you go this route. I didn't think it was necessary, but it's also a way to support a great app. Is it better than the alternatives? I'm tempted to say yes Kyu Launcher may be better than Google TV, but other developers have also acknowledged that Google TV is bad and alternatives are needed. I've tried Arc launcher and Projectivy Launcher myself, and I love both, especially Projectivy. Can Kyu be better? I'm tempted to say yes. Projectivy is great, and it feels closer to Google TV, for better or worse; it strips out all the ads and is much faster to use and navigate, but it doesn't feel quite as good as Kyu, in my opinion. Kyu seems even faster and smoother, and while I have experienced minor slowdowns on both (you can't do miracles on this hardware), Kyu seems less prone to the issue. It runs smoothly almost all the time; even when opening apps and returning to the home screen, it doesn't seem to slow down. Plus, I quite like the more grid-based layout and all the theme options it offers. I just think the themes look great, even more so than Projectivy's. Maybe in the long term I'll change my mind, but for now, Kyu Launcher is the default on my Chromecast. An easy recommendation Since Kyu Launcher is available on the Play Store and easy to install, I'd say there's no reason not to give it a shot. Based on my time with it, it's a huge upgrade to the experience, and if you have a slower device like I do, the speed boost makes a big difference. I doubt you'll regret installing it. Kyu Launcher