I made my Google TV faster with these 7 tweaks, and you can too

I own a TCL smart TV. It’s a 2022 entry-level model with 1.5 GB RAM running Google TV. And, like most budget TVs, it started showing its age within a few years. The most probable reasons? Storage depletion and excessive RAM usage.

So, I finally decided to fix it. I tried numerous suggestions shared by users and experts online. Here’s what actually helped and made my Google TV faster again.

Clear cached data

Many apps and system services on your smart TV cache data, i.e., save temporary files to internal storage. For example, a streaming app like Netflix automatically downloads a chunk of data, such as images, icons, layouts, and more, and saves them temporarily. That way, it doesn’t have to load them every time you open it, so you can browse and watch content right away.

Although this saves the app from loading everything every time you open it, cached data can build up over time and take up significant storage space. Not to mention, the cache can sometimes get corrupted and cause the app to lag or crash. To fix this, you should clear cached data on your Google TV from time to time. Go to Settings > System > Storage. Select Internal shared storage and click Cached data. Hit OK when prompted to confirm clearing cached data.

You can also clear cached data for apps individually. For this, instead of selecting Cached data under Internal shared storage, choose Apps, then select the app whose cached data you want to clear and click Clear Data. Confirm the action by clicking OK.

Free up storage space

Most smart TVs have anywhere between 8GB and 16GB of internal storage. A significant portion of this storage is occupied by the operating system itself, whereas your installed apps take up another huge chunk. Any photos and videos you’ve saved on the TV further contribute to the increased usage.

Now, this is fine as long as your TV’s storage doesn’t run too low (under 1GB). If it does, the TV — especially budget and mid-tier models that generally use storage chips with low read/write speeds — may struggle to write temporary cache files to internal storage. As a result, you may experience slow app loading speeds and hiccups during navigation.

You can avoid these issues by ensuring your TV never runs too low on storage space. The most effective way to free up storage is to uninstall apps you no longer need. Head to Settings > Apps > See All Apps. Go through the list and select the app you want to delete. Next, tap Uninstall and hit OK to confirm. Similarly, use a file manager app to check for downloaded files on your TV and delete them if you no longer need them.

Reduce or disable animations

Just like your Android phone, your Google TV also plays animations when you open and close apps, navigate menus, or click buttons. How fast or slow the animation plays out directly influences how we perceive speed and responsiveness. The slower it is, the longer you need to wait for the animation to finish before you can interact with items on the screen. These animations also strain system resources, which can be problematic on older hardware and may result in stuttering and dropped frames as you navigate the TV’s interface.

To avoid all these problems, you can reduce or disable animations on your Google TV. First, turn on developer options. Go to Settings > System > About. Click Android TV OS Build seven times until it says “You are now a developer.” Now, go back to the previous menu and select Developer options. Scroll down to the Drawing section, then select Window animation scale and set it to Animation scale .5x or Animation off, depending on your preference. Do the same for the Transition animation scale and Animator duration scale options too.

Limit background processes

Your Google TV often runs multiple apps and executes various system processes in the background. Although we don’t have an official number for how many apps are active at once by default, most TVs use the Standard option, which decides this dynamically based on available RAM. Leaving it set to Standard is wise if your TV has good specs, but if yours is older, like mine, with 1 or 1.5 GB of RAM, it makes more sense to limit background processes.

Changing the background process limit is easy. First, turn on developer options. You can do this using the steps mentioned above. Next, go to Developer options, scroll down to the Apps section, select Background process limit, and select a limit from the available options. I’ve set it to “At most 2 processes” on my TV, since I don’t stream a lot of content across different apps. You can experiment with different options to see what works best for you.

Disable auto-playing videos

If you’ve paid attention to your Google TV’s home screen, you may have noticed some auto-playing videos, especially on the top banner. These are ads or previews for featured content, and they not only clutter the home screen, but they also increase system resource usage, which ultimately makes the interface less responsive and navigation feel slow.

Turning off these videos, therefore, is an effective way to free up resources and improve navigation speed. To do this, go to Settings > Accounts & Sign In. Make sure you’re connected to the internet so that the page can load account settings. Choose your account, then flip the Autoplay video toggle under the Recommendations section off.

Limit content recommendations

Alongside auto-playing videos, the home screen also displays show and movie recommendations across various apps to help you discover new content. Some of these are general recommendations, while others are based on your activity. Although useful, the feature continuously fetches and updates content. As a result, it keeps some system resources reserved throughout, leaving little free to handle navigation.

Disabling these recommendations frees up reserved system resources, which the TV can then use to make navigation feel faster and smoother. In the Settings app, select Accounts & Sign In and choose your account. Under Recommendations, select Content preferences > Apps & services. Finally, toggle off the toggles next to the apps and services you no longer want recommendations from on your home screen.

Enable apps-only mode

Turning off content recommendations can reduce the number of movie and show suggestions on your home screen, but it doesn’t stop all curation. Your Google TV may still display rows of trending and promotional content on the home screen. And similar to Google’s recommendations, these can also eat up valuable system resources and slow performance.

Thankfully, you can fix this too by turning on apps-only mode. As the name implies, apps-only mode removes all recommendations from the home screen and replaces them with a grid of all your installed apps. Do note that this also disables search and voice, so you’ll have to launch apps manually. Go to Settings > Accounts & Sign In and select your Google account. Scroll down and flip the Apps only mode toggle under Device Settings on. Hit Turn on to confirm.

The above tips have significantly improved my Google TV’s performance. If yours struggles with performance too, you should definitely try them. Furthermore, if you want a completely uncluttered experience on your Google TV, consider switching to a third-party launcher like Projectivy Launcher. It’s free to use and replaces your TV’s stock interface with one that’s clean, fast, and more organized, breathing new life into it.