3.0: Changing the User Interface - dikodahan/dikodahan.github.io GitHub Wiki
The native user interface for both Android and Amazon based TV devices is overall very nice, but in both cases they have some major flaws.
- The native UI has a lot of "bloatware".
- Bloatware is referred to the many additional apps that come built into these devices for features and capabilities that are almost never used.
- This issue is even worse on Amazon based devices than on Android based ones.
- The native UI has embedded "push content" functionality that always tried to push video and audio to make the preview more interactive.
- This is a nice feature in essence, but is a huge bandwidth consuming feature.
- The native UI does not let you manage the most used apps in a manor that makes then easily accessible.
- The Native UI of the Android based devices automatically hides certain apps, especially the non-official ones. This makes it inconvenient to access these apps.
There are many more issues with the Native UI for these devices that makes it even more so a reason to explore a simple alternative that gives you the full functionality and flexibility.
Here is a quick video to briefly show you the alternative UI offered in this guide. This video is of an older version. Some features are more advanced and will be covered in this guide. It is still a good overview of the difference vs the the default device stock launcher.
Wolf Launcher is currently the most advanced alternative home launcher for TV based devices.
- Clean interface
- Create and edit your own apps categories
- Hide unneeded apps
- Decide how you want each app to show up (with/out its icon, change label, color...)
- Eliminates all native "push content" features
- Launch the Unlinked app and go into the DIKO+ app store.
- Head over to the Home Launcher section, download and install all the files according to your specific platform. An of exceptions for this step is the Weather XL Pro app. Make sure you only install the files based on the version matching your device type!
- NOTE! Make sure to to click DONE and not OPEN at the end of each file installation.
- Once all apps are installed, we are ready to move on the the next phase of configuring the environment.