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Google has started rolling out the personalized screensaver to Google TV. The revamped screensaver shows proactive personalized content on the screen when your TV is idle. The company had originally announced this feature in October last year.
Google TV offers a screensaver functionality that lets you use your TV as a digital photo frame when you aren’t actively watching any content. You can have it play a slideshow of images from the Google Photos library or other galleries. The latest change now makes this functionality even more useful. Your TV will now show more personalized information and recommendations when idle. These include game scores, weather, news, music, videos, and even quotes. The results are tailored according to your interests and usage pattern.
According to the company, more proactive information will be added to the Google TV screensaver in the future as it rolls out the changes widely. The rollout began Friday for Chromecast with Google TV last Friday. The feature should reach non-Google hardware too in the coming days and weeks. Once available for your Google TV-powered device, the personalized screensaver is enabled by default.
Should you don’t find it much useful, Google does let you turn it off. And you can do so with relative ease. Simply head over to Settings and navigate to Accounts & Sign in > Google Account and disable the Proactive Personalized Results toggle (via).
The long-awaited proactive personalized screensaver for Google TV is here
When Google first announced the revamped screensaver for Google TV last year, it said the changes will roll out alongside Profiles “in the coming months”. But with Profiles delayed indefinitely after a false start in late 2021, the proactive personalized screensaver took more time to come than expected. Both features went live for some users last month, although separately. It was likely small-scale testing as the changes appeared on very few devices. Thankfully, Google didn’t make us wait much longer for the revamped screensaver. If you’re using a Google TV device, you should start seeing the changes soon.
Hopefully, Google TV Profiles will soon roll out widely too. The feature personalizes your TV experience like never before. Each Google account linked to a TV will have its own personalized space. When you enter your designated space, you will only find recommendations for movies and TV shows based on your interests, preferences, and watching history. We will let you know when Profiles roll out widely to Google TV users.