Pip: TV launcher and phone remote

A calm, Apple TV–style home screen for Android TV and Google TV, with a remote on your phone.

Website · Download for TV · Phone remote (Android) · Privacy

▶ Watch the film (35 s) · vertical

Beta. Version 0.9 runs every day on our own TV (a 2 GB Google TV). Expect rough edges and tell us about them in Issues.

What it does

• A quiet home. Real landscape photos, one row of apps, a clock. No ads, no rows of recommendations.
• Five layouts. Calm, Spotlight, App icons, Mosaic and Widgets. Switch them from the TV (Menu) or the phone.
• Make it yours. Background, tiles (app artwork, brand colors, frosted, logos only), names, a serif font, the clock, reset.
• Inputs. TV and every HDMI port as cards. Name what's plugged in (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC).
• Quick settings. Sleep timer, screen saver, Wi‑Fi, picture, sound, turn off, free storage and memory.
• Clean up. Tick apps you don't use and hide or uninstall them together. Apps that came with the TV are never uninstalled.
• Phone remote. A touch surface, keyboard and volume, plus a live preview of the TV. Pair once with a 4-digit code.
• Send to TV. Share a YouTube or Netflix link on your phone and it opens in that app on the TV.
• Fast on cheap TVs. Focus moves at 60 fps in four of the five layouts, measured on a Mali-G52 TV with 1.8 GB of RAM.

Spotlight	App icons	Mosaic
Make it yours	Inputs	Quick settings

Install on your TV (three steps, all with the remote)

1. On your TV, open Google Play and install Downloader (free, by AFTVnews).
2. Open Downloader, type piptv.github.io and press Go.
3. Press OK on Install Pip, then Install. If the TV asks, allow Downloader to install apps.

Then open Pip OS from your apps.

With a computer (adb)

adb connect YOUR_TV_IP:5555
adb install pip-tv.apk

Phone remote. No install needed: Pip shows a QR code (Menu → Connect a phone) that opens the remote in your phone's browser. You can also use the Android app, pip-remote.apk. The iPhone app is coming.

Optional: let the phone control every app. To make the phone remote work inside Netflix, YouTube and other apps, turn on Network debugging in the TV's developer options. The TV then asks once to allow Pip; tick Always allow. Without it, the phone controls Pip's own screens only.

Undo everything

Pip doesn't change your TV's system. To stop using it, uninstall Pip OS from Settings → Apps. Hidden apps are only hidden inside Pip. Nothing else was removed.

Privacy

There are no accounts, no ads and no tracking. Weather uses your city name with Open-Meteo. The phone talks to the TV only on your home network. Full text: privacy.

Credits

The built-in wallpapers are public-domain photographs from the US National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service (list and sources). The type is Inter (SIL Open Font License).

---

This repository holds the releases and the website. The app's source code is private for now.