In case you didn't know, just as you can access your Android phone's developer options or even Android Auto, you can also do it on your television. That will allow you to use advanced features like USB debugging or even tinker with features like device GPU rendering or background process throttling. that's why today We teach you, step by step, how to access the Android TV developer options.
Before we begin, let's go with the important thing, the necessary and fundamental warning in these cases.
Use this tutorial only if you know what you are doing. Hit developer options on any Android device can lead to errors and problems of all kinds. This is made for the experts and unless you're one of them, We do not recommend touching or accessing developer options.
I say it seriously. Also, each Android TV can be very different with what it offers or what it has inside, so what goes well in some can be a disaster in others.
Why do you want to access the developer options of your Android TV
The truth is that for many things. If you are a real software developer, it can be used to create a bug report (one of the options) and so on. test and debug the bugs of the application you are programming for Android TV, for example.
Similarly, other developer options can influence television performance.
For example, one of the features that appears when you activate this advanced mode is to modify the window animation scale. By default, this is set to 1x, but reducing it to 0,5x can speed up Android TV somewhat.
The same goes for other advanced features like the ones we have named at the top of the GPU or background processes.
Again though, touching these options should only be for someone who knows what each one means and what they are doing.
Finally, in the developer options too we can influence how television is watched itself, through features such as being able to change the image color mode, for example.
How to access step by step
From the main screen of your Android TV, Go to "Settings", which is the gear icon.
In the menu that appears, Scroll down to the "Device Preferences" option and press the OK button on the remote.
Within the new menu, choose "Information" and press again to enter.
In the new menu, Scroll down to the "Compilation" option. When you are with him selected, press the OK button 7 times to activate developer options. It will notify you of the remaining touches until it is achieved.
Once done, the television will display the message that those developer options have been activated.
Now, if you go back to "Device Preferences", you can see that it has appeared a new menu called “Developer Options”.
If you click on it, a huge range of preferences will open, subdivided into categories, which will allow you to destroy your television in many new ways.
However, this not all.
Android TV factory menu
If you look at the image above, an option called “Factory Menu” has appeared on my TV model. When you press it, it opens that blue menu on the left, where even more advanced options related to television appear and its operation.
Each model will be different and, again, getting in there is a mission for experts only. Be very careful because you will be touching delicate things.
What developer options does Android TV have
We make you the exhaustive list of the things that you can configure in those options.
In addition to the "Factory Menu" on television, as soon as we enter the development section we will have the virtual switch to turn off developer options.
In addition, we can access:
- Create a bug report.
- Active screen. To prevent the TV from going into sleep.
- HCI Bluetooth search log. To capture Bluetooth packets to a file.
- Image color mode. To change it and adjust how the colors look on the TV.
Android TV Debugging Section
Here we can:
- Turn on USB debugging.
- Revoke that authorization.
- Choose application to simulate location.
- Turn view attribute inspection on or off.
- Define the application to debug with which we work.
- Turn on wait for debugging.
- Activate the verification of applications by USB.
- Change the logger buffer size.
Network section of Android TV developer options
In this section we find the following options:
- Activate wireless display certification.
- Enable detailed Wi-Fi logging.
- Always activate/deactivate mobile data (even when you have Wi-Fi, to change networks quickly).
- Select USB settings (MTP, mass storage, etc).
- Enable/Disable when connected to Wi-Fi.
- Enable/Disable when connected to LAN.
Input section of Android TV Developer Options
Two options here:
- Show touches on the screen for better tracking in the application with which you work or develop.
- Pointer location, to overlay data from screen taps.
Drawing section of Android TV developer options
Lots of options in this section:
- surface changes.
- Show design limits (video, margins, etc).
- Force layout direction to RTL (right to left).
- The window animation scale. Default to 1x.
- The animation transition scale, back to 1x.
- The duration scale of the animation. A 1x again as standard.
- Simulate secondary screens.
Hardware Accelerated Rendering Section
- Enable/Disable GPU acceleration.
- GPU upgrades.
- View layer updates hardware.
- Debug GPU overdraws.
- Debug non-rectangular clipping operations.
- Force MSAA 4x.
- Disable Overlays hardware.
- Simulate color space.
Media section of Android TV developer options
- Enable/Disable USB audio routing.
Supervision Section
- Enable/Disable Strict Mode.
- GPU rendering profile.
- Enable OpenGL tracing.
Apps section of developer options
- Destroy application activities (when the user stops using them).
- Limit background processes.
- Show ANR in the background.
- Waiting applications.
- Force the permission of applications externally.
- Force resizing of activities.
As you can see, the list is huge and now you know how to activate those development options on Android TV. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. So, if you don't really know what you're doing, don't even think about fiddling with these menus.