Posted by Fahad Durrani Product Management, Google TV

Google TV and Android TV will require 64-bit app compatibility to support upcoming 64-bit TV devices starting August 2026.

Following other Android form factors, Google TV and Android TV devices will soon support 64-bit app compatibility. 64-bit apps will offer improved performance, shorter start times, and new viewing experiences on upcoming 64-bit Google TV and Android TV devices.

Starting August 1st, 2026:

• Any new app or app update that includes native code is required to provide 64-bit (arm64) versions in addition to 32-bit (armeabi-v7a) versions when submitted to Google Play. You can mitigate the size increase of your App Bundle. For more details, see Support 64-bit architectures.
• If you’re targeting Android 15 (API level 35) or higher, your 64-bit app version must be compatible with 16 KB memory page sizes. For more details, see Prepare your apps for Google Play’s 16 KB page size compatibility requirement.

We’re not making any changes to 32-bit support, and Google Play will continue to deliver apps to 32-bit devices. The 64-bit requirement means that apps with 32-bit native code will need a 64-bit version as well. You should continue to provide 32-bit binaries alongside 64-bit binaries by using ABI splits in App Bundles.

How to transition

This requirement only impacts apps that utilize native code. You can check if your app has native code (.so files) with the APK Analyzer. For ARM devices, you can find native libraries in lib/armeabi-v7a (32-bit) or lib/arm64-v8a (64-bit).

For detailed guidance on transitioning to 64-bit, see Support 64-bit architectures.

How to test

• The Google TV emulator image for macOS devices with Apple Silicon is configured for a 64-bit userspace and may be used for app testing and verification.
• The Nvidia Shield (models P2571, P2897 and P2897) have both 32-bit and 64-bit userspace compatibility and may be used for testing on physical hardware. If your app contains 64-bit libraries, they will be used automatically.
• 64-bit TV apps may be sideloaded to Pixel (7 or newer) phones after constraining the view window to TV resolution and DPI:
adb shell wm size 1080×1920
adb shell wm density 231 #tvdpi
adb install <package.apk>

Next steps

Prepare your TV apps to comply with 64-bit requirements by August 1st, 2026:

1. Use the APK Analyzer to check if your app has native code.
2. Update your native code to support 64-bit and 16 KB memory page size.
3. Test and verify that your changes work as intended.
4. Submit your app update to Google Play.

Posted by Shobana Radhakrishnan – Senior Director of Engineering, Google TV, and Paul Lammertsma – Developer Relations Engineer, Android

Over the past year, Google TV and Android TV achieved over 270 million monthly active devices, establishing one of the largest smart TV OS footprints. Building on this momentum, we are excited to share new platform features and developer tools designed to help you increase app engagement with our expanding user base.

Google TV with Gemini capabilities

Earlier this year, we announced that we’ll bring Gemini capabilities to Google TV, so users can speak more naturally and conversationally to find what to watch and get answers to complex questions.

After each movie or show search, our new voice assistant will suggest relevant content from your apps, significantly increasing the discoverability of your content.

Plus, users can easily ask questions about topics they’re curious about and receive insightful answers with supporting videos.

We’re so excited to bring this helpful and delightful experience to users this fall.

Video Discovery API

Today, we’ve also opened partner enrollment for our Video Discovery API.

Video Discovery optimizes Resumption, Entitlements, and Recommendations across all Google TV form factors to enhance the end-user experience and boost app engagement.

• Resumption: Partners can now easily display a user’s paused video within the ‘Continue Watching’ row from the home screen. This row is a prime location that drives 60% of all user interactions on Google TV.
• Entitlements: Video Discovery streamlines entitlement management, which matches app content to user eligibility. Users appreciate this because they can enjoy personalized recommendations without needing to manually update all their subscription details. This allows partners to connect with users across multiple discovery points on Google TV.
• Recommendations: Video Discovery even highlights personalized content recommendations based on content that users watched inside apps.

Partners can begin incorporating the Video Discovery API today, starting with resumption and entitlement integrations. Check out g.co/tv/vda to learn more.

Jetpack Compose for TV

Last year, we launched Compose for TV 1.0 beta, which lets you build beautiful, adaptive UIs across Android, including Android TV OS.

Now, Compose for TV 1.0 is stable, and expands on the core and Material Compose libraries. We’ve even seen how the latest release of Compose significantly improves app startup within our internal benchmarking mobile sample, with roughly a 20% improvement compared with the March 2024 release. Because Compose for TV builds upon these libraries, apps built with Compose for TV should also see better app startup times.

New to building with Compose, and not sure where to start? Our updated Jetcaster audio streaming app sample demonstrates how to use Compose across form factors. It includes a dedicated module for playing podcasts on TV by combining separate view models with shared business logic.

Focus Management Codelab

We understand that focus management can be challenging at times. That’s why we’ve published a codelab that reviews how to set initial focus, prepare for unexpected focus traversal, and efficiently restore focus.

Memory Optimization Guide

We’ve released a comprehensive guide on memory optimization, including memory targets for low RAM devices as well. Combined with Android Studio’s powerful memory profiler, this helps you understand when your app exceeds those limits and why.

In-App Ratings and Reviews

Moreover, app ratings and reviews are essential for developers, offering quantitative and qualitative feedback on user experiences. Now, we’re extending the In-App Ratings and Reviews API to TV to allow developers to prompt users for ratings and reviews directly from Google TV. Check out our recent blog post detailing how to easily integrate the In-App Ratings and Reviews API.

Android 16 for TV

We’re excited to announce the upcoming release of Android 16 for TV. Developers can begin using the latest Emulator today. With Android 16, TV developers can access several great features:

• The MediaQualityManager allows developers to take control over selecting picture profiles.
• Platform support for the Eclipsa Audio codec enables creators to use the IAMF spatial audio format. For ExoPlayer support that includes previous platform versions, see ExoPlayer’s IAMF decoder module.
• There are various improvements to media playback speed, consistency and efficiency, as well as HDMI-CEC reliability and performance optimizations for 64-bit kernels.
• Additional APIs and user experiences from Android 16 are also available. We invite you to explore the complete list from the Android 16 for TV release notes.

What’s next

We’re incredibly excited to see how these announcements will optimize your development journey, and look forward to seeing the fantastic apps you’ll launch on the platform!

Explore this announcement and all Google I/O 2025 updates on io.google starting May 22.

Posted by Paul Lammertsma – Developer Relations Engineer

Ratings and reviews are essential for developers, offering quantitative and qualitative feedback on user experiences. In 2022, we enhanced the granularity of this feedback by segmenting these insights by countries and form factors.

Now, we’re extending the In-App Ratings and Reviews API to TV to allow developers to prompt users for ratings and reviews directly from Google TV.

Ratings and reviews on Google TV

Users can now see rating averages, browse reviews, and leave their own review directly from an app’s store listing on Google TV.

Users can interact with in-app ratings and reviews on their TVs by doing the following:

• Select ratings using the remote control D-pad.
• Provide optional written reviews using Gboard’s on-screen voice input, or by easily typing from their phone.
• Send mobile notifications to themselves to complete their TV app review directly on their phone.

Additionally, users can leave reviews for other form factors directly from their phone by simply selecting the device chip when submitting an app rating or writing a review.

We’ve already seen a considerable lift in app ratings on TV since bringing these changes to Google TV, and now, we’re making it possible for developers to trigger a ratings prompt as well.

Before we look at the integration, let’s first carefully consider the best time to request a review prompt. First, identify optimal moments within your app to request user feedback, ensuring prompts appear only when the UI is idle to prevent interruption of ongoing content.

In-App Review API

Integrating the Google Play In-App Review API is the same as on mobile and it’s only a couple of method calls:

val manager = ReviewManagerFactory.create(context)
manager.requestReviewFlow().addOnCompleteListener { task ->
    if (task.isSuccessful) {
        // We got the ReviewInfo object
        val reviewInfo = task.result
        manager.launchReviewFlow(activity, reviewInfo)
    } else {
        // There was some problem, log or handle the error code
        @ReviewErrorCode val reviewErrorCode =
            (task.getException() as ReviewException).errorCode
    }
}

First, invoke requestReviewFlow() to obtain a ReviewInfo object which is used to launch the review flow. You must include an addOnCompleteListener() not just to obtain the ReviewInfo object, but also to monitor for any problems triggering this flow, such as the unavailability of Google Play on the device. Note that ReviewInfo does not offer any insights on whether or not a prompt appeared or which action the user took if a prompt did appear.

The challenge is to identify when to trigger launchReviewFlow(). Track user actions—identifying successful journeys and points where users encounter issues—so you can be confident they had a delightful experience in your app.

For this method, you may optionally also include an addOnCompleteListener() to ensure it resumes when the returned task is completed.

Note that due to throttling of how often users are presented with this prompt, there are no guarantees that the ratings dialog will appear when requesting to start this flow. For best practices, check this guide on when to request an in-app review.

Get started with In-App Reviews on Google TV

You can get a head start today by following these steps:

1. Identify successful journeys for users, like finishing a movie or TV show season.
2. Identify poor experiences that should be avoided, like buffering or playback errors.
3. Integrate the Google Play In-App Review API to trigger review requests at optimal moments within the user journey.
4. Test your integration by following the testing guide.
5. Publish your app and continuously monitor your ratings by device type in the Play Console.

We’re confident this integration enables you to elevate your Google TV app ratings and empowers your users to share valuable feedback.

Resources

• Google Play In-App Review API
• App ratings by device type in your Play Console

Explore this announcement and all Google I/O 2025 updates on io.google starting May 22.