I find myself actively avoiding my Nexus Player these days because it's such a pain to navigate. Am I really the only one who feels this way? Is there any way to force the old Leanback Launcher on to the new operating system? Or failing that a Launcher that acts like the old one used to behave?
Surely I'm not the only one, am I?
It is incredibly frustrating not to have the ability to install a custom launcher. I’m not sure I can take the new UI personally.
The new UI still feels unfinished and Google's achingly slow pace of development isn't making me feel any happier about it. I don't even know what 'Watch Next' is for since I've never seen it do anything....
The old UI was a bit crude but it was visually more coherent for the '10 foot experience', the new one is a mish-mash of different design ideas. The slide-out settings menu just doesn't make any sense to me compared with the more readable tile-based approach.
In the meantime, Amazon keeps iterating on its Fire TV interface and has an attention to detail that means I often stumble across something and think "that's nice, someone really thought about that small thing" - I haven't felt these little moments of delight with Google for a long time. There are plenty of things to dislike about Amazon's offerings, but at least they seem to be taking the user experience seriously ... and making efforts where they most count.
I didn't hate it. I though it was an unnecessarily drastic change, and I finally got a Shield, so the Nexus player got retired. I won't be upset if the Shield goes with it when they update.
It's horrible and jarring. The basic idea is good, but it's executed poorly.
Why is it a pain? I didn't like it at first, but after a month I learned to like it.
Meh, it's not great and IMO step back. But it you can add apps to favorites which will add them to default selected top row so you get the same functionality back more or less.
Im fine with it but don't like how cumbersome it is to force close an app when I need to.
I work on UI/UX for a living, and IMHO, the old launcher was beautiful and simple. This new one is damn ugly. It works OK on my bedroom Nexus Player, but I'm glad I don't have to look at it every day on my living room Shield TV.