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A screensaver for Android TV devices including Nvidia Shield, Fire TV, and Chromecast with Google TV. Inspired by Apple TV's video screensaver.

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Aerial Views

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A screensaver for Android TV devices including Nvidia Shield, Fire TV, and Chromecast with Google TV. Inspired by Apple TV's video screensaver.

Please read if you have a Nvidia Shield, Chromecast with Google TV, onn. Google TV 4K Streaming Box or Amazon Fire TV

Features include...

  • 4K Dolby Vision (HDR) videos, if your TV supports it
  • Over 150 videos from Apple, Jetson Creative and Robin Fourcade
  • Play videos from your device, USB storage or network share
  • Option to avoid burn-in on QD/OLED TVs
  • Skip videos, change speed with the d-pad
  • Refresh rate switching

Support the project

If you enjoy using the app, please consider buying me a coffee.

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How to get Aerial Views...

Google Play Store badge    Amazon Appstore badge

Or download the APK from the Releases page and install it manually

Translations

If Aerial Views is not available in your language but you have some free time to help translate menu text and video descriptions, please get in touch!

We use the Lokalise platform to coordinate translations for Aerial Views and thank them for their support of this open-source project.

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Where to download videos for offline/local playback

Follow these links to download the videos from...

HDR videos don't seem to play, I only see black screen...

Apple's videos only support Dolby Vision HDR. Even if your TV supports HDR, it might not support Dolby Vision.

Here are some things to try...

Nvidia Shield users

If your device is running Android 11 (Shield Experience 9+) and you want to play videos from a USB storage device, make sure the following setting is enabled:

Settings > Device Preferences > Storage > Scan for media automatically

How to set Aerial Views as the default screensaver

Since 2023, nearly all devices that ship with Google TV have no user-interface to change the screensaver to a 3rd party one...

  • Chromecast with Google TV, Google TV Streamer
  • Recent MECOOL devices
  • Recent TCL, Philips, and Sony TVs
  • onn. Google TV devices (excluding the 2021 model)
  • Fire TV

But it can be done manually. Here is an overview of the steps...

  1. Enable Developer mode, enable USB debugging, then find the IP address of your device
  2. Use a Mac, iPhone, PC or Android phone with the required software or app
  3. Connect to your Android/Google/Fire TV device
  4. Run two ADB commands, one to set Aerial Views as the default screensaver, the other to set how long it takes the screensaver to start
Enable Developer Mode on your Android/Google TV  

Navigate to the Settings menu on your device, then to the About screen. Depending on the device…

Settings > System > About or Settings > Device Preferences > About

Scroll down to Build and select Build several times until you get the message "You are now a developer!"

Return to Settings and look for the newly enabled Developer options page.

On the Developer options page, look for the USB debugging option and enable it.

Next, find the IP address of your device. Try looking in the Network & Internet settings of the device, check the properties of the current LAN or WIFI connection - that should list the current IP address eg. 192.168.1.105

Enable Developer Mode on Fire Stick/TV  

Open Settings, then navigate to My Fire TV then the About screen.

Highlight the first option on the list, which is usually your device's name, and press the action button on your remote seven times.

You'll now see a message confirming "You are now a developer", and it'll unlock the Developer Options in the previous menu.

Navigate to the Developer Options page, look for the ADB debugging option and enable it.

Next, find the IP address of your device and make a note of it. Navigate to the About then Network screen, which will show your current IP address eg. 192.168.1.120

Connect using an iPhone  

Find an iPhone app that is capable of running ADB commands, such as iSH Shell, which is free.

Once installed, run the app and install the Android Tools with the following commands…

apk update
apk add android-tools

To check if the ADB command is working, try typing…

adb version 

After pressing return, you should see something like this

Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41
Version  31.0.0p1-android-tools

Now you can execute ADB commands.

Connect using an Android phone  

Find an Android app that is capable of running ADB commands, such as Remote Termux, which is free.

Once installed, run the app and install the Android Tools with the following commands…

pkg update
pkg install android-tools

To check if the ADB command is working, try typing…

adb version 

After pressing return, you should see something like this

Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41
Version  34.0.0p1-android-tools

Now you can execute ADB commands.

Connect using a Mac  

Download the official SDK Platform Tools for Mac.

Extract the files from the ZIP archive to a folder. Then open a Terminal or Command Prompt and navigate to the folder.

To check if the ADB command is working, try typing…

adb version

After pressing return, you should see something like this

Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41
Version  35.0.0-11411520

Now you can execute ADB commands.

Connect using a PC with Windows  

Download the official SDK Platform Tools for Windows.

An alternate option is Tiny ADB and Fastboot Tool (Portable version) but they both work in the same way.

Extract the files from the ZIP archive to a folder. Then open a Terminal or Command Prompt and navigate to the folder.

To check if the ADB command is working, try typing…

adb version

After pressing return, you should see something like this

Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41
Version  35.0.0-11411520
ADB command - set Aerial Views as the default screensaver  

Connect to your Android TV device and start a command shell...

adb connect <ip_address>

ℹ️ Use the IP address of your device from earlier steps, it should be something like 192.168.1.98

adb shell

ℹ️ The first time you connect to your Android TV device, you will probably see a confirmation dialogue asking to "allow" the connection

Next, set Aerial Views as the default screensaver with this command…

settings put secure screensaver_components com.neilturner.aerialviews/.ui.screensaver.DreamActivity

Optional: Confirm that the command was run successfully, as there is no confirmation when the command above is run.

settings get secure screensaver_components

If set correctly, you should see...

com.neilturner.aerialviews/com.neilturner.aerialviews.ui.screensaver.DreamActivity
ADB command - change the screensaver timeout  

To change the default timeout use this command with a value in milliseconds. So, 5 minutes is 300000, 10 minutes is 600000 and so on.

settings put system screen_off_timeout 600000
How to revert back to the default screensaver  

For whatever reason, if you would like to stop using Aerial Views and revert back to the original screensaver, there are two options…

  • Reset your device. Doing so will also reset the screensaver preference
  • Use an ADB commands to enable the default screensaver, depending on your device
  1. Follow the instructions above to connect to your Android/Google TV device using an iPhone, Android phone, Mac, PC, etc
  2. Run one of the following commands...

To restore the default Google TV ambient screensaver

settings put secure screensaver_components com.google.android.apps.tv.dreamx/.service.Backdrop

To restore the default Fire TV screensaver

settings put secure screensaver_components com.amazon.bueller.photos/.daydream.ScreenSaverService

To restore the default (older) Android TV backdrop screensaver

settings put secure screensaver_components com.google.android.backdrop/.Backdrop

Weather data

Thanks to OpenWeather for providing weather data to this and other open-source projects.

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About

Aerial Views is based on Aerial Dream, which was created by Daniel Cachapa in late 2015.

Aerial Views started in early 2020 as a fork with a couple of fixes and features to improve the experience on an old Sony Android TV. Around this time, Aerial Dream was not in active development anymore.

Shortly after putting the code on GitHub, others found the fork and started requesting new builds with fixes and additional features. This led to the eventual release of Aerial Views on the Google Play Store in 2022, and later, the Amazon Appstore.

About

A screensaver for Android TV devices including Nvidia Shield, Fire TV, and Chromecast with Google TV. Inspired by Apple TV's video screensaver.

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