Best Android TV apps: 8 worth installing on any new box

An Android TV box ships with Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, and a stock UI that makes everything else hard to find. The eight apps below are the ones we install on every new box, in this order.

Personal media (your own library)

1. Plex

Best for: the best polished media server experience.

Plex on Android TV pulls from your home Plex server (running on a desktop, NAS, or a dedicated server box) and presents your media library with metadata, trailers, and watch-progress sync. Free for basic use, $5/month or $120 lifetime for Plex Pass. The Android TV app is genuinely good; the platform's recent ad-injection in some menus is the trade-off you're paying around.

2. Jellyfin

Best for: the open-source alternative without ads.

Jellyfin is the open-source media server. Same idea as Plex (your library, presented well, on every device) without the cloud-account requirement and without ads. Free, no upsell. Setup is more technical than Plex; the payoff is full ownership of the stack.

3. VLC

Best for: playing arbitrary file formats.

VLC handles every codec without complaint, plays from network shares (SMB, NFS), and runs equally well on Android TV as on every other platform. Free, open-source, no ads ever.

Bypass the stock UI

4. Sideload Launcher

Best for: accessing sideloaded apps that don't appear in the launcher.

Stock Android TV launchers don't show sideloaded apps in the main grid. Sideload Launcher is a free utility that gives you a launcher screen with every app installed, sideloaded or not. Free. Install via the Play Store.

5. Aptoide TV

Best for: app discovery beyond the Play Store.

Aptoide is an alternative app store that's been around since the early Android days, with a TV-specific variant. Useful for apps that aren't on the Google Play Store's TV section but exist in APK form. Side note: Play Protect doesn't scan apps installed from Aptoide, so use it for known-good apps you can't find elsewhere, not as a primary store.

Replace ad-walled apps

6. SmartTube

Best for: ad-free YouTube on Android TV.

SmartTube is a community YouTube client for Android TV that strips ads, supports SponsorBlock, and runs much faster than the stock YouTube TV app. Sideload from the SmartTube GitHub releases. Free, open-source.

7. Solid Explorer

Best for: file management from the TV.

Solid Explorer on Android TV gives you a file manager with network share support, FTP/SFTP, cloud storage integration, and a clean UI. About $3 one-time after a 14-day trial. Useful when you're moving files onto the TV box without going through a desktop.

8. Yatse (smartphone remote)

Best for: controlling Plex, Kodi, and other media servers from your phone.

Yatse is a remote control app that runs on your phone and controls Plex, Kodi, and other media servers on the TV. The TV-side support is part of those server apps; Yatse is the phone-side remote that's better than the included one. Free for basic use, paid tier (~$5) for power features.

Verdict

Plex if you have a polished media server, Jellyfin if you want full ownership, VLC for everything else. Sideload Launcher to actually see sideloaded apps. SmartTube for ad-free YouTube. Aptoide TV for app discovery beyond the Play Store. Solid Explorer for file management. Yatse for a phone-side remote that works. Eight apps, ten minutes, every Android TV box becomes meaningfully more useful.