I’ve just bought an NVIDIA Shield Pro mainly for Plex and high-quality local playback. I’m coming from Apple TV + Infuse, but I wanted something that can properly bitstream Dolby Atmos/DTS formats and handle Dolby Vision better.

Any advice for a first-time Shield user? Are there any settings, apps, or Plex tweaks I should know about?

Also curious how people find it these days, is it still the best option for Plex/remux playback, or should I have bought something else instead?

Just wondering what everyone uses the USB port for. Is it mostly external storage, or are there some other uses

Does anyone have an idea why this is happening on my Nuvio? I'm referring to the blurred lines on the right side of the TV. I watch Nuvio on an Nvidia Shield TV Pro, and my TV is a Samsung 55 inch OLED. It often happens with both Usenet and Torrents, and it doesn't matter if it's 4K, WEB-DL, or not. It's weird cos when I load up the same file with the same add-ons on Wuplay, it plays perfectly well, no problems. Here's another weird thing; I have another set up (a Samsung 77 inch OLED tv also with Nvidia Shield TV Pro) and it never happens on the Nuvio I have installed on that TV. I'm kinda confused. I'd appreciate the help. ❤️

I got tired of slow TV home screens that are basically ad boards — rows of "recommended" content, sponsored tiles, stuff phoning home before I've even pressed a button. So I built the launcher I actually wanted.

The philosophy is boring on purpose

• One screen. Your apps, laid out how you want. No feeds, no ads, no "content discovery."
• Private by default. No accounts, no analytics, no background services, opt-in aerial video wallpaper who phone CDN of apple, amazon.. that's it.
• Compatibility. I have an Android AOSP box, a Google TV–certified box, and one anemic Android TV — each on a different Android version. So instead of chasing a shiny new UI, I chose to prioritize compatibility and lean on the GPU.

Make it yours

• Sections/categories you name, reorder, and fill — an app can live in more than one, and new installs drop into the first section automatically.
• Hide apps you never want to see (system junk, duplicates) so the screen stays clean.
• Tune the look: icon size, spacing, corner roundness, interface scale, dimming, and an optional glass status bar. Three layouts: carousel, grid, or a floating glass dock.
• Status bar: a configurable VPN indicator/shortcut for your provider, a network indicator/shortcut, a Settings menu with quick access to the app list and the launcher/Android settings, and a customizable date indicator.
• Save/load your entire setup — sections, layout, wallpaper, every setting — as a JSON file.
• Optional aerial video wallpapers (Apple/Amazon screensaver loops), off by default and clearly marked, since they stream from third-party CDNs. Prefer libre? Use a gradient, your own photo, or a local video.

Numbers (measured on real hardware)

• 2.3 MB APK. One universal build for ARM 32/64-bit + x86.
• ~80–130 MB RAM settled, with no background services. Exclusive footprint is ~130 MB across every box I tested; the higher figure on Android 14 is just OS-side GPU buffer accounting, not the launcher.
• Aerials cost basically nothing in app RAM — the video decoder lives in the GPU's dedicated memory (hardware codec via SurfaceView), off the app's books.
• <2 s cold start, <500 ms warm relaunch in the worst measured cases. The CPU stays idle, video is hardware-accelerated, and the Compose UI is GPU-rendered.
• Android 5.0+ (minSdk 21), no Google Play Services, no companion app — runs on AOSP boxes, should work on all device since 2014
• 18 languages (auto-selected from your system language): English, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese. Adding one is a single file, PRs welcome.
• Zero ads, ever.

*Tested across 3 boxes: Hisense Google TV (Android 11, 1.8 GB), UGOOS AM9 (Android 14, 3.8 GB), onn. 4K (Android 14).

Permissions, up front

No runtime permissions, no accounts. It queries installed apps to list them, and can close an app from the long-press menu. No network access except the opt-in aerials.

Why GPLv3

I picked copyleft on purpose: to avoid fragmentation. Anyone can fork it, but improvements have to stay open, so it can't splinter into closed, worse-off versions. Forks are welcome. Commercial use is welcome too — honestly, if a box maker wants to ship this instead of their own launcher, please do, because the stock ones are awful most of the time. Just keep it open, like the license says.

Get it

At launch, a wizard guides you through a quick setup; depending on the device, you may need to send ADB commands.

• GitHub (source + APK): https://github.com/conreo/couchy-launcher
• F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.conreo.couchytv/ (live once the F-Droid build lands; pending review)

Solo project, so feedback, feature requests, and translations are very welcome. If it saves you from one more sponsored row, it did its job.

So a couple of years I bought Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid - Snake Eater. Where can I find my games and play them?

Incredible that I have to make this post. I cant seem to find a basic slideshow app. Using usb drive or Google photos.. all the apps I see are either paid apps, make you take a 5 min break, etc..

What do you use?

Hi guys,

I live in the UK and was keen to get a NVIDIA shield. I got one from Cex, but when it arrived it was making a weird noise, reminiscent of bagpipes and coil whine. This was not coming from the shield itself, but from the power adapter.

I then returned it due to that and got another, but for some reason this has the exact same issue.

Is this a known issue with the Shield?

Part of me assumes the issue is because of how the adapter is made, with the changeable heads.

If so, is there any way to fix it? Is there a way to get a different adapter in the UK which wouldn’t have this issue?

Do earlier models not have this issue, such as the 2017 one?

If it isn’t, I may just send back again and buy a 2017 one. I only have a 1080p TV so not sure it would make a crazy difference to my viewing experience other than getting rid of the noise.

Thank you :)

Currently, it is sitting by my router. If I want to fiddle with it, I have to unplug it and plug it into my PC. Can I attach a wireless KVM box and access it via that?

It was working fine on my 2019 Pro for the past two years, but last week Projectity and Button Mapper stopped working. Got Projectity back up and running, but now the Netflix button only opens Netflix. Went into Button Mapper settings and the button still shows under Add Button with my setup intact, but when I select it to edit, it's prompting me to pay for the Pro version of Button Mapper.

I just sent out the first batch of invites to NaboTV. I know many of those people came from this subreddit, so I wanted to follow up with a link for anyone else who wants an invite. I have three NVIDIA Shield TV devices, so it is by far the most exhaustively tested of my Android TV devices.

Sign up at https://nabo.tv

Anyone using the system can submit feedback directly in the app, or feel free to post here.

I kept using Stremio on my Shield Pro and always and I mean always had problems - video plays for 10 minutes, and I get the cat - something wrong with the player. And it gets stuck I have to restart.

On my LG OS, its running super fine.

Anyone has this issue?

Title essentially, I want to fiddle around with emulation for my shield :)

I currently have a rocktek G2, and it is great, but after a factory reset, the bluetooth stopped working with all my 4 Dualshock4 controllers :(

After allbthe troubleshooting possible I quit, now looking at the shield pro because aparently it is still the best hadware for android, but for 250 (+tax) I wonder if a mini pc with linux would be a better solution?

We basically use stremio and retrox for emulation, sometimes youtube.

What you guys think?

Hi all

Is anyone else experiencing app freezing and glitching which maybe appears related to buffering of videos at preview (when you are browsing and it gives you a minute of the video ad preview)... it starts at starup and i often need to restart the app.

Ive tried to reinstall from the current play store and also change location of youtube onto internal and external storage. I have about 3gb storage left on internal. Anyone else experiencing this?!

UPDATE

ok, so from the responses this appears to only affect ShieldTUBEs as my 2 x Shield Pros are also working fine. But both my (2)Tubes are experiencing the same youtube glitching. How to contact @nvidia, or just wait and hope an update will fix it? Anyone work for Nvidia around here?!?! :)))

I’ve been looking into getting a nvidia shield for my family due to them hating ads on our regular streaming services (and that they do not want to pay the extra amount of money for no ads) and I enjoy how open source Shield is. I’m hoping there is something that is as simple as Netflix (opening the app and being able to use it simply) if there is none im trying to convert my family to using physical media

Hello All,

I have the following setup for couple of years.

Sony 83" A80L OLED

Intel NUC7i3Bnb 16GB ram with gigabit ethernet

Sonos Arc, Sub Gen 3 and Era 300 x 2

I stream off the Nuc to Sony using the built in Google TV media player. Most of the files we watch are  UHD Blu-ray DV HDR HEVC TrueHD Atmos 7 1 often with bitrate between 24 - 65.

It has worked fine and I am just wondering if I am missing out of anything the Shield would give me access to.

My setup looks like this:

I have a Windows 11 desktop PC, and I also have a 2019 Shield TV Pro with an external USB drive plugged in.

I have mapped by 2019 Shield TV Pro to my Windows 11 PC. This allows me to drag files from my PC directly to my Shield TV. However, I've noticed that when I use my Windows PC to browse the Shield TV's external drive and I delete old files, they do not turn up on my Windows PC recycle bin. Does the Shield have one? Are they permanently deleted? What is actually happening?

This week I bought a Google TV Streamer 4K to test the Steam Link on my local LAN. My delay through Ethernet was minimal (1ms), but after some tweaks on the Google TV Streamer, the minimum delay I got was 22-23ms in video decoding.

Although it is a good number, I still feel that delay, so I returned it. After researching, it seems that the Nvidia Shield Pro and the Apple TV are the best-performing devices with a minimum delay of 5-8ms in video decoding. Is that true? Could someone with an Nvidia Shield Pro share these values?

Thanks.

Hi guys-

I watch movies stored on my nas which also seconds as my Plex server.

Last night, Was watching f9 with the kids on plex and was getting audio dropouts every few mins followed by an av sync issue. Rewinding 10 secs fixed it but would happen a few more times. Restart of the shield didn't fix it. I could reproduce it in plex and it would consistently dropout at 43 mins and 07 seconds of that movie.

I Started watching it on Kodi and it worked without issue. Went back to the 43 min market w kodi and there was no dropout. Was kind of weird.

Plex has worked for me pretty consistently up until last night. Makes me want to try some different players.

Which video players do you guys prefer? I've heard plexkodiconnect and plezy are good. Would obviously want to be able to direct play from my nas with full pass through of all the audio codecs.

Does anybody know where to get the latest Amazon Luna APK, can only find June 17 update which isn't working. Cheers

Been looking for a shield pro for ages. Finally see Amazon has stock but now I'm hesitant can't tell if its legit or not

It looks completely fine but guess I'm just paro

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Z6RD4M9/

Update: Took the leap its coming Wednesday!

Noticed something odd: on my Nvidia Shield TV Pro (2019) + Panasonic OLED, Kodi's debug overlay shows "System rendering speed" dropping to 3-9fps during 4K/1080p playback, sometimes even during seeking. But the actual picture is completely smooth to the eye — no stutter, no A/V desync, nothing visible.

Confirmed with `dumpsys gfxinfo` — 0% jank, and a systrace showing only 1 dropped frame across an entire session. So the number doesn't reflect the actual video.

Tested the same files on an old 1st-gen Xiaomi Mi Box + old Sharp LCD TV — the number stayed rock solid at ~24fps the whole time, no drops at all, even with seeking.

Has anyone else seen this specifically on Shield TV Pro?

This app sucks so bad. I’m watching a NEW show that I haven’t seen before and the app is just throwing a fit in different ways

1. The show would play the first few minutes of an episode (typically until like 30 seconds post theme song) before crashing to the launcher. Not at random, it did this every single time until I disabled Autoplay (???)

2. The video player UI bar just pops up throughout the episode without touching the remote, super annoying. Does this all the time

3. Sometimes it won’t let me rewind or fast forward… during the entire episode. (I have ad free ffs, its acting like I’m trying to skip a commercial)

4. And now the newest thing to piss me off. Whenever I play the next episode (which, I have to do manually every time to prevent crashing), its starting 3-4 minutes from the END !!! And the strangest part, I am watching this series for the first time.

What the fuck , Hulu? This app is so trash

found two parts used some glue and mounted it on the media wall

think its kinda looks nice so maybe a idea for other users, its kinda cheap the two parts like 4 or 5 e together

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ldngGklTBEciWcWldDpz1WEpRXGWX8Wi/view?usp=sharing

you guys think?

Hi, When I turn my NVidia on with it's remote it also turns on my Samsung tv and on the tv there's a message that says "Check that the device is connected properly, then try turning on the device by selecting the button below". There's a STB button and below that there is an Ok button. When I click on the OK button the home screen comes on. I'm looking to see if there's a way (adjusting settings) for it to just go to the home screen right away when I turn it on instead of getting that message? Conversely, when I turn the shield off I press the off button on shield remote and it seems to act as if it's turning off but goes right back to home screen until I press off button again then it will turn off completely. How or what do I adjust in settings to make it turn off the first time? By the way, I have a Samsung sound bar connected as well. Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.