There’s a lot of announcements across the portfolio of products at Google I/O today, and Android TV is also getting new features with the update to Android 12 including a TV remote built into Android and options to transfer and expand your streams.
Google has been letting you move and expand your audio streams around your Assistant powered smart speakers for a while now, but now you’ll be able to do the same with your streams on Android TV.
Stream Transfer will let you move what’s playing on your screen to other Android TV devices with a simple voice command – “Hey Google, play this on the Bedroom Chromecast” and Google can move the stream for you.
Google also knows that sometimes the speakers you have on the TV don’t quite cut it, and with Stream Expansion you can expand your current stream to include Smart Speakers around your home in an ad-hoc surround sound setup. This makes the stereo pairing on speakers like the Nest Audio even more attractive.
Google is also thinking about making Android TV easier to control – and acknowledging that we all lose our remotes even the little one with their new Chromecast with Google TV. So your movie night isn’t interrupted, Android 12 will now include an Android TV remote built right into the OS, no need for any separate apps. The Android TV remote will let you easily access voice search, or even let you type a query with your keyboard.
Google will begin rolling these updates out in the Android 12 Beta for Android TV which will be available for developers from today on their ADT-3 developer device. For the rest of us, we’ll be seeing updates on our devices once Android 12 launches in full later this year.
