Android TV’s Discover tab might not have long to live. Hints buried in a recent Android TV Home (launcher) update suggest Google is planning on a bit of a rebrand, likely to tie it into the “Google” brand more generally: Discover will be renamed to “Search,” while Favorites and Up Next (someone at Google is a huge Apple fan), or, as this documentation indicates, the watchlist, will simply move inside the Home tab. But the feature is still visible to most users, leading to an odd limbo that suggests staged rollouts and server-side switches.
What the new launcher update tells us about Discover
Android TV Home app version 7.1.7-787904429-f — new strings discovered: a message informing about Discover tab changes, and that your watchlist will now be placed in Home as well.
Package: com.google.android.tvlauncher
Version: Weitere Informationen
- Edit: popped the few missing new APKs.
This info comes from the “open beta” alpha Google+ community. One of the messages makes the transition clear by telling users that the tab is going away and that personalized recommendations will remain on the main screen.
Confusingly, a separate internal string claims that the tab has already been removed—even though the Discover button is still visible on some of Android TV’s most popular devices. This inconsistency indicates the change is not governed by the launcher version in and of itself, but rather server flags or gradual rollouts. It’s also conceivable that the deprecation plan slipped in timing, but the messaging went out regardless.
Why fold Discover into Home on Android TV?
Consolidation also brings things more in line with what Google is doing with the new Google TV and a single “For you” roller-style Home. A more streamlined layout cuts down on redundancy — no more bouncing back and forth between Home and Discover — and moves recommendations and your watchlist front and center.
There’s also a behavioral angle. A lot of viewers just dive straight into a particular app — Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube or whatever — rather than steering through platform-level tabs. Studies from industry research and measurement firm Hub Entertainment Research, for example, have consistently shown that app home screens are where users turn when they don’t know what to watch. If platform-level discovery is underperforming, where everything ends up in Home makes a bigger difference since there’s no extra UI junk to clutter it.
Rollout caveats: flags, OEM ETAs, regions
Android TV updates come inconsistently. Changes can be gated behind server-side configuration, account cohorts or geography. In addition, TV manufacturers like Sony, TCL and Hisense all have their own firmware schedules and certification timelines. Those layers are a lot of the reason you end up with something like the fact that a line in your code is referencing a change that has not “gone live” yet for most users.
Another theory: Google is A/B testing the consolidation. If some of you are already seeing fewer recommendations and watchlist tiles when you’re navigating through Home, that would back up a slow rollout plan aimed at gauging engagement before flipping the switch for all users.
What this means for your watchlist and recommendations
If Discover retires, your stuff shouldn’t vanish. The internal strings also make it clear that the watchlist moves to the Home tab. In practice, you’ll see the titles you’ve saved and tailored recommendations start to collapse into those top rows, up to and including support for Watch Next/Continue Watching that Android TV already includes at the system level.
For developers, though, little changes when it comes to feeds. The recommendations and watch-next items are being surfaced by the system over established APIs — it’s the presentation layer that moves. If anything, a single-tab model might be more Table/Sticky Headers/Spec Definitions for row app visibility and allow users to “spend” on Home.
The larger strategy: fewer tabs, stronger brand
Consolidating discovery in Home tidies up the Android TV experience and brings it closer to Google TV, with its content-first approach. It also reduces cognitive overhead. A unified “what to watch” destination is simpler to describe, for first-time users, and more consistent across set-top boxes, streaming sticks and built-in TV OS deployments.
Leading industry analysts, including Omdia and Strategy Analytics, have recognized TV platforms’ ongoing push to optimize home screens that feature a lean-back experience with rows curated by the platform’s team of editors in addition to developer-sourced shelves. That gives an engagement boost and ups ad inventory, all without making users learn multiple navigational paradigms.
So, is Discover actually being killed by Google?
That appears to be the case for all intents and purposes, according to code references made in the launcher: The tab is scheduled to retire with its features now part of Home. The mixed signals — which include language that serves as a warning the change is coming and language that suggests it’s already happened — suggest a rollout that hasn’t fully propagated or an internal schedule changed late in the game.
Until a server-side switch flips, Discover is likely to stick around for many devices. But if you notice bigger recommendations, and your watchlist hanging out on the Home screen, you’re probably encountering the new normal. In other words: the tab will be visible at this point in time, but the future of Android TV discovery will later place a great deal of emphasis on Home.