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I bought a handheld computer, now Google says I'm not allowed to do whatever the hell I want to it
(keepandroidopen.org)
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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Privacy
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It's like on my old Nvidia SHIELD, an update rolled in and all of a sudden there are ads on the homepage. Some people were ok with TV/movie ads being on a TV/movie device, but, why the hell would I want ads for content only available on services that I don't have? If they'd at least only given me ads for the services it knew I was subscribed to, I would have at least been less pissed off since it could have been useful.
Reached out to Nvidia and they say there isn't anything they can do, it's built that way by Google. By no means do I just blindly accept that that was accurate, but, it's still bullshit that with a basic update all of a sudden the nature of my device was completely changed (imo) and I'm expected to just suck it up or work around it with 3rd party launchers that weren't as polished.
Dunno if it's gotten better/worse in the last couple years, mine died and I elected to not replace it with another Android device.
Just like android phones, the "launcher" in the shield is just the default. You can download a replacement launcher. I'm using Projectivy.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu&hl=en_GB
https://troypoint.com/projectivy-launcher/
I was frustrated by this also and decided not to put the effort into rooting the device to get rid of all that crap. Instead I decided to use Flauncher together with Button Mapper. Using that tool, I map the homepage button on the remote to point to Flauncher. It isn't a perfect solution but it was done in a few minutes and I can now mostly avoid the bullshit ads