Top 10 must-have apps to supercharge your Android smart TV in 2025

Top 10 must-have Android TV apps for 2025 to enhance entertainment, control, and productivity on your smart TV.

One of the reasons why Android TV is widely accepted by customers is its versatility. The Android OS features a massive app library that can be installed from the Play Store to enhance the experience exactly how you want it. This app support makes Android TV one of the most popular OS for smart TVs. So today, I am going to tell you about 10 of the best apps you should install on your Android TV to multiply the TV experience even further.

Discover the best apps to unlock the full potential of your Android TV in 2025.

By Amit Rahi

For the past seven years, I have tracked consumer tech through constant shifts in hardware, platforms, and the way people actually use devices. Covering everything from budget gear to flagship hardware, I focus on what readers need to know, not on buzzwords or launch cycle hype. My expertise spans gaming laptops and chairs, high-performance PCs, gaming monitors, printers, smartwatches, earphones, headphones, Bluetooth speakers, tablets, and more, with a particular emphasis on how these products hold up in daily use. Reviews, explainers, buying guides, and news pieces all share the same goal: giving readers enough detail to make confident decisions without wading through fluff. Away from deadlines, I spend a lot of time gaming and watching films and anime, which naturally filters back into the work. Performance, comfort, display quality, and sound are judged the way players and viewers experience them, not just by lab numbers, which keeps my coverage grounded in real scenarios rather than just benchmarks.

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Kodi

Kodi is an open-source media player that offers extensive customisation with hundreds of add-ons for streaming content directly to your TV. It supports multiple media formats and allows you to create a digital library of all your local media, a true delight for advanced users.

Aerial Views screensaver

This is one of the first apps I installed on my new smart TVs. This app replaces the default ambient mode with beautiful 4K videos from different places around the world. Most of the videos are slow-moving drone clips or shots from space, both of which look fantastic on a TV. It is very customisable and uses a very small amount of internet data.

Plex

Plex is the most popular media centre app available on Android TV that lets you stream your personal collection of movies, music and other media content. It is a perfect app for people who want to centralise their media files and watch them remotely on different devices. It can take advantage of a fast wireless connection to play all media types with zero lag and buffering.

Steam Link

Gamers will love the Steam Link app because it lets you convert your TV into a gaming console. You can stream all your favourite games from PC to your TV with minimal latency and it supports controllers, which is perfect for a no-distraction gaming session on a big screen.

Browser

Yes, the app is literally called Browser and it's from developer browser-app.com, so you can find the correct one. This is one of the best browser apps I have found for TV; it has amazing features like multiple tab support, an ad blocker, and it loads websites pretty fast with absolutely no lag when using this browser.

Send Files to TV

This is another very important app for your TV because it allows you to share videos, images, music, and even APK files to your Android TV over Wi-Fi. It’s a fast and easy method to share files to your Android TV without cables or plugging in flash drives.

ATV Tools

This is a multifunction app that helps manage your Android TV by letting you control all the installed apps. It stops background tasks and helps you sideload APK files safely. It also offers a remote control feature that enables you to control your TV with your phone, especially if your TV has less RAM.

Today VPN

Today VPN is one of the best VPN apps I found on the Android TV’s Play Store, which is completely free. There is no subscription required; you don’t even have to worry about creating an account or logging in. It includes a lot of locations in the free version, and you can unlock more locations with a paid subscription.

Button Mapper

You often get some buttons on your smart TV remote that you don’t use at all. With Button Mapper, you can remap the buttons to open any app, which has amazing functionality. This app works flawlessly and most of the features are free, but you can donate to the developer one time to unlock pro features.

AnExplorer

AnExplorer is a versatile file manager app for Android TV which offers comprehensive file operations such as browsing, moving, and renaming, and supports access to network and cloud storage as well. The user interface is optimised for TVs, making navigation and file transfers smooth.