Recent Changes (update?)

[djMot76]

ISSUE 1:
A couple of days ago, the YouTube app on my Google TV Streamer demanded account verification for whatever reason.  The process was really messed up and took multiple attempts and dealing with errors.  Eventually, it accepted verification.  Okay, so fine, but now every time I switch to the YouTube app, it gives me the "Who's Watching" screen.  This happens even if the streamer went into screensaver and is brought back out after only mere minutes.  It then makes me go back to my history to find the video I had been watching (but apparently was called away from) so I can resume watching.  The Google TV Streamer is new to me and has only been in use for less than 2 months.  This is probably the first update it has received.  Sadly, the YouTube app now behaves EXACTLY like the YouTube app on Roku.  I decided to try the Streamer to get away from this absurd behavior, but it has clearly caught up with me.  Is there some reason Google believes it must ask who's watching EVERY time the app gets focus?  You can change who's watching just by clicking on the current account's avatar.  Could this not be a setting where one could select to ask every time vs just keep using the current account until manually changed?  Before this update, if that's what changed everything, I could literally pause a video and resume it the next day.  Now, I have to jump through some really annoying hoops just to get back to where I left off only 10min ago.

ISSUE 2:
I had been using my Google Photos as the screensaver for the Streamer.  Yesterday, it started to show me the Google Art Gallery instead.  When I tried to re-select my Google Photo screensaver, it demanded I verify the account.  Fine, I did that.  It went back to my photos, so I went and watched some YouTube or whatever, and the very next time it went to screensaver, it was back to the Art Gallery.  Tried to switch it back to Google Photos, and once again had to verify the account.  Only to have it switch right back to the Art Gallery.  I am totally unable to use my own Google Photos account as a screensaver anymore.

SO NOW WHAT?
Is this just the way this is going to be now?  Should I just -sigh- and go back to Roku and conclude this was just a bad experiment?

[AndersC]

Hi @djMot76,

Thank you for posting in the community. I'm sorry to hear that you're running into a couple of issues with your Google TV Streamer (4K), specifically with the YouTube app constantly asking "Who's Watching" and with your Google Photos screensaver reverting to the Art Gallery. It sounds annoying to have to jump through extra hoops just to resume a video you paused briefly, and your experience with the screensaver is certainly not how it should be. I'm happy to assist you in troubleshooting this.

Since you mentioned the issue started after the latest update and you already tried to change the settings/options of both apps, like switching back to Google Photos when you automatically get to the Art Gallery, I recommend that you factory reset your Google TV Streamer (4K) to confirm if the issue was due to a problem when installing the latest update. After the reset, your device will automatically update with the default settings, and this should help to refresh the system.

In case you don't know how to factory reset your Google TV Streamer (4K), just follow the steps below:

1. While the device is plugged into the TV and powered on, press and hold the reset button for 10-12 seconds on the back of the device. The LED should start to blink yellow.
2. When the LED light turns solid white, release the button, and the device should then reset.
3. After the reset, you just need to set up your device again within the Google Home app. You can visit the article Set up Google TV Streamer (4K) and Voice Remote, where you'll find the steps to follow.
   

In case you're still experiencing the same issues after the reset, you can always share your feedback. We're always looking for ways to improve our products and meet your needs.

Keep me posted. I'll be waiting for your response.

Regards,

Anders

[djMot76]

Anders,

Thank you for your reply. I'll first preface this with the fact that my entire career has been in IT and much of it doing application development. Although now recently retired, I still continue to keep my skills sharp, and I'm no stranger to how software is developed.

With that out of the way, let's first be pragmatic about the "factory reset" lie. I can literally count on one hand, and still have 5 fingers left, the number of times that has actually worked in my experience. It's a tired old punt that only causes more pain for the customer than is worth the effort. Sadly, many software authors use it as a way to block forward progress on matters such as I'm relating because the support representatives are following a script and will not proceed until the all-pain-no-gain option is exhausted. You seem to think all I have to do is set up the Google Home app, but what about the other streaming services that I have dialed into this Streamer? They need to be installed and set up again, too, right? So no, I'm sorry, but I decline to rotely perform a factory reset for you just to prove everything I said still remains on the other side of the all-pain-no-gain option.

To further debunk the notion that a factory reset will fix the problem, I'll ask you to re-read what I wrote. You completely discounted the fact that I stated the YouTube app is now performing on the Streamer exactly the way it performs on Roku devices. This behavior of continuously asking "who's watching" infected the Roku devices I own somewhere around a year ago. It's been discussed as a severe annoyance on other forums. It's an intentionally programmed feature that was rolled out some time ago and no one to my knowledge is able to work around it. How could they? The apps have literally been programmed to behave this way, and despite the annoyance it causes your customers, it seems that Alphabet/Google/YouTube could care less. It was a horrible decision to have made and implemented, but so what, right? I mean, here it is a year or so later and the same abhorrent behavior still exists, and has apparently been standardized across multiple platforms. So no, a factory reset will not fix this.

As for the screen saver, now that I've had to deal with it for a while, I notice that it actually seems to randomly select either my own Photos galleries or Google's gallery at any given instance of its activation. If it selects Google's gallery, and I go into settings and try to select my own, it will force me to authenticate. But that authentication is rather moot since it may select Google's gallery the next time the screensaver kicks in anyway.

So look, Anders, what I really need you to do is go back to the dev teams for these features and tell them they have created a mess and they should recognize and correct them. When I tell the Streamer to use my galleries, that's what it darn well better do. As the for YouTube app, stop incessantly asking "who's watching"! If we want to change who's watching we will through the account avatar. If the devs absolutely insist on asking (maybe because Netflix and others do it, too), only ask when the app loads, but NOT when it's coming out of screensaver. When the app first loads, at least you know nothing was being watched, but paused long enough for the screensaver to kick in. But if it's already loaded and just coming out of screensaver, then just resume; don't start over.

Some people would call what's happening here the "ensh*tification" of this Streamer. It's a harsh evaluation, but it's not wrong. I feel like my experimental switch to the Google TV Streamer from Roku failed to provide any meaningful advantage. Out of the box and before forced updates, it actually did behave better than Roku, other than the remote kept becoming unresponsive and needed to be reset by pulling/reinserting the battery. At least that's not happened for a while now perhaps corrected by the update that broke the other things. Roku has a better remote anyway, so I'm basically considering just ditching this Google TV Streamer due to its ensh*tification. Sad. I expect more out of Google.