It’s official, Google seems to be doubling down on Android TV. The latest in a stream of little improvements is the implementation of Ambient Mode for Google Photos on your big screen. Despite Ambient mode being an option for Smart Displays and Clocks for some time the feature was always missing from Android TV.
Users are reporting that the option for selecting Google Photos as the background for Android TV has appeared in the Google Home app. We’ve tested locally and can’t see the option yet, but that’s not 100% surprising with Google. It’s unclear if this is a mistake, test or the start of Google’s traditionally slow and painful roll-out of new features.
For those who have gotten it working you can see the standard date, time and weather info, the image library that’s in use and a somewhat surprising Chromecast Built-in logo. This makes us wonder if the image above is actually a cast of a Google Photos library, but we will know more when and if we get to test it.
I can happily confirm that this has been present on my Mi Box S for the last few weeks.