page.title=Building TV Apps page.tags=tv, leanback helpoutsWidget=true startpage=true @jd:body
Android offers a rich user experience that's optimized for apps running on large screen devices, such as high-definition televisions. Apps on TV offer new opportunities to delight your users from the comfort of their couch.
TV apps use the same structure as those for phones and tablets. This approach means you can create new TV apps based on what you already know about building apps for Android, or extend your existing apps to also run on TV devices. However, the user interaction model for TV is substantially different from phone and tablet devices. In order to make your app successful on TV devices, you must design new layouts that can be easily understood from 10 feet away, and provide navigation that works with just a directional pad and a select button.
This class describes how to start building apps for TV, including setting up your development environment, basic requirements for layouts and navigation, as well as guidance on how to handle hardware features that are not typically available on TV devices.
Note: You are encouraged to use Android Studio for building TV apps, because it provides project setup, library inclusion, and packaging conveniences. This training assumes you are using Android Studio.