How to use Apple TV screensavers on Android TV

If there's one thing I love about Apple TV, it's the "Aerial" screensavers. The slow flyovers of some of the greatest places on Earth — and, soon, of Earth itself — are almost as much fun to watch as anything else you'll find in 2018. They're beautiful. They show you parts of the world you might otherwise have never seen. They're almost a reason to buy an Apple TV in and of itself.

And the default "backdrop" screensaver on Android TV (and specifically the Shield TV, which is the only one we currently recommend) is pretty good, too. You get some great pictures of great places throughout the world. But it's just not the same.

But it's possible to get Apple's Aerial screensavers on Android TV (and other Android devices, for that matter), thanks to the free Aerial Dream app.

In a nutshell, the developer says it uses the openly available files from Apple's Aerial screensaver. You'll install the app, and set the system screensaver to Aerial Dream, and you're done. They're not tiny files, but still not huge — below 200MB, the dev says. But you'll still want to take that into consideration as it downloads new videos.

You've got some options here, too. You can choose weather to show a clock and the location of the current screensaver. You can choose whether to view them randomly, or according to your local time, or whether you want to only see daytime or nighttime videos. You also can choose whether to cache the videos or not.

And that's it. It's a simple app that goes a long way to making the Android TV experience that much better.

By the way, you can do this for your computer screensaver, too.