This development was noticed by Android expert Mishaal Rahman in a few lines of code. That recent code update confirms that Android TV 13 will be discontinued in its entirety, and the next Android Studio Canary edition will flag the operating system as unsupported.
Alongside the new Android 14 Beta 3 builds, Google has also quietly released the first builds of Android TV 14 based on Android 14! Only emulator builds are available now.
Alongside this, Google seems to be retiring Android TV 13 (!) pic.twitter.com/Dmy5f9Fril
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 7, 2023
At this point, Android TV 14 Beta is only available to be run via an emulator and is, as the name implies, based on the Android 14 operating system. This code base allows for some new functionality to be introduced to Android TV 14 that will work once Android 14 goes public, as revealed through more code in the beta build.
Here’s a look at the new “magic button” customization settings in Android TV 14. This is currently disabled by default, so I had to manually surface these pages. pic.twitter.com/7Tzc9Pt1rh
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 8, 2023
The magic button also seemingly has the added functionality to be programmed for switching inputs, a function that is already built in with some Android TV devices such as the Chromecast with Google TV. This particular device already has the option to let you reprogram the built in YouTube button to open either YouTube TV or the actual YouTube app.
Photo by Travis on Unsplash
However, in the case of the other buttons that are pre-programmed, it doesn’t seem like you can re-program those as those are tied to brands and license deals. The alternative being that there could be an opening here for some third party or additional remotes released by Google, that will have this magic button available for a more customized experience.
