- Let's talk about the top 10 free apps on your Chromecast
with Google TV.
Now, of course, there are a lot of apps on the Chromecast
with Google TV.
Some of them are free, some of them are not.
I'm going to be talking about the ones
that really you oughta have
if they catch your interest at all in this video.
The idea behind this video is that for cord cutters,
probably a lot of the reason you cut the cord was
to save money.
And if you've got apps like these,
then you'll never have to spend money on content ever again.
You might still choose to, but, you know, that's up to you.
You'll never have to
because after you get these top 10 free apps,
you'll have more content
than you could ever possibly consume.
So, let's dive in.
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All right, so let's get into our apps.
The first thing we should do
as we go into our home screen here is scroll over
to the apps tab and I'll show you how to download an app
just in case you don't know how to do it yet.
If you do, feel free to skip forward a moment.
So on this apps tab, I'm gonna come down here,
go past this featured stuff, the Your Apps.
You'll see that they've got things arranged by category
that you can scroll through here,
or you can come down here, find some featured stuff,
other stuff that's arranged by category.
If you find something that looks interesting to you,
okay, Xumo, sure.
You find an app that looks interesting, you hit install.
And once it's done with that, yeah, you can hit open,
or if you want to find it amongst the rest of your apps,
you come back to that apps tab
and it'll show up under Your Apps.
Now, of course, it's not here up front
'cause I've arranged this particularly for this video.
So, I'm gonna come over here all the way to See All,
and that's where I can see all of my apps in one place.
All right, there's Xumo right there.
Now that is a free app that we could talk about,
but we're not going to
'cause there's better stuff out there.
Now the other place you can find that app listing is
on that For You tab.
If you come down here a few clicks,
there you go, there's Your Apps right there.
If you want to customize what's available
on that home screen, that For You tab,
then again, you scroll all the way to the right,
go to See All, and yeah, you've got all your apps there.
You'll notice that line.
Anything above this line, those 12 apps are going to appear
on your home screen.
So, if you want something else up there,
let's say you want Apple TV,
you just long hold the center button, that select key,
click on Move, and then you can move it,
arrange it wherever you want.
After you hit that select key again,
you'll need to press the back key.
It says, press back to finish.
And it's arranged.
Now then, let's start with our top 10.
You'll notice YouTube right here in the front spot,
but that's kind of an obvious choice, okay,
so I'm gonna kind of skip over that.
Yes, you should get YouTube.
Yes, it's the most amazing place for free content,
including from yours truly.
But we're gonna skip it for now.
You may not have known that there is a YouTube Kids app.
Now this may not apply to everybody watching,
but if you do have kids,
especially kids under say the age of 12 or so,
then the YouTube Kids app is gold.
You click on that.
And when you go through the setup process,
which I've already done so it's not gonna show me that here,
it's gonna ask how old your kids are.
Are they preschool age?
Are they five to eight?
Are they eight to 12?
Something like that.
Once they get in there,
they'll see a few different categories,
shows, music, explore, and gaming content.
So, this is all stuff
that YouTube's automated system has scrubbed
that they believe is for kids.
And as they tell you, nothing is ever perfect,
but it should be pretty good.
There shouldn't be much on here
that you wouldn't approve of for your children
depending on their age range.
So, definitely make sure you get YouTube Kids, yes.
And then when I hit the back button,
it asks if I want to exit.
I do, and I'm gonna come to my next one, Dust.
Now this is one that I've often included
in kind of hidden gems videos instead of top 10s.
But I'm gonna throw this one in the top 10
just because it's so interesting as a niche product.
Dust is a sci-fi specific channel or app.
Once you come into Dust, you'll see that it's populated
with a bunch of sci-fi content.
Now much of the content
on here is going to be short form content.
So, shorts that are say, you know, three to 10 minutes long,
something like that.
There are a few longer things on here,
like movies and whatnot,
but mostly it's just fun short sci-fi content.
I highly recommend it
if that's a niche that you're interested in.
If it's not, then we should move on to our next app.
Now this one is gonna be more built for everybody, Peacock.
This is NBC Universal's streaming service.
But hang on a second
because Peacock is a premium streamer, right?
Well, they actually have a free tier.
So, you can pay five bucks a month to get their full library
or you can pay 10 bucks a month
if you want the full library
and no commercial interruptions,
but you can log into Peacock
and get access to a good chunk of their library,
about half of it, maybe a little more.
And as with most of the free content that you see,
it's gonna be commercial support it.
So, if you find something that you want to watch,
okay, let's say, I want to turn on "The Matrix,"
then when you do, it's gonna say,
hey, let's watch some commercials
and then you'll be able to enjoy your movie.
Some movies will have commercial interruptions throughout,
some of them like this one says, enjoy your movie ad-free
after you watch usually a minute or two, maybe three,
of commercials.
Not a bad deal honestly.
Peacock kind of kills it that way.
Peacock is also a great home
for those who like Olympic sports
and for those who like WWE content.
Now there's obviously lots of other stuff on there,
but that's kind of one of those things
that Peacock specializes in.
So, if you like wrestling content especially,
Peacock, definitely the place to be.
All right, now let's talk about Tubi, free movies and TV.
Tubi is one of the oldest free content platforms out there.
And frankly, it's one of the best.
So, Tubi is kind of thought of as a Netflix imitator.
It's like Netflix with commercials.
So, you can watch it for free.
Pretty sweet.
Now you can go in here and sign in.
If you sign in, then you can keep track of my list,
you can save shows, that sort of thing,
but you don't have to.
We can go ahead and skip that,
and it'll take us, let's see, continue as guest,
and it'll take us right to the Tubi homepage.
Now there are a lot of Netflix imitators out there.
The reason that Tubi gets the nod here is
because their library is so good.
Compared to a lot of those Netflix imitators,
and we could talk about a few of them,
but compared to the other ones, Tubi's content is fabulous.
And since Tubi came around,
they've actually branched out
into a lot of other content as well,
so it's not just that Netflix kind of grid platform.
They've also got some news content, live news content.
You can also come up here to the top, click over to live TV,
and there you can see everything that they offer
as far as live TV.
Now that's gonna bring up a good question.
If you look close at this list,
you'll see that I don't have Pluto TV on there.
You may have heard of that, you may not.
Pluto TV is the best free live TV platform out there,
so why am I not highlighting it here?
Well, we'll take a break from our list here
and just say, if you've got the Chromecast with Google TV,
you just hit the home button, come up here to the top,
and where it says Live, there you go, there's your Pluto TV.
This is 324, yes, I counted,
324 channels powered by Pluto TV.
You may still want to download that app
because it'll have a slightly different navigation
and maybe you'll like that more, but you don't need to.
All of those channels are here in the live TV tab
on Google TV.
So, that doesn't even count in our list.
That's just a bonus.
You're welcome.
All right, moving on.
Let's talk about IMDb TV.
This one is going to be similar
to those other Netflix imitators,
so why do I bring it up here?
Well, it's all about the library.
So, IMDb TV is powered by Amazon.
Amazon has Prime Video, of course,
but that's their, well, premium content.
And here on IMDb TV,
that's where they put their commercial supported content.
And similar to Tubi, they've got a very good library.
So, if you've got Tubi, why do you need something else?
Well, again, it's all about the library.
They're gonna have titles on IMDb TV
that you can't get over on Tubi,
so it helps to have a little bit of overlap there
so that you can always find something to watch.
All right, next up is Haystack News.
Let's talk about this one
because I think it's really valuable to have a live news app
on your device.
It's good to be able to keep track of things,
and you don't have to pay for it anymore.
Haystack News does a great job of bringing together national
and local content into one place.
Once you sign in, it'll ask you for your zip code
and then it will suggest channels for you
or stations for you that you may want to keep track of.
You can also, with Haystack TV,
let it know what types of subjects you're interested in.
So, when you're setting it up, you might say, you know,
I'm really interested in entertainment news,
international news, and weather.
And then when you are signed in,
you come to My Headlines,
and it will have new stories specifically tailored
to your taste in subject.
Twitch is another niche product.
Kind of similar to Dust, you're either into it
or you're not.
Twitch is video game centric, okay?
So, this is not games you play.
This is games you watch.
So, if you're into video game culture
or you want to watch tournaments online,
whatever the case may be,
Twitch is a great place to do that.
You can follow it by game,
you can follow specific streamers, whatever your flavor is.
Now let's move on to Spotify.
This is another maybe obvious one,
but sometimes people don't think of it.
Yes, you can use your streaming device to listen to music.
So, this is especially useful obviously
if you want to have something on in the background
and you can't watch it, you know,
maybe you're doing the dishes
or maybe you're entertaining a party, something like that.
Whatever the case is,
yeah, you can go ahead and play your songs here on Spotify.
And the good news is once you get in here,
you're playing your stuff on Spotify.
Once it's playing, you can go back to your home screen
and it will continue playing.
So, now on my home screen, I go to For You,
you'll see that it is still playing.
So, I can play music and I can still go ahead
and search through my apps,
I can look for content to watch if I want to,
without turning off the music.
Now, once I open up an app, once I go into some content,
it's going to shut that music off,
but it does play in the meantime.
And here's a little tip for you by the way,
if you're here on the home screen,
you're watching some music
and you want to bring up the screensaver
instead of waiting for it to come up after a few minutes,
just hit the back button from your home screen,
and it will immediately start the screensaver.
Speaking of which we can go now to our next app
and that is Plex.
Now Plex is an interesting one,
and I promise this will tie back into Spotify
in just a moment.
But let me explain what Plex is first.
Plex has a lot of the things
that we've already talked about.
They have movies and shows that you can scroll through.
They have a live TV service with channels.
They're not cable channels,
but they're channels that you can scroll through
if they have content that you want to watch.
But the real magic of Plex is
that you can bring in your own content,
your own library onto the cloud and stream it on a server.
So right here, if I go to music,
I've uploaded a few of my disks onto my Plex server,
so I can listen to those anytime I'd like
from my Chromecast.
And it's the same thing here.
Let's say I want to listen to Pascal Obispo,
one of my favorite French artists from a few years ago,
well, once he's playing,
it's gonna do the same thing as Spotify,
where that is going to show up here on my home screen.
It's gonna keep playing until I bring up another app.
And of course it's not just music.
You can upload your own DVDs,
you can do your photos, whatever you'd like,
you can load it onto your Plex server
and then have access to it on any streaming device
that supports Plex.
It's really nice.
Now in this video,
I'm not going to show you how to set up your Plex server.
That would take a little bit too long.
But I do have a video to that effect,
so go check that one out.
And finally, let's talk about Crackle.
Now Crackle is gonna be similar to Tubi, similar to IMDb TV
in that it's kind of a Netflix imitator
with some twists in there.
So once we get in there, again, like the others,
you can log in, but you don't have to.
So if you log in, you'll be able to save your lists,
you'll be able to save things to watch for later.
If you skip that, you may not be able to.
So, it's probably a better experience if you log in.
For now though, I'm gonna skip that.
Now once you get into Crackle,
yeah, you'll notice that it is set up a lot
like a Netflix imitator,
lots of titles for you to watch.
Why am I bringing this one up?
Well, again, same reason as IMDb TV
and same reason as Tubi,
and it's that it's good to have overlap.
Okay, so if titles aren't available on one service,
you may be able to find it on another.
And there you have it.
There's 10 or so, I think I threw a couple extras in there.
10 of the best free apps that you can get
on your Chromecast.
Now there are a lot of free apps out there,
so if you have any favorites
that you want to recommend to people,
go ahead and hit the comments and let us know.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Don't forget to like if you liked this video,
if it was helpful to you,
and join me on Fridays at 2:00 PM Eastern
for the live streams I do right here on this channel.
I'd love to see you there.
I'll see you next time.