Every app has access to an api that asks your phone to verify your fingerprint against the ones stored for the lockscreen. The phone then asks for your fingerprint and tells the app if it passed or not.

As the commenter pointed out, it’s not an image of your fingerprint either. It’s a hash that is stored on your phone that is likely unique to that device.

It’s so useful you see it mentioned on every other thread

And for me: 4. It makes it a lot harder to accidently turn my camera on in meetings (a different form of privacy)

For me it was much simpler to just add it as a line in the field in my router settings than trying to find a launcher that was better while looking decent.

I also like the look of the launcher minus the ads as well, so that might play into it.

I’m not worried about it breaking any features tied to the ads, and I haven’t had any problems in like 2 years I’ve used it.

(On the shield 2019) If you block this domain with your dns ad blocker, the default launcher will only show ads for the YouTube, Google TV, and Google Play Store apps (not individual shows). I find these to be far less annoying as they use muted tones.

androidtvwatsonfe-pa.googleapis.com

If you have already setup your device and currently see ads, you need to reset the android tv home application data to get rid of them. This will temporarily show you the old dashboard, but the new one will load eventually (without ads).

Try blocking this domain manually and see if it works (it wasn’t part of my native lists in my router’s adblock)

androidtvwatsonfe-pa.googleapis.com

If you have already set up your device and currently see ads, you need to reset the android tv home application data to get rid of them. This will temporarily show you the old dashboard, but the new one will load eventually (without ads, in its place it shows a dark “Google play, Youtube”, and something else that isnt very intrusive).

I like to describe this as a game of peekaboo.

Where’s the vulnerability?

There it is!

Where’s the vulnerability?

(Not opening eyes) Huh, I guess there are none!

This is what I have ended up running with nextcloud as the server.

I also have home assistant syncing to CalDAV so that I can automatically create/remove tasks.

Fun fact for shield owners:

If you block this domain with your dns ad blocker, the default launcher will only show ads for the YouTube, Google TV, and Google Play Store apps (not individual shows). I find these to be far less annoying as they use muted tones.

androidtvwatsonfe-pa.googleapis.com

If you have already setup your device and currently see ads, you need to reset the android tv home application data to get rid of them. This will temporarily show you the old dashboard, but the new one will load eventually (without ads).