although the HomePods e Echos are quite popular these days, many people listen to music or podcasts directly from their televisions — either because they don’t have a device dedicated exclusively to audio playback, or to take advantage of the benefits of a graphical interface.
However, when you just need to listen to what’s playing (like calm music at bedtime), the light generated by the TV can be a nuisance — especially on TV systems that don’t have an option to “turn off” the video, like Apple TVs.
The developer Craig Hockenberry was one of the people who suffered from this limitation — that is until he himself developed the Blank TVapp for tvOS whose main functionality is (believe me) to “turn off” the television screen.
When entering the app for the first time, it displays a welcome screen explaining how the app works, as well as some tips on how and when to use it.
Basically, once the “OK” option is selected, it quickly displays a quote and then simply leaves the screen completely black, requiring you to tap the “Back” button or the “TV” button to exit the software.
When tapping the touch-sensitive surface, another quote is displayed for a while until the image is completely “turned off” again. Before that happens, you can simply click on the clickpad to change the quote that is displayed on the screen.
Hockenberry’s idea, by the way, was to make the app simply display the black screen, but as a version with this feature was not approved by App Store reviewers (because it lacks functionality), it came in handy (good news) ) quote idea.
In addition to solving the problem with the screen being turned on, Blank can still be a good ally in energy savings — especially in OLED TVs, which turn off screen pixels when not in use.
Cool idea, isn’t it?
Apple TV 4K
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via MacStories