How to migrate saved playlists from Android TV's default launcher

Updated 2026-11-04

If you use a Samsung or LG smart TV running Android TV and have curated playlists built up over months—music mixes, news feeds, kids’ shows—you probably noticed that the system launch screen feels sparse compared to what you’ve installed yourself. Stock Android TV on many devices hides or limits playlist management behind a locked-down “Samsung TV Plus” or “LG TV+“-style account system, and once you decide to install a more flexible third-party launcher like CleanYourTV, the playlists tend to disappear. Migrating them without losing any data is one of the trickier steps in setting up a custom launcher on Android TV, but the effort pays off: you end up with a launcher that lets you organize playlists as tiles, quick-launch remote commands, and full control over which apps appear on the home screen.

Why Your Playlists Disappear After Switching Launchers

Android TV’s stock launcher (the one that ships with the OS, sometimes branded as “Samsung TV Launcher” or “LG TV Launcher” depending on the hardware partner) relies on Google Play Services and the Chromecast Smart Display API to surface app shortcuts. Your playlists live inside the “Recent Apps” feature, the home-screen widgets, and sometimes inside the TV platform’s own “My Apps” panel, which the default launcher can read but cannot permanently export. When you remove the default launcher layer and install CleanYourTV, the new launcher starts as a blank slate: it scans installed apps, draws tiles from the package manager, and pulls widget data from the Home Screen API. It has no way to know about playlists you manually created in the stock UI unless the underlying app exports them to a standard format first.

The main culprits for lost playlists are these scenarios: (1) playlists stored only inside the TV’s “My Content” / “My Media” section and not exported to the Cloud via the TV’s built-in backup, (2) playlists managed by a third-party streaming app (e.g., Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video) that uses its own cloud account and does not expose a JSON or XML export API to other launchers, and (3) playlists created with smart remote gestures that rely on a proprietary TV service (for example, the old Samsung “Smart Hub” playlist feature) that is inaccessible from any other launcher. CleanYourTV itself does not import playlists out of the box, which means the migration path is a manual one—but it is straightforward if you follow the right order.

Preparing Your Playlists Before You Remove the Stock Launcher

Before you uninstall the default Android TV launcher and power a fresh CleanYourTV install, audit every playlist you want to keep. On most TVs, go to Settings > General > My Content or My Media > Playlists, navigate each list, and verify whether a “Export” or “Share” option exists. For streaming apps that support it—Netflix, YouTube, Plex, and a few others—open the app directly on the TV, go to the three-dot menu, and choose “Copy to clipboard” or “Export playlist.” Most of these services allow you to download an .fodformat (iOS/macOS) or .m3u (free for many) file. Even if your launcher can’t read the format, the exported files serve as a safe backup you can restore later by recreating the list in the target app on the new launcher.

Next, gather the exact names you use daily, because you’ll need them in CleanYourTV later: “Morning Jazz,” “Kids’ Cartoons,” “Workout Mix,” “Late-Night Reads,” and whatever other named collections you have. Write them down. Android TV’s “Create Tile” flow works best with short, exact labels—the tile’s subtitle appears beneath the icon, and if the name is long or contains punctuation, the tile rendering drops characters. Also copy the URLs of the playlists if they live inside the app itself (e.g., the Plex URL bar) so you can recreate the tile with a link subtitle. Finally, confirm that you’re logging into the same accounts on both the old and the new setup: the playlist content usually lives in the per-account cloud, and a different account will only get you a blank slate.

Installing CleanYourTV and Importing Your Lists

Once you have the export files (or at least the app names and URLs), install CleanYourTV from its verified store listing. Boot the TV, sign into your Google account if prompted, and run the installer. CleanYourTV replaces the stock launcher entirely—after installation, restart the TV and you’ll land on the CleanYourTV home screen, where you can search for each app you want on your account list using the new search bar.

For each streaming app you had a playlist in, open it on the TV through CleanYourTV’s search or built-in app picker, then recreate the playlist within the app itself. CleanYourTV exposes each app’s “Add to tile” or “Shortcut” command, and because the app is now the source of truth, you’re guaranteed that the tile will always reflect the correct content. For apps that don’t natively support tile creation (some older versions of the Netflix app, for instance), the workaround is to create a manual “Shortcut” tile pointing to the app’s web URL, and then add a secondary tile that links to the playlist’s deep-link URL embedded in the app’s share menu.

If you exported .m3u or .fodformat playlists from the old launcher, you can paste those names into CleanYourTV’s tile editor under “Custom URL,” and the app will load the playlist from its own cloud storage when you tap the tile. This is the closest thing CleanYourTV has to true playlist import: it won’t parse arbitrary JSON from the old launcher’s unknown format unless it happens to match the known export schema. In practice, the most reliable method is to re-create the playlists in-app, exactly in the order and grouping you prefer, and treat CleanYourTV’s tile titles as your custom label set.

Trade-Offs Between the Stock Launcher and CleanYourTV

The default Android TV launcher is polished, and it integrates deeply with the TV platform’s native apps, so you lose some of that convenience when you switch. The biggest loss is that the stock launcher automatically surfaces the most recently used apps, the recent-playback screen, and the built-in “My Apps” grid—which CleanYourTV doesn’t fully replicate until you add tiles. On the plus side, the stock launcher handles playlist sharing with the Samsung Connect, LG ThinQ, or Google Home ecosystem much more smoothly, and you don’t have to move your account credentials around during setup.

CleanYourTV wins decisively on flexibility: you can rearrange tiles in any order, change colors, swap out icons, and use its browser to pull in web-based content tiles. Its downside is the lack of official import tools—there’s no one-click “Import all playlists from Android TV” button, so expect an extra 20 to 30 minutes of manual tile creation per day. Another trade-off to note: CleanYourTV is primarily a shortcut and home-screen manager; it doesn’t replace the TV’s native media player or the ability to cast playlists from the system-wide “Cast” panel while the launcher is active. If you rely on the default launcher’s “Play anywhere” casting workflow, build a small habit of launching a playlist via CleanYourTV’s shortcut, then pushing it to the Cast panel from the app’s own interface.

Tips To Keep Your Migration Smooth

• Back up your current playlist files before removing the stock launcher; keep the old export on your laptop as a safety net.
• Recreate playlists in the order you use them most often first, because CleanYourTV’s tile layout defaults to alphabetical sorting and you’ll have to tweak it.
• If an app’s tile creation fails, check that the app supports “App Links” in the TV’s Developer Options (Settings > Developer options > “App links” toggle); without it, Custom Tiles don’t render correctly.
• Use the same account for each streaming service across both launchers—if a Plex library was in your Google account on the old TV, sign into the same Plex account on the new one before creating the tile.
• Test the migration with a single playlist first: recreate “Morning Jazz” on CleanYourTV, confirm it plays correctly via the tile, and only then bulk-migrate the remaining playlists.

By following these steps, you can move your playlists out of the locked stock launcher and into a CleanYourTV setup where every curated list is immediately available as a tile on your home screen. The migration takes patience and a bit of manual work, but the result is a TV that finally respects how you organize content—and once the tiles are in place, you’ll spend less time hunting for apps and more time watching what you’ve arranged for yourself.

Related reading: more Android TV notes