I use Kodi on Android boxes for streaming. I have looked at other options but nothing else works as well for me. Kodi wouldn’t, either, except for a couple of game-changing add-ons I have discovered.

The first one is called Chrome Launcher. This works like a URL shortcut, something Android badly needs. Most apps are designed for phones and don’t work well, or at all, on Android boxes. Kodi add-ons are also limited. Often, the only way to access some content is with a browser, but that can be an enormous pain on Android, especially with the Nvidia Shield, which for some bizarre reason decided to drop the mouse function from its remote. Without a mouse, Chrome is virtually unusable. Go figure. Google doesn’t even support its own products.

With the Launcher, accessing any site becomes a single-click operation. Just add the one you want. No more fiddling with navigation settings or bookmarks. You may still need a mouse to start the stream, depending on the site, but a cheap air mouse provides a good solution. Even the Shield works with this. Just plug the receiver into the USB port and you are good to go.

However, an earlier version of Chrome Launcher wouldn’t work with the Shield. Very little seems to. The one that does is version 1.2.0 from the Rasjani repo. I couldn’t live without it. You get a simple list of names you have given your sites and you just click on the one you want. It loads full-screen with no further intervention.

Together with the Chrome Launcher I use another brilliant add-on called Simple Favourites. The one I have is version 0.1.13 by Primaeval. With this I can make and organise my own shortcut folders any way I like and give them any names. Simple Favourites lets you make shortcuts from anywhere and it treats them all the same whether they are add-ons, Android apps, or Chrome Launcher entries. An easy way to do this is just to make Kodi Favourites shortcuts and then add them to your Simple Favourites folders from there. Afterwords the Kodi Favourites can be deleted to keep things from getting too cluttered while Simple Favourites itself can be placed in the Kodi Favourites folder. In this way I have been able to put everything I want to have accessible into Simple Favourites sub-folders. It is all in one place and I just use Simple Favourites as my user interface, rather than Kodi or Android.

I am not a Kodi expert. Far from it. But what I have described here works very well for me and it may also be helpful for others who are not Kodi experts, which is why I am posting this.

Shield purists seem to get offended when anyone suggests that their box of choice is anything less than a gift from the gods, and they will probably insist that I am not using it correctly, but for me the Shield interface is a complete pain in the butt, along with the silly remote. I use it because I bought it and the basic hardware works well. Now I finally have a decent interface, too.

So what else are people going to jump on? Right, VLC. Tried it, discarded it. More hassle than it is worth. Never seen a version that isn’t buggy. Does work well for some things, just not for this.

And then there is Chromecast. I didn’t like the early version but now I use it all the time with my notebook for videos and web sites I don’t want to permanently install with Chrome Launcher. No complaints there. Everyone should have it and it is one truly useful addition to the Shield. I don’t have a smart phone, though.

This is what has worked for me. Maybe it can also be useful for others.