Feature request: Layered Home button navigation (preserve app state on first press)
TV: 2022 Frame
The problem
The Home button currently collapses multiple distinct actions into a single unpredictable gesture:
“Return to this app's main screen”
“Exit to Smart Hub”
“Leave Art Mode”
The cost is state loss: every press throws away scroll position, guide placement, and browsing context that users would rather keep. If I'm deep in the YouTube TV guide or mid-scroll in Netflix and want to check something in the app's main landing screen, there's no way to get there — Home exits the app entirely and re-entering loses my place.
Requested behavior
A layered press model that mirrors how Back already works — each press steps up one level in the hierarchy, rather than jumping to the top:
First press of Home (while inside an app) → return to the current app's root/home screen, preserving app state
Second press (or press when already at app home, or from Smart Hub) → return to Smart Hub / TV home
Why Back isn't a substitute
The obvious response is “just use the Back button” — but Back solves a different problem:
Back is N presses, not 1. Six menus deep in YouTube TV means six Back presses to reach the app's root. Home's value is being a one-press shortcut.
Back is app-dependent and destructive. In Netflix, Back often exits the app entirely from the browse screen. In Samsung TV Plus, Back cycles through previously-watched channels instead of stepping up. Back's behavior is also unpredictable — just in different ways than Home.
Back reverses history; it doesn't jump to a known location. If you opened an app via universal search, a continue-watching tile, or a deep link, Back may never pass through the app's home screen on the way out. Home-as-app-home is a direct jump to a known location.
The whole point of a Home button is to be distinct from Back — a direct jump rather than a retrace. Right now, the only known location it jumps to is the top of the TV. The request is to make it jump to the top of the app first, then the top of the TV.
Why it's worth doing
Resolves button overloading. One button is currently trying to do three different things. A two-level hierarchy separates the common case (“go back to this app's main screen”) from the escape hatch (“get me out”).
Preserves user state. The most frequent action — returning to an app's landing screen — stops destroying scroll position and context.
Backward-compatible. Users who want the current “exit everything” behavior still get it, just with one extra press. Nothing breaks.
Addresses a cluster of existing complaints. Multiple threads on this forum describe Home button unpredictability (Art Mode hijacking, app exit behavior, Samsung TV Plus traps). A layered model resolves the root cause rather than each symptom.
Workarounds today
None I've found, short of third-party remotes or Home Assistant scripting a Back→Home sequence — neither of which the average Frame owner is going to do.
Thanks for considering — happy to provide more detail or test a beta build if that's useful.
I agree that OP's comparison to Apple's TVOS isn't the best example for user familiarity since Apple doesn't license Apple TV to OEMs and it's a set top box.
I also don't think the suggested behavior in this post is the best either, but I get what the OP is getting at.
Tizen is totally different for other TV interfaces and very difficult to navigate by comparison, in my opinion. I would personally like to see Samsung move away from Tizen and adopt Google TV.
