Android TV has grown quite a bit in the past year, with over 80% more monthly active devices than one year ago. And to celebrate, Google is adding several new features to its smart TV platform.

PIN code purchases are coming to Android TV to make buying things easier. Soon you'll be able to enter a short PIN code rather than your full password when buying content on Google Play.

For those times that you do have to type something out, Gboard on Android TV is getting better, too. New layouts are coming to the keyboard as well as speech-to-text and predictive typing to make it easier to use that virtual keyboard on your television.

Google is also enabling Instant apps for Android TV. When developers enable this feature for their app, you'll see a "Try Now" button next to the "Install" button on an app page. Clicking "Try Now" will let you quickly load part of an app so you can try it out and see if you like it before committing to the full download and install.

Finally, an auto low latency mode should help make gaming better on Android TV. When developers enable this feature for their games, Android TV will disable post-processing and minimize latency whenever a game is being played fullscreen.

Android TV doesn't get quite the same amount of love as Android on tablets, so it's good to see Google adding several new features to the platform. These all look like solid improvements, and I'm sure lots of users of smart TV platforms can attest that it's a pain having to type using an on-screen keyboard, so the PIN code purchases and Gboard additions are especially exciting.