Ansub/tv-detox

1. On the TV, open Settings, then Device Preferences (or System), then About.
2. Press OK on Build 7 times until you see "You are now a developer."
3. Go back, open Developer options and turn on USB debugging. If you see Network debugging or Wireless debugging, turn that on too.
4. The first time your laptop connects, the TV asks "Allow debugging?" Tick "Always allow" and press Allow.

Menus differ a bit by brand. If you're stuck, ask Claude or Codex: "I have a <brand and model> TV. How can you connect to it from my laptop and take control of it?"

Android TV 9 (a real TV), 11 and 12, and Google TV 14. Every change is tested automatically on emulators.

• Amazon Fire TV: partly. Fire TV is Android underneath, so the cleanup works. Amazon blocks changing the home screen on current Fire TVs, so you keep Amazon's. Tell Claude what you want to keep, like Alexa voice search on the remote.
• Roku: no. Roku runs its own system, not Android, so nothing can connect to it to turn things off.
• Samsung (Tizen): no, for the same reason.
• LG (webOS): no. You can still cut down the ads by turning off Home Promotion and Content Recommendation in the TV's home settings.

If your TV or streaming box runs Android TV or Google TV, it should work. That includes many Sony, TCL, Hisense, Philips and Xiaomi TVs, Chromecast with Google TV and Nvidia Shield. Some of those brands also sell Roku or other non-Android models, so check Settings > About if you're not sure.

• Android projectors: probably. If it has Developer options and USB debugging, the cleanup should work. Cheap projectors often run a custom Android, so the home screen may act a bit differently.
• Android phones: only the cleanup. The home screen is made for a TV remote, not touch.

It runs the same Google TV this is tested on, so it should work. People who've done it report two things:

• The YouTube button on the remote can stop working, and some lose casting. Tell Claude to keep casting on if you use it.
• Google TV can bring its own home screen back. If that happens, ask Claude to turn off Google TV's home screen. Leave its setup app on: the TV needs it to start.

The chat in the Claude app (and claude.ai) runs on Anthropic's servers, not on your laptop, so it can't see your TV. You need something that runs on your own laptop: Claude Code or Codex.

Don't want to pay for either? Skip the AI and use install.sh instead (see "Can I install the home screen without AI?" below).

Not yet. Claude has to run on a computer on the same network as your TV. A phone hotspot is fine as that network, as long as the laptop and TV both join it.

That works the same. Your laptop talks to the TV over its IP address on your home network, so cable or Wi-Fi doesn't matter. The laptop just has to be on the same network. You'll find the TV's IP in its network settings, or ask Claude to find it.

Yes. Leave out step 5 of the prompt ("Install the home screen"). Your TV looks the same, just with the junk turned off.

You can. The cleanup is the part that makes the TV faster, and it works with any home screen. This one is here if you want something tiny and open source: one screen, no ads, no account, about 30 MB of RAM.

That's a TV setting, not this home screen. Ask it: "My TV opens Live TV at startup instead of the home screen. Find that setting and turn it off."

Some remote buttons are handled by the TV's own home screen or by apps the cleanup turned off. To see which app handles which button, ask Claude: "Run adb shell dumpsys window policy and tell me which apps my remote's global keys go to." If it's an app other than your TV's home screen, turn that app back on.

The YouTube button on some Google TVs (seen on Xiaomi and Vu): it goes to Google TV's own home screen, which install.sh turns off, so the button does nothing. Turning that home screen back on brings the button back, but your TV may then open Google TV's home screen again instead of this one. Until there's a safe fix, open YouTube from its tile on the home screen.

sh check.sh <TV_IP>                  # check the home screen is still in charge
sh check.sh <TV_IP> --fix            # and fix it
sh check.sh <TV_IP> --fix my-tv.txt  # also check your own list of changes

Your list has one change per line, like off com.example.app, global window_animation_scale 0 or device_config activity_manager max_cached_processes 4. Ask Claude to write it from the changes it made.

Yes. You only need adb. On a Mac, run brew install android-platform-tools. On Windows, download Google's SDK Platform Tools, unzip it, and run the commands below from Git Bash. Download this repo, then:

sh install.sh <TV_IP>                                               # picks your TV apps for you
sh install.sh <TV_IP> "com.netflix.ninja,com.hulu.livingroomplus"   # or choose them
sh install.sh <TV_IP> "" "bluetooth,sound,picture"    # add settings shortcuts

Most TVs keep opening their own home screen, so the script offers to turn that off. Nothing is uninstalled.

Use the remote. Hold OK on an app (or press Menu) to:

• Move it: use the arrows to slide it to a new spot, then press OK to finish.
• Replace it: pick another app to take its place.
• Remove it from the home screen. The app stays installed, and you can add it back any time.
• Uninstall it, for apps you installed yourself. The TV asks you to confirm first.
• App info, for apps that came with the TV. They can't be uninstalled, but from there you can turn them off.

To add an app, pick the Add app tile in the bottom row. Add as many apps as you like: they wrap into rows of six, and the page scrolls once there are more than twelve. Your changes are kept until you run install.sh with a new app list.

Yes. A small network icon always sits next to the clock. It shows Wi-Fi (with signal bars), Ethernet or a crossed-out Wi-Fi when you're offline, and opens your network settings. Bluetooth, Sound and Picture shortcuts can join it. They're off unless you ask for them:

sh install.sh <TV_IP> "" "bluetooth,sound,picture"   # pick any of them, in any order
sh install.sh <TV_IP> "" "none"                                    # take them away

Press Up from your apps to reach them. A shortcut your TV has no screen for is left out. On TCL TVs, Sound and Picture open TCL's own panels.

sh undo.sh <TV_IP>

This turns your TV's own home screen back on and removes this one. To undo the cleanup too, ask Claude or Codex to reverse everything on its list.

Your laptop can often still connect for a few seconds each time the TV starts. Use that to turn everything back on:

adb connect <TV_IP>
adb wait-for-device
adb shell pm list packages -d

That lists everything that's turned off. Turn each one back on with adb shell pm enable <package>, or all of them at once:

for p in $(adb shell pm list packages -d | tr -d '\r' | sed 's/package://'); do adb shell pm enable "$p"; done

To undo just the home screen, run sh undo.sh <TV_IP>. Then restart the TV. You can redo the cleanup later, one app at a time.

If the laptop never connects, use the TV's recovery mode or a factory reset. How you get there depends on the brand and model, so check your TV maker's support page.

1. Put your default apps in apps.txt (package names, one per line). You can also pass them to install.sh instead.
2. Install Java 17 and the Android SDK. On a Mac:

   brew install openjdk@17
   brew install --cask android-commandlinetools
   sdkmanager "platforms;android-34" "build-tools;34.0.0"

3. sh build.sh, then sh install.sh <TV_IP> installs your build instead of the release.
4. sh ci/smoke-test.sh <TV_IP or emulator> checks it all works.

HDMI inputs are found on their own. Keep key.jks, which is made on your first build: updates must be signed with the same key.

It's one screen of plain Java, no libraries, no Gradle. The background is drawn once, the only animation is the focus lift, and it uses about 30 MB of RAM.