Gathin23/cleanyourtv

The problem

Owners of Android TV and Google TV devices—Sony, TCL, Xiaomi, Hisense, Philips and others—get a home screen cluttered with sponsored rows, telemetry services and preinstalled apps they never asked for. The TV also nags with "Discover" prompts and phones home. The usual fixes are a factory reset into a different region, a risky root procedure or simply living with it. CleanYourTV approaches the problem through the same ADB debug bridge that Android phones expose: it disables vendor bloat with pm disable-user, which can be undone, and then installs a small native launcher as the default home screen.

What's different

Most debloating guides amount to copying shell commands from a forum post, which is fragile because package names differ per brand and firmware. Here the README provides a prompt file that you hand to a coding assistant with shell access; the assistant inspects the connected TV, asks which apps you actually use, and applies changes step by step, verifying with screenshots. The bundled launcher is the other half: a pitch-black home with a dock, an app grid and a top shelf that names the focused app, plus HDMI inputs and Wi-Fi in frosted buttons. Compared with the stock Google TV launcher, it is deliberately minimal; compared with community launchers such as a generic Android TV launcher replacement, it is packaged with the debloat workflow and restore path. The claims that stand out are the no-root, nothing-uninstalled approach and the one-line restore.

Who it's for

People with an Android TV or Google TV set who care about privacy and a quieter home screen, and who are comfortable enabling developer options. A coding-assistant-based flow is fine for developers and technically inclined tinkerers; the community Android phone app exists for those without a laptop. Fire TV owners get only the debloat half, since Fire OS will not hand Home to a third-party launcher. Samsung Tizen and LG webOS users should look elsewhere: those are different systems with no ADB.

Cost of adoption

You need the TV and a computer on the same Wi-Fi network, USB (network) debugging enabled, and a coding assistant with shell access such as Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI. That is a real prerequisite: the project is not a single-click installer for the computer path. The README is unusually detailed about device coverage and known failures, including Fire OS 5 and some China-market TCL sets. The license is NOASSERTION, so check the terms before redistributing the launcher. Maturity is the main risk. The project is days old and the per-model lists come from contributors, so your exact firmware may behave differently.

Verdict

The concept is genuinely useful and the execution is more honest than most viral projects: the README lists failures, not just successes. But this is a brand-new repository, created 7 days ago, that gained about 4,157 stars per day and topped the new board at #1. The 30,000+ stars reflect a viral tweet and press coverage far more than long-term maintenance. Hacker News picked it up only lightly (a 6-point thread with no comments). Treat it as a promising tool to test on a secondary TV, not yet as an established utility.