mclhm8182/tvhome-zh

If you have an Android TV box with a cluttered stock launcher and no patience for JDK builds, this fork is directly installable — but its signature conflicts and its upstream relationship should shape who tries it.

The problem

You want the TV to boot into a plain, readable home screen: a dock, a grid of apps, and, for older family members, a clock and date. The stock launcher puts sponsored tiles and recommendations in the way, and adding or removing apps means poking around nested settings. This fork changes that workflow: the dock, wallpaper, grid density and weather are set from an on-screen panel with the remote, and the launcher is installed as a finished APK rather than compiled from source. The result is a home screen you can set up once and that persists across reboots.

What's different

Upstream Gathin23/tv-vibehack (now CleanYourTV) is built around prompts and scripts run with an AI assistant; this fork's core change is moving those configuration steps into remote-driven panels. Editing the dock, for example, is a long-press or a menu-key panel instead of editing config.xml and rebuilding; wallpapers can be Bing's daily image or a local file selected on the TV. It also targets targetSdk 29, which the author says keeps Android 11 package visibility from hiding installed apps — relevant on Chinese boxes that stay on Android 11. Xiaomi China firmware gets a vendor-specific input-source switch, detected automatically. The trade-off is feature lag: theme pushing, module tiles, AOT precompile and a few other upstream items are absent, and the release APK is a debug-style build whose signing key changed once.

Who should try it

Good fit: someone with a TV box who wants a different home screen without a build toolchain, especially a Simplified Chinese interface or a household where the TV should just work at boot. Poor fit: users who want upstream's full feature set, or who expect to install any launcher on a TCL China-market set — the README records that some of those firmwares reject launchers signed by anyone else, and the documented workaround is disabling install verification, which may not be possible on every set. If you are willing to build from source, go upstream instead.

Requirements and limitations

Installation is via an APK copied to the TV or adb install; setting it as home may need ADB if the TV settings lack a default-launcher entry, and the README documents the commands. Upgrading from v1.2.0 requires an uninstall first because the signing key changed, losing dock and wallpaper settings; later versions install over the top. The Home-button-to-top behavior and the menu-key overlay need the bundled accessibility service enabled. A few ROMs show a transparent "starting" window that eats remote input until the app is force-stopped, and the Bing wallpaper and file picker depend on network and a system file picker respectively.

HotRepo's take

HotRepo first recorded this repo at 5 days old: a NEW-REPOSITORY board listing (java, 217 total stars, #10, observed 2026-10-25), not an overall ranking or a daily gain. With only a two-date sample, the history is too thin to judge persistence. Before installing, confirm which release APK matches your target and whether your TV model's install verification can be disabled; the README's compatibility notes are the place to check.