mihirgupta0900/tv-home

This is a weekend project for someone who owns a sluggish, ad-laden Android TV and is willing to use ADB to disable packages and sideload a launcher. The payoff is a leaner home screen, but it is not a one-click consumer app.

The problem

You turn on the TV and want to reach an app, but the stock home screen loads slowly, fills the hero area with sponsored content and keeps background services running. The workflow here changes that: you connect a laptop to the TV over Wi-Fi, disable a curated list of manufacturer ad, telemetry and junk packages, then install a small home screen with a dock and wallpapers. Afterward the TV boots to a quiet launcher and the disabled apps stop running.

The author reports one concrete before-and-after: on a 2 GB TCL Google TV, 25 bloat apps were disabled and home-screen memory use fell from 192 MB to 83 MB. That is a single anecdote, not a benchmark across devices.

What's different

The distinctive piece is the pairing of a debloat script with a purpose-built launcher. Most of the value is in the launcher, which is 4.7 MB including wallpapers, uses plain Android, and declares no network access or background services. It gives you an Apple TV-style dock, input switching, Wi-Fi status and rotating nature photos, driven by a config file you edit to set dock apps and grid columns.

The debloat side is deliberately reversible in the sense that packages are disabled, not uninstalled. That lowers the stakes of a bad choice, but it is not a guarantee that every disabled package can be restored cleanly across future firmware updates, and restore depends on keeping the same list.

The README also documents gotchas it hit, which is useful evidence of the real friction: macOS can block the adb binary on the local network, so the project ships a pure-Python ADB client in tools/tv.py; Google TV's setup app can hijack the Home button until it is disabled; and chained pm commands can silently stop after the first. Those details matter more than the feature list when deciding whether to try it.

There is also an optional Claude Code path: paste a prompt and let an agent discover the TV, ask which apps you use, disable packages and build the launcher. That is convenient, but it hands package selection to a model, so you should review what it disables.

Who should try it

Good fit: you have a supported Android TV or Google TV box, a laptop on the same network, and some comfort with a terminal. You care enough about a clean home screen to edit a config file and rerun a build script when you change the dock. The project is tested on one TCL Google TV running Android 11, so other models are plausible but unverified.

Poor fit: you want a polished consumer app with a settings UI, or you are unwilling to enable developer options and USB debugging on the TV. If your TV is a Samsung (Tizen), LG (webOS) or Fire TV, this does not apply at all. If you rely on the stock launcher's recommendations or live TV integration, replacing it changes that experience.

Requirements and limitations

You need a computer (the manual path is documented for macOS), JDK 17 and the Android SDK for building the launcher, plus network access to the TV. The TV must have developer options and USB debugging enabled, and you must accept the debugging prompt on screen. The manual path uses setup.sh; on other platforms the same tools likely apply but are not documented as tested.

Ongoing upkeep: after a firmware update or factory reset, disabled packages can reappear and the custom launcher may need reinstalling. The launcher has no network or background services, so it will not update itself. Debloat lists are per-model examples; using the TCL list on another brand is guesswork, and the README asks users to add their own examples.

HotRepo's take

HotRepo recorded the repository on the NEW-REPOSITORY board (Java) at #6 with 453 total stars on 2026-10-25, six days after creation. That is a snapshot, not a growth curve, and the tracked sample spans only 2026-10-24 to 2026-10-25, so persistence cannot be judged yet. Before starting, check whether an example debloat list exists for your exact TV model and Android version.