People are using Claude Code to make smart TVs dumb again

Smart TVs ship with ads, tracking and sluggish software. A growing crowd now points coding agents at the TV instead of putting up with it. Two open-source projects, dumbtv and cleanyourtv, do the setup work.

The method is simple. You turn on developer options and ADB debugging on the TV, then run an agent like Claude Code from a computer on the same Wi-Fi. The agent lists the installed packages, disables the non-essential ones, and installs a lighter launcher. It uses pm disable-user rather than uninstalling, so changes can be reversed. One builder, Mihir Gupta, disabled 25 bloat apps and swapped a 192 MB stock launcher for an 83 MB custom one. cleanyourtv's prompt was reportedly used by a few thousand people in two days. dumbtv, built for Fire TV and tested on Android/Google TV sets from Sony, TCL, Philips, Hisense, Xiaomi and Shield, aims to leave only the apps and HDMI inputs you paid for, with no ads or watch tracking.

It isn't foolproof. Agents can disable important packages, and one user reported bricking an Android TV. Disabling the stock launcher before its replacement is installed can break the Home button. Samsung Tizen, LG webOS and Roku use different systems, so this doesn't apply to them. Leaving ADB on also exposes an open port on your network.

Why it matters: agents are now being pointed at consumer hardware nobody designed them for, and people are choosing that over the manufacturer's software.