Nowadays, turning on the TV means leaving out everything it wants you to watch first. A sponsored banner here, a row of recommendations there, and an app you never requested that keeps showing up when you just wanted to open Netflix. But some smart TV owners have had enough and are putting AI encoding assistants to work. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or may have been deleted. Developers and other users on social media are sharing experiments on using tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code to disable unwanted software, replace busy home screens, and make their TVs feel more responsive. The results range from simple app menus to custom interfaces, with open source projects collecting tools and prompts for anyone interested in trying them out for themselves. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or may have been deleted. For one developer, his motivation was to fix his parents’ television. In an October 17 post on X, he described using Claude Code to review a Xiaomi TV that was showing an ad before it could reach Netflix. He said the wizard connected over Wi-Fi, removed 25 software packages and built a replacement home screen. “Now it looks like an Apple TV lol,” he wrote. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or may have been deleted. Another X user reportedly got rid of their “ads, bloatware, spyware [and] Slow UI.””I also got a beautiful screensaver with my income, calendar, weather, and notifications for new Stripe payments. It was super easy!” he added. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or has been deleted. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or has been deleted. These experiments have become part of CleanYourTV, an open source project originally called “tv-vibehack.” as [a] new,” wrote an In its Q4 2025 Video Trends Report, TiVo found that more than a third of respondents reported excessive advertising on their TV homepage. artificial intelligence to make changes that TV companies have little incentive to offer. CleanYourTV homepage credit: Screenshot: https://cleanyour.tv/ How to try it on your own TV If you’re wondering what people are actually typing into Claude Code, here’s a message behind the makeover, telling the code wizard how to connect to the TV, back up your settings, disable unwanted software, and create a simpler home screen To do it yourself, you need Claude Code or something else. coding assistant with command line access, running on a computer and pasting the instructions into a regular chatbot. The conversation will not give you access to your TV. This particular message is written for Android TV and Google TV devices, which require different approaches. Please check your TV’s operating system and model: Connect your computer and TV to the same Wi-Fi network. many supported models, go to Settings → Device Preferences → About, select Build and press OK seven times. Turn on debugging. Go back to Settings, open the developer options and enable USB debugging. If your TV also shows network debugging or ADB debugging, enable that option. project message (found in the link below), replacing the text in brackets with the exact model number of your TV. If the wizard cannot find the TV, it may ask you for the TV’s IP address, which usually appears in the TV’s network settings. and around. The assistant should ask you which apps you use, which shortcuts you want, and whether you want to keep features like streaming and voice search. Review the proposed changes before you approve them, especially if you don’t recognize a service. A handy note: Debugging may temporarily cut power to USB accessories on some TVs. X user who tested it on a Sansui Google TV reported that it finished in 25 minutes. “Damn, it was good!” they wrote. open source project, dumptv, which provides scripts to disable ads and tracking services and to replace the home screen on compatible TVs. Its developer documents testing on a Fire TV Edition TV, but its cleanup also makes changes you may not want, including disabling Alexa and blocking software updates. get rid of the ads. Another user shared a more unusual addition: “Give my TV live game odds tables,” they wrote. “You can really get things done these days, don’t you think?”
