CleanYourTV: the free project that takes the ads off your Android TV

Before you start: a small number of people say this left their TV stuck while starting up, and not every one of those TVs has come back. Read "Reports of broken TVs" further down before you try it.

On 17 October, a developer called Gathin T. posted about his parents' Xiaomi TV. Every time they turned it on, it showed a sponsored ad before they could get to Netflix. So he gave Claude Code the TV's model number and let it in. The AI found the TV on the home Wi-Fi, switched off 25 Xiaomi apps, and wrote a new, simple home screen from scratch.

The post went viral. He turned the prompt into a GitHub project called CleanYourTV, and within about a week it had more than 34,000 stars, thousands of people trying it on their own TVs, and coverage from TechCrunch, Gizmodo, XDA and over 200 other sites and videos. Tech writers have started calling it "making smart TVs dumb again".

Here's what it does, how to try it, and the honest catches.

Why your TV shows ads at all

Smart TVs are cheap partly because they keep earning money after you buy them. The home screen shows sponsored rows and ads, and many TVs use a feature called ACR (automatic content recognition) to notice what you're watching and sell that information to advertisers. On top of that, most TVs come with dozens of preinstalled apps you never asked for, which make the menus slow.

CleanYourTV switches all of that off and gives you a quiet home screen that only shows your own apps.

What it does

Clears out the clutter. It switches off ad services, tracking, and the preinstalled apps you don't use. Your TV feels faster because less is running in the background.

Switches off, never deletes. Nothing is uninstalled. Every app it touches is only disabled, and before it changes anything it saves a backup and writes a restore script. One command turns everything back on.

Gives you a new home screen. A tiny home screen app, about half a megabyte, with a dock of your favourite apps, a grid of the rest, and quick buttons for HDMI inputs, Wi-Fi and Settings. It looks a lot like Apple TV's. It has no internet access of its own and nothing running in the background, so it can't show ads or track you.

Makes it yours. Themes, a clock screensaver, remote button changes, and optional ad blocking for your whole TV through a setting called Private DNS. People have shared hundreds of home screens and add-ons on the project's website.

No hacking tricks. It doesn't root the TV, replace its software or get around copy protection. It uses the developer settings that Android already has.

Will it work on your TV?

• Android TV and Google TV: yes, both the clean-up and the new home screen. That covers most Sony, TCL, Hisense, Philips and Xiaomi TVs, plus boxes like the Nvidia Shield. The TV needs Android 8 or newer.
• Amazon Fire TV: the clean-up only. Amazon doesn't let other home screens take over.
• Samsung, LG, Roku and Vizio: no. They run their own systems, not Android.

The project keeps a list of TVs people have tested, more than 300 models from 87 brands by its own count, so check yours at cleanyour.tv before you start.

What you need

• An AI coding assistant that can run commands on your computer, such as Claude Code, OpenAI's Codex or Gemini CLI. Most need a paid plan for a job this size.
• A computer on the same Wi-Fi as your TV. Windows, Mac or Linux all work.
• About fifteen minutes. Your assistant does almost all the typing.

There's also a community-made Android phone app that does the job from your phone, linked from the project's website.

How to try it

1. Unlock the TV's developer settings. On the TV, go to Settings, then Device Preferences, then About. Scroll to Build and press OK on it seven times. You'll see a message saying you're now a developer.

2. Turn on debugging. In the new Developer options menu, turn on USB debugging, and Network debugging or ADB debugging if your TV has it. This lets your computer talk to the TV over Wi-Fi.

3. Download the project. Ask your AI assistant to download it, or run this yourself:

git clone https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv

4. Paste the prompt. Open the folder in your assistant, open the file called PROMPT.md, paste its contents into the chat, and add your TV's brand and model. When the TV asks "Allow USB debugging?", press Allow.

The prompt is a careful checklist. It tells the assistant to back up first, switch apps off in small batches, check the TV with a screenshot after each change, and stay away from anything the TV needs to run, like the remote, Bluetooth and Google Play. It asks you before touching streaming apps or the voice assistant.

5. Turn debugging off again. When it's done, the assistant should switch debugging off and check that the TV is closed to outside connections. Check that it did. Leaving debugging on means anyone on your Wi-Fi could connect to your TV.

Reports of broken TVs

Most people who try CleanYourTV report a cleaner, faster TV. But some TVs have got stuck while starting up, and the project's own GitHub page has the reports. These are the main ones as of 26 October 2026:

• A Sony Google TV stuck on the logo. After a restart, a Sony BRAVIA KD-55X74K froze on the Google TV logo (issue #62). The old home screen had been switched off while Google's setup wizard was still on, which made the TV crash about once a minute and drop off the Wi-Fi. The owner had to factory reset it. The project changed its installer so it now starts the new home screen first, checks it works, and undoes the change if it doesn't. On 23 October, the owner of a Challenger Google TV reported the same loop and hadn't got it working again.
• A Xiaomi Mi TV Stick that won't start. This stick stopped at the Android TV logo after core parts of Android were switched off (issue #884). The remote didn't work in the recovery menu, so the owner couldn't factory reset it. The project's creator apologised and pointed them to Xiaomi's repair service. The tools now refuse any list that switches off core Android parts.
• A Sony TV that restarts on its own. A Sony BRAVIA KD-55XD8005 worked fine after the clean-up, then about nine hours later began restarting over and over, with its red light blinking six times (issue #1592). A factory reset didn't fix it. The creator thinks it's a hardware fault, because a factory reset wipes everything CleanYourTV changes, and six blinks on a Sony usually points to a power or backlight problem. Nobody has confirmed the cause yet.
• Other reports. A TCL TV showing a grey screen after its logo (issue #962), and a few older, cheaper TVs where the computer could no longer connect to the TV after the clean-up (issue #795, issue #692).

Nearly all of these came from switching off something the TV needed, and the project has added a new safety check after each one. Still, it's a young project, and a TV that can't reach its recovery menu may need a trip to the repair shop. To lower the risk:

• Learn how to factory reset your TV first. Look up how to reach the recovery menu on your model, often by holding a button while you plug it in, before you change anything.
• Don't let the assistant go off script. If it wants to switch off something the prompt says to protect, or something you don't recognise, say no.
• Unplug it once before you finish. Before debugging is turned off, unplug the TV at the wall, plug it back in, and check it starts properly. The owner of the Sony in issue #1592 suggested this, because their TV only failed later.
• Start small if you can. An older TV or a cheap streaming box is a safer first try than a new TV still under warranty.

What else to watch out for

• Your warranty may not like it. Changing a TV's software can affect the warranty.
• Updates can undo it. A TV software update can switch apps back on. The project includes a check you can ask your assistant to run after updates.
• Streaming apps keep their ads. It clears the TV's own ads and tracking, not the ads inside YouTube, Netflix or Prime Video.
• Beware of copycats. The real project lives at github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv and cleanyour.tv. The project warns that other sites using the name, such as cleanyourtv.com, aren't run by it.

A simpler option

Not everyone needs AI for this. PCWorld argued you can get much of the way with less risk. Turn off ACR in your TV's privacy settings, which most brands now offer. Then, for a cleaner home screen, install a launcher from the Google Play Store, such as Projectivy Launcher or FLauncher. You won't remove the clutter underneath, but you won't need developer settings either.

Good to know

• It's not the only one. Similar projects appeared the same week, like dumbtv and TV Detox. CleanYourTV is the one most of the coverage has focused on.
• Made by many hands. Hundreds of people have added clean-up lists for their own TV models, which is why it works on so many brands.
• Licence. CleanYourTV is MIT licensed, so you can use it, change it and share it freely. The font it uses, Outfit, is under the SIL Open Font License. The project isn't connected to any TV maker.