Claude Code Can Strip the Ads Off Your Smart TV. Here’s How People Are Doing It.
No root, no new hardware. An AI agent, your Wi-Fi and 15 minutes. What it removes, how it works and the mistakes to avoid.
The TV played a sponsored ad before it would open Netflix.
That was the last straw for a developer called Gathin, setting up his parents’ Xiaomi TV. He pointed Claude Code at it over Wi-Fi. It found 25 preinstalled apps to switch off and wrote a clean new home screen.
He shared the prompt online. A few thousand people reportedly did the same on their own TVs.
Your smart TV is a computer you’re not allowed to control. AI agents just handed people the keys.
Why Your TV Gets Slower and Louder
- Bloat. TVs ship with apps you never asked for, running in the background and eating memory.
- Ads. Sponsored rows and “recommendations” fill the home screen, and you can’t turn them off.
- Tracking. Many TVs use a feature called ACR. It fingerprints what’s on your screen so the maker can sell ads based on what you watch.
Cheap TVs often have only 1 to 2 GB of memory. Every extra app makes them crawl.
How It Works, Step by Step
This is the method from Ansub Khan’s video, which has over 760,000 views.
- Unlock the TV. Go to Settings, Device Preferences, About. Click “Build” seven times to turn on developer mode.
- Open the door. Turn on USB debugging in the new developer menu. Write down your TV’s IP address from the network settings.
- Brief Claude. On a computer on the same Wi-Fi, give Claude Code the IP address and the apps you actually use.
- Say yes once. The TV asks to allow debugging. Click allow.
- Let it audit. Claude lists every app and sorts it into three groups. Safe to switch off, needed by the TV, and apps you use.
- Approve the changes. It asks before switching anything off. It disables apps rather than deleting them, and logs every change so you can undo it.
Think of it as a house cleaner who boxes things up instead of throwing them out. And leaves you a list of every box.
What Changes
- Unused background services go quiet, like voice search, casting and screensavers.
- The TV opens on a clean home screen instead of live TV.
- Animations go off, so menus feel instant.
- Claude builds a simple new home screen. A clock, your apps, your HDMI inputs. No ads.
In Khan’s test, free memory jumped from about 370 MB to around 600 to 650 MB. That’s the difference between a laggy TV and a usable one.
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No new streaming stick. No new TV. Just switching off what you never asked for.
Two Repos That Do the Heavy Lifting
- tv-vibehack. Gathin’s original prompt, a custom home screen and a list of gotchas. Over 1,300 stars on GitHub.
- dumbtv. Adds Amazon Fire TV support. Switches off about 65 packages, including Amazon’s screen fingerprinting and ad tracking.
With a repo as a guide, people report the whole job takes about 15 minutes. The first person to try it on a cheap TV spent an afternoon.
Will It Work on Your TV?
- Yes. Android TV and Google TV models from Sony, TCL, Xiaomi, Hisense, Philips and others.
- With care. Amazon Fire TV.
- No. Samsung, LG and Roku. They run different systems.
The Mistakes to Avoid
- Disable, don’t delete. Removing system apps can break the Home button or HDMI switching.
- Mind the order. Switch off the old home screen before the new one is installed and the Home button can land in a factory test menu.
- Close the door after. Turn debugging off when you’re done, so your TV isn’t left open on your home network.
- Keep updates on. Switching off the update service also stops security fixes.
- Ask the household. Someone may use the voice remote or casting you just switched off.
It can go wrong. One user reported bricking their TV. Another got stuck halfway through a Fire TV setup.
Phrasing matters too. Some people found Claude declined a blunt “hack my TV.” Giving the model number and asking to remove ads and speed it up worked better.
Why You Should Care
This isn’t really about TVs. It’s about what changes when anyone can hand a tricky technical job to an AI agent.
The fridge, the router, the car app. Every device that was “too complicated to fix yourself” just got a lot less complicated.
The Wrap-Up
People are using Claude Code to switch off the ads, tracking and bloat on their Android TVs, and with the right repo it takes about 15 minutes and can be undone.
Here’s your action step. Check which system your TV runs under Settings, About. If it says Android TV or Google TV, read the tv-vibehack README before you touch anything.
For more ways to reshape Claude Code itself, read this next: Claude Code Mods Are Here. You Build Them by Asking. Start With These 5.
thank you for reading :)
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