CleanYourTV: remove ads from Android TV and Google TV

What is CleanYourTV?

Smart TVs keep adding ads: sponsored rows on the home screen, promoted apps, "Discover" pages and analytics services that run in the background. CleanYourTV is an open-source toolkit that turns most of that off. It talks to the TV over the network with Android’s standard debug bridge (ADB), disables the packages that serve ads and telemetry, and installs a small replacement home screen.

The project began on October 17, 2026, when its developer posted a before-and-after photo of his parents’ TV, cleaned up with Claude Code. The post reached millions of views, people tried it on their own TVs, and their results became the lists in the repository. It is now one of the most-starred new projects on GitHub.

How CleanYourTV works

Because the junk differs from brand to brand, the official prompt has your AI coding assistant find it on your TV and ask before it touches anything you might use. If someone has already tested your model, their list skips that discovery step.

CleanYourTV at a glance

What’s new in CleanYourTV 3.2 and 3.3

• 3.3 (November 1, 2026): hold OK to move your apps. Holding OK on a Home tile now opens a small menu with Move, App info and, with the App library on, Remove from Home. Put "tile_menu": false in your theme’s config.json to get the old App info shortcut back.
• 3.2 (October 29, 2026): the Halloween update. A Halloween theme, skin and screensaver add-on that switch themselves off after November 1 (the theme stays in themes/halloween), and launcher builds in Docker.
• More TVs: 341 models at 3.1, 360 at 3.2, 407 at 3.3, and 407 in the repository today, from 106 brands.
• Launcher 3.2 and 3.3 (new switches off by default): a 12- or 24-hour clock, Back for the clock screensaver, an app that opens when the screen comes on, a remote button for the App library, App library exclusions and a VPN pill as a lock button. There are 16 themes now, including minimal, blocky, storm and red-rain.
• 31 add-ons at 3.3 (26 at 3.1), new ones including Open on wake, Game Day, Scoreboard and Haunted. See add-ons.
• Safer and clearer: the core-package guard now keeps Android 14’s SDK sandbox (a TCL G08 hung on its boot logo without it), and about 20 tools stop with a plain sentence instead of a traceback when the TV cannot be reached.
• 3.1 (October 27, 2026): a remote-only path for Samsung, LG, Roku, Vizio and Hisense VIDAA owners. Our summary: CleanYourTV on non-Android TVs.

Full list of changes: what changed in CleanYourTV 3.x.

What you need

• An Android TV or Google TV set, box, stick or projector. The launcher needs Android 8.0 or newer.
• A computer on the same Wi-Fi as the TV (Mac, Windows or Linux).
• An AI coding assistant with shell access: Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Gemini CLI or Antigravity CLI. Or skip it and run the scripts yourself. No coding assistant? The README points to community apps for Android phones, Mac and Windows, made by independent developers.
• USB debugging switched on in the TV’s developer options. The step-by-step guide shows where.

Find your TV

Brand guides, step by step: remove ads from a TCL TV, a Sony Bravia, a Xiaomi Mi TV or Mi Box, a Philips TV, a Hisense TV, a Skyworth or Coocaa TV and Fire TV.

Want a different home screen instead? Free My TV is an ad-free home screen for Google TV (and an app on LG and Samsung), and Aerial is a tvOS-style launcher for China-market Xiaomi and TCL TVs.

Or search the full list of supported TVs. Not listed? It will most likely still work, because the prompt discovers the bloat on your set.

What you get

• A dark, quiet home screen with a dock of your favourite apps, a large title for the focused app and a soft glow in its colour.
• Your other apps in a grid one press down, with a single glass highlight that moves between tiles.
• Inputs, network and settings buttons, with HDMI ports shown under the names you gave them.
• A clock screensaver that drifts so nothing burns in, plus themes you can push without rebuilding.
• No sponsored rows, no analytics, no network permission for the launcher itself.

Things to know first

• It does not block ads inside apps. YouTube ads stay. A private DNS resolver can cut some in-app ads; see the safety page.
• Firmware updates can undo it. Most lists disable the updater; if an update lands anyway, the check tool puts the list back. See restore and updates.
• Some features may go. Disabling the voice assistant costs the mic button; on Google’s own devices disabling the setup wizard costs phone casting. The prompt asks you first.
• Close debugging when you are done. Network ADB is unencrypted. The launcher keeps working without it.

CleanYourTV questions