Fed up with ads and surveillance built into their televisions, a growing number of people are asking AI coding assistants to take their sets apart, at least digitally. The trend, which some developers have dubbed “vibe-coding” a TV, uses tools such as Claude Code to remove sponsored content, speed up the app launcher, redesign the home screen and turn off tracking features.

The projects are spreading quickly on GitHub. One, called dumbtv, describes its mission on its project page this way: “Your TV should do what you paid for: your apps, your HDMI inputs, and nothing else. No ads from the TV itself, no watch tracking, no update you did not ask for.”

Another project, cleanyourtv, promises to strip bloatware from any Android TV or Google TV over Wi-Fi. It replaces the default launcher with one that looks like Apple TV’s interface.

Why are viewers using AI coding tools on smart TVs?

Hacking consumer electronics to gain more control over them is hardly new. What has changed is who can do it. AI agents can now write the code and walk a user through the steps, which lowers the skill needed to make these changes. That matters most for smart TVs, where many viewers have grown tired of being shown ads on devices they already paid for.

Modern smart TVs often include a technology called Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR, which identifies what is on the screen using screenshots, audio clips or other forms of digital fingerprinting. The data feeds an industry that sells viewing information to advertisers or uses it to serve personalized ads on the TV’s own interface. If hacks like these catch on with ordinary consumers, they could cut into that business.

The cleanyourtv project started with a single frustration. Its creator, Gathin T., said the idea came one afternoon when he got tired of seeing ads on his parents’ TV. He had Claude Code clean up the set over Wi-Fi and build a simple home screen with only their apps on it. He then posted the prompt on GitHub and shared before-and-after images on X. He wrote that a few thousand people did the same to their own TVs over the next two days, on sets from brands including Xiaomi, TCL, Sony, Fire TV and LG, along with a projector or two. The process does not require root access to the TV, he said, and the changes can be reversed to restore factory settings if a user wants.

The dumbtv project has been tested end to end on a Fire TV Edition set and on Android and Google TV platforms from Sony, TCL, Philips, Hisense, Xiaomi and Nvidia’s Shield. Its developer, Muzammil Yasin Sabuwala, suggests that users point their preferred AI agent at the dumbtv repository. He told TechCrunch that he started the project because he was tired of the ads and of not being able to get straight to the content he wanted to watch. He said he coded it with a mix of AI models and plans to keep maintaining the repository, adding support for more models over time.

Not everyone needs a shared project. In a viral X post, Ryan Doyle said he sent Claude Code the listing for his TV and asked, “Can you hack this?” He says the agent then guided him through removing ads and bloatware, speeding up a laggy interface and customizing his screensaver. He posted a video showing the new interface responding quickly after the changes.

That kind of result inspired others. Mihir Gupta, another X user, tried it himself. “One afternoon with Claude Code: 25 bloat apps disabled, the 192 MB stock launcher replaced with a custom 83 MB one, plus rotating wallpapers,” he wrote.

Do AI coding tools work reliably on smart TVs?

The results have not been consistent, though. Some users reported that Claude did not respond to simple requests to “hack my TV” and that they had to write more detailed prompts. Others warned that AI agents can make mistakes, such as disabling important system packages or breaking functions. One person said they bricked their Android TV while using Claude, and another got stuck halfway through hacking a Fire TV.

Users who want to avoid AI altogether have other options. Android-based smart TVs can run home screen replacement apps such as ATV Launcher, Projectivity Launcher and FLauncher, which customize the interface without the broader changes the AI-driven projects make.

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