Brief

• A developer used Claude Code to disable 25 Xiaomi software packages on his parents' TV, and his open-source project cleanyourtv now lists test configurations for 37 brands and 107 models of TVs.
• These tools use the built-in debugging bridge of Android to shut down applications, rather than deleting them, so all changes can be reversed using a recovery script.
• TV manufacturers make money through advertising and viewing data; in December 2025, Texas filed a lawsuit against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL to question this practice.

Smart TV users are pointing their AI proxies at the TVs in their living rooms, demanding that they remove the pre-installed sponsored ads, tracking software, and sluggish main screen interfaces provided by the manufacturers.

This trend became popular quickly on the X platform over the weekend, and now it has even got a name: providing vibe and coding for television.

The most notable case comes from a Xiaomi TV. Developer Gathin T posted on Saturday that this TV would display sponsored ads even before users entered Netflix. As a result, he handed the model over to Claude Code to handle it themselves.

This proxy found this TV in his home Wi – Fi, removed 25 Xiaomi software packages, and created a brand-new home screen interface. As he said, “It now looks just like Apple TV now, haha.”

This afternoon, I did vibe coding on my parents' TV!

Sponsored ads will be displayed before you enter Netflix.

I gave the model number to Claude Code. It found a TV on Wi – Fi, removed 25 Xiaomi software packages, and also created a new launcher.

It now looks like Apple TV, haha. pic.twitter.com / E5Q4A1b0yI

— Gathin (Ø,G) (@ gathint ) October 17, 2026

In the past decade, anyone who has bought a television has probably encountered the same issue, as many televisions come equipped with automatic content recognition technology (Automatic Content Recognition, abbreviated as ACR). This software scans the content on the screen, including that from cable TVs, gaming consoles, and any devices connected to a HDMI port, and then sends this information back to the manufacturers in order to serve targeted advertisements. In December 2025, Texas filed a lawsuit against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL, accusing these televisions of taking a screenshot every 500 milliseconds, which is twice a second.

Regulatory authorities have been investigating such practices since at least 2017. In that year, Vizio paid a settlement of $2.2 million for collecting viewing data from 11 million televisions without consent. However, this did not significantly impact the business: Walmart acquired Vizio in 2024 for approximately $2.3 billion, with its executives citing the profitable and rapidly growing advertising business of the television manufacturer as one of the attractions of the acquisition.

In other words, the TV you buy continues to make money for someone else every time it is turned on.

vibe coding refers to describing in natural language what you want, and then having AI write and run the code. This concept was proposed in 2025 by OpenAI, co-founder with Andrej Karpathy. Just earlier this month, gamers were still using proxies based on Claude to reverse-engineer games and perform various crazy operations, such as stuffing Minecraft into Elden Ring.

The encoding proxy Anthropic, which is Claude Code, is a key tool because it can now be used to enter and run commands on your computer. Televisions based on Android come equipped with Android Debug Bridge, commonly referred to as ADB, which is a maintenance tool; when you click on “Build” seven times in the settings menu to enable developer mode, computers on the same network can then control this television.

The proxy connects through this entry point, lists all installed applications, and marks which applications are responsible for displaying advertisements, as well as which ones are running telemetry functions—that is, sending usage data back to the manufacturer's backend software.

Gathin has organized their own reminder words into cleanyourtv, which is an open-source project. It doesn't aim to delete applications that you don't want, but rather to shut them down. Therefore, running a restoration script is all that's needed to restore everything to its original state. It doesn't require root permissions – which are high-risk operations that unlock full administrative control. As of Tuesday, the project had listed test configurations for 37 brands and 107 televisions, and it had collected 10,700 stars, which is equivalent to GitHub bookmarks. On the donation page, it was mentioned that in just two days, thousands of people followed the same steps to do the same thing.

There are also those who do more than just “streamlining” televisions.

Mihir Gupta replaced the original launcher of 192 MB – which is the app that renders the home screen – with a custom version from 83 MB; Ansub Khan said that the available memory of his parents' old Android TV increased by about 90%. Ryan Doyle simply sent the product page of the TV to Claude and asked if it could be “hacked” a bit, and what they ended up with was a screensaver that displayed their own income and new Stripe payments.

I saw everyone working on vibe and coding for their TVs. My TV is already so slow that I can’t stand it anymore, so I decided to give it a try too.

Spending an afternoon with Claude Code: 25 bloated applications were disabled, the original launcher of 192 MB was replaced with a custom version of 83 MB, and a carousel wallpaper was also added.

With AI, all you need to do is imagine! pic.twitter.com / QR6V3Au2f5

— Mihir Gupta (@0900mihir) October 18, 2026

Rod Pers went a step further, replacing the ads with a real-time 3D model of their apartment, with lights and ceiling fans turning on and off in real time. Adrian Friend used animation tools to create a minimalist interface. Another user mentioned helping their grandmother clean the TV, and her grandmother is now very satisfied.

Joined the entire trend of 'hackers' in television

I made a super minimalist version using @rive_app, so why not?” pic.twitter.com / rk53DOBfhB

— Adrian Friend (@ z00med0ut ) October 19, 2026

Another competing project, dumbtv, is mainly aimed at Amazon Fire TV. It will disable around 65 software packages, including the ACR software, and then install a launcher that only contains 41 KB. Moreover, it has absolutely no internet permissions. Its slogan is very straightforward: "Your apps, your HDMI input, a clock, and that's it."

cleanyourtv is only fully available on Android TV and Google TV devices, and is suitable for brands such as Sony, TCL, Hisense, Philips, and Xiaomi. However, Samsung and Tizen have different operating systems from LG's webOS; therefore, Fire TV can only utilize some of its cleaning functions.

For LG television, users have made some adjustments by removing excess content, but they did not completely redesign the interface like the users of Android TV. Nevertheless, this is still a significant advantage for privacy-conscious users, as experts have discovered that LG is capable of secretly locating users' locations, collecting voice conversations, and gathering other data even when the television appears to be turned off.

" LG Spyware has been removed, and the interface has also been simplified. https :// t.co / Ams81w9uKE pic.twitter.com / qmLGDURELb "

— malone (@ malonehedges ) October 20, 2026

Not every attempt is successful: some users say they have “bricked” their TVs – which is a term in the tech community to describe making a device unusable – while others get stuck halfway through the process related to Fire TV.

Last month, when I tried to restart it, I managed to “brick” the TV. I even uninstalled the system. It was quite interesting to see that old Android recovery screen appear on the TV again.

— 🔻 (@ jihadsinwar ) October 19, 2026

The "readme" file of cleanyourtv also warns that the network ADB is unencrypted. On certain firmware, any device connected to the same Wi – Fi as the TV may be able to take control of it, so users should turn off the debugging function after completing the process. The AI proxy itself can also be tricked: Microsoft discovered this year that hidden commands could cause Claude Code to expose credentials, and this vulnerability was fixed in May by Anthropic.

A user named X gave a more practical reminder: If you clean the TV for your parents, don’t tell them how to do it themselves, because there are still many other devices at their home that come with model numbers.

As of Tuesday, the cleanyourtv repository had been copied, that is, it became “fork” 1200 times, and there were 85 open pull request, which are proposed changes submitted by volunteers to the open-source project.

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