Free My TV

A fast, ad-free home screen for Google TV.

Trending picks from your own apps, the weather at a glance, and a look that follows the sunset. Open source. Built with Claude Code. One button to undo.

freemytv.io · Install · Any TV · Make it yours

What you get

• No ads. No sponsored rows, banners or autoplaying promos. Not one.
• Your apps, front and center. The streaming apps you actually use, on a glass shelf.
• Trending, not sponsored. Three fresh picks every hour from what's trending this week and the latest releases, only from apps you already have. Movies and Shows get their own tabs.
• Weather and markets, one press away. The hour-by-hour forecast, sunrise and sunset, and live crypto prices.
• Light by day, dark by night. It follows your city's real sunset, the way your phone does.
• A screensaver to match. Full-screen photos of the picks with a big glass clock.
• Fast. 60 fps, every frame in 16.6 ms, on the TV's own chip. The home screen uses 96 MB of memory instead of 242 MB (−60%).Measured on a 98″ TCL Google TV running Android 14.
• Safe. No root. Nothing is uninstalled. One button brings back the factory home screen.

Install

About ten minutes. You need a Google TV or Android TV (Android 12 or newer) and a computer on the same Wi-Fi.

The easy way: Claude Code

1. On the TV, turn on developer mode: Settings → System → About → press Android TV OS build 7 times. Then Settings → System → Developer options → turn on USB debugging. Write down the TV's IP address (Settings → Network & Internet).

2. On your computer, get the code:

   git clone https://github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv && cd free-my-tv
   

3. Open Claude Code in that folder and say:

   Install Free My TV on my TV at 192.168.1.50. I live in Lisbon.

   It installs the tools it needs, builds the app and puts it on your TV. Swap in your TV's IP and your city.

4. On the TV, open Free My TV → Home Screen → Free My TV, and accept the debugging prompt (tick Always allow).

The manual way

1. On the TV, do step 1 above.
2. Tools: a JDK (17+), the Android SDK command-line tools (build-tools 34, platform android-34) and adb. On a Mac:

   brew install --cask temurin android-commandlinetools android-platform-tools
   sdkmanager "build-tools;34.0.0" "platforms;android-34"
   

   On Linux, get OpenJDK 17, Android's command-line tools and adb from your package manager, then run the same sdkmanager line. On Windows, use WSL.
3. Build:

   ./build.sh
   

   The first run creates config.properties. Set your city and your TMDB key there, then run it again.
4. Install:

   adb connect 192.168.1.50:5555
   adb install -r FreeMyTV.apk
   

5. On the TV, open Free My TV → Home Screen → Free My TV.

Settings

Everything lives in config.properties, created by the first build:

Changed something? Run ./build.sh and install again. Keep freemytv.keystore: updates are signed with it.

The TMDB key

Free, and it takes two minutes: create an account at themoviedb.org, then open Settings → API and request a developer key. Paste the API Read Access Token (or the API Key) after tmdb_key=. It's your key: config.properties stays out of git.

Going back

On the TV: Free My TV → Home Screen → Original. The factory home screen, screensaver and every app come back exactly as they were. If the new home screen ever crashes three times in five minutes, it switches back by itself.

To remove it for good, switch to Original first, then uninstall Free My TV (Settings → Apps).

What it changes

• It becomes the home screen and the screensaver.
• It turns off, without uninstalling:
  • the stock home screen and screensaver, with the remote shortcuts they run on some TVs (like the Netflix button on TCL);
  • Google TV's recovery home, Play Games and YouTube Music;
  • on TCL TVs, the TCL Channel, messages, store demo, hotel menu, manuals, mirroring and logging apps;
  • Google Assistant, only with disable_assistant=true.
• Picture, sound, inputs, remote pairing, Google services and the Play Store are on a protected list, checked before every change.

Any TV

Free My TV runs on Google TV and Android TV: TCL, Sony, Hisense, Philips, Xiaomi and more, plus streamers like Chromecast with Google TV, the Google TV Streamer, onn 4K and NVIDIA Shield.

Samsung, LG or any other TV: plug a Google TV streamer into HDMI and free that one. Same steps, same home screen.

A different brand or model: ask Claude. Free My TV is made to be adapted by AI. Open the folder in Claude Code and say "set it up for my Sony": it reads your TV, finds its home screen and its promo apps, updates the lists below and walks you through a test. CLAUDE.md tells it how.

Make it yours

It's your code, and Claude Code finds its way around it. Try:

• "Add Crunchyroll to the shelf."
• "Show the prices in euros."
• "Add Spanish."
• "Switch to the night look an hour after sunset."

How it works

• A plain Android app, no Gradle, no libraries. build.sh runs aapt2 → javac → d8 → zipalign → apksigner and makes a 2 MB APK.
• It uses the TV's own ADB, from inside the TV. The app connects to 127.0.0.1:5555 with its own key (that's the Allow USB debugging? prompt) and runs the same commands you would: cmd package set-home-activity, settings put secure screensaver_components, pm disable-user. Nothing listens to the network.
• Drawn by hand on one Canvas, with Android 13 shaders for the frosted glass and the sky (plain fills on Android 12).
• A safety net. A watchdog in a separate process brings back the stock home screen after three crashes in five minutes, and a boot check keeps your choice after TV updates.
• Data from TMDB (trending titles, new releases and which app streams what in your country), Open-Meteo (forecast, sunrise and sunset) and Binance (24-hour prices).

The website (freemytv.io) is in docs/: plain HTML, CSS and JS on GitHub Pages.

Privacy

No accounts, no analytics, no tracking. The app only talks to TMDB, Open-Meteo (with the coordinates you set) and Binance. Your settings stay on your computer and your TV.

Credits

• Built with Claude Code.
• This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Prices from the Binance public API.
• Icons: Material Symbols (Apache 2.0). Font: Inter (SIL OFL 1.1). Coin logos: cryptocurrency-icons (CC0).
• Not affiliated with Google, TCL or any streaming service. App names and logos belong to their owners.

License

MIT. Fork it, change it, ship it.