If your TV greets you with a car commercial before it lets you anywhere near Netflix, you're in good company — and there's finally a genuinely new way out. A developer who goes by Gathin used an AI coding agent to remove ads from a smart TV in his own family's living room, then published the whole method as a free, open-source project called CleanYourTV. It's already pulled in thousands of stars on GitHub, and the coverage has followed: Mashable, TechRadar and The Daily Star have all written it up.
What happened
The spark was small and painfully familiar. Gathin's parents had a Xiaomi TV, and ads were showing up before they could even open Netflix. Instead of shrugging it off, he handed the job to Claude Code — an AI coding assistant that can actually run commands on a machine — and pointed it at the television over the home Wi-Fi network.
The agent went digging through the TV's system and switched off 25 unwanted packages: ad services, telemetry, and a pile of other software nobody in that house had ever asked for. Then it built a new home screen, inspired by Apple TV's stripped-down look. No root access. No USB cable. And every change is reversible, because the agent backs up the original settings first.
Bloatware, telemetry, root — in plain English
Three jargon words show up in every write-up, so here's the short version.
Bloatware is software the manufacturer installed and you never asked for — the digital equivalent of a landlord leaving their old furniture in your apartment. Telemetry is the TV's habit of quietly phoning home to report how it's being used. And root access is the deepest level of control on an Android device, roughly the master keys to the building. The interesting part here is that CleanYourTV doesn't need those keys at all.
Why your TV shows ads in the first place
TV makers aren't being random about this. Some smart TVs use something called automatic content recognition, or ACR, which watches what's on screen by analyzing images and audio. That viewing data feeds targeted advertising and audience analytics — in other words, the ad you're seeing before Netflix is part of the business model, not a glitch.
What it means for you
Here's the thing: a TV cleanup sounds like a hobbyist's weekend project, but it changes everyday moments in ways that are easy to underestimate.
At home: fewer clicks between you and your show
If you've got kids, a shared living room, or just an evening routine, you know the drill — power on, wait, skip an ad, land on a messy home screen, hunt for the app you actually wanted. Stripping out the ad services and swapping in a cleaner launcher removes most of that friction. It's the difference between opening a drawer and rummaging versus grabbing the one thing you need.
In the office, the waiting room, or a lobby
Any screen that faces customers is a screen that shouldn't be blasting mattress sales at them. A waiting room TV, a reception display, a screen above the counter — those are prime candidates. A clean home screen that boots straight into what you want looks a lot more professional than a wall of promoted content.
For students and anyone living with a hand-me-down TV
Renters and students usually inherit whatever TV came with the place, and cheap smart TVs are the most ad-heavy of the bunch. Since the process only needs Wi-Fi, a laptop, and a free open-source project, it's a realistic fix for people who'd never dream of flashing firmware.
For creators and tinkerers
If you test apps, film content, or just like your gear to behave, a decluttered launcher is a better canvas. And if you're the person friends text when their tech misbehaves, this is exactly the kind of recipe worth having in your back pocket. While you're at it, the free AI tools at mykreatool are a handy companion for the writing and planning side of these little projects.
If you want to turn it into income
Not everyone wants to paste prompts into a terminal. If you're comfortable doing it, setting up someone else's Android TV or Google TV is a service people will happily pay a local helper for — the same way they pay someone to mount a bracket or sort out their Wi-Fi. Start with one or two people you know, document what you changed, and keep the backups.
How to try it right now
The free option comes first, because everything here is free: the project is open source, the prompt is public, and you don't need any paid add-ons. The one tool you'll want is Claude Code — the AI coding agent Gathin built this around — or another AI coding agent that can run commands in a terminal.
1. Check what your TV runs. Dig into Settings → About and look for Android TV or Google TV. That's the whole compatibility test.
2. Put both devices on the same Wi-Fi. Your TV and your computer need to be on the same network. That's the only "connection" involved.
3. Turn on debugging mode on the TV. Android has a hidden service called ADB, which is basically a service hatch that lets a computer send commands to the device. You switch it on in the developer options menu.
4. Grab the prompt. The project's instructions and prompt are published on GitHub; this walkthrough video shows the flow end to end if you'd rather watch than read.
5. Paste it into Claude Code. The agent will ask you a few questions about what you want — which packages to leave alone, what kind of home screen you're after.
6. Let it back up before it changes anything. This is the step that makes the whole thing safe to experiment with. Watch it happen; don't walk away.
7. Restart the TV and look around. If something feels wrong, you have the backup to roll back to. Nothing here is a one-way door.
The whole thing is pitched as a five-minute job, which tracks — the slow part is the backup and the questions, not the cleanup itself.
Upsides and what changes
The immediate win is obvious: fewer ads, less clutter, and a home screen that shows you apps instead of offers. The quieter win is privacy. Every telemetry package that stops reporting is one less stream of data about your household going out the door, and ACR-style tracking gets harder to run when the services behind it are switched off.
There's also the structural upside. This is open source, which means the prompt and the package list are public and can be inspected, argued about, and improved by anyone. If AI-powered TV cleanup becomes common, it puts real pressure on a business model that currently treats your screen as ad inventory. And because nothing requires root and everything is reversible, the barrier to trying it is about as low as it gets.
Limitations
Be honest with yourself about what you're doing: you're handing system-level access to an AI agent and letting it switch off software you don't fully understand. Sometimes the thing labeled "ad service" is also the thing that makes casting work, or an app you use depends on a package that just got disabled — which is exactly why the backup exists and why you should read the questions the agent asks instead of mashing enter. An AI agent can be confidently wrong, and no manufacturer is going to support a TV you've reconfigured yourself. Firmware updates may also undo your work or reintroduce what you removed, so plan on revisiting it. None of this is a reason to skip it; it's a reason to do it on a TV you can afford to experiment with, keep the backup somewhere safe, and change one thing at a time.
Conclusion and one action for today
A guy noticed ads interrupting his parents' Netflix, pointed an AI coding agent at the problem over Wi-Fi, and ended up with an open-source project that thousands of people have now starred. That's the whole story — and the takeaway is that the screen in your living room is more configurable than the manufacturer wants you to believe. You don't need to be an engineer. You need a Wi-Fi network, a laptop, and about five minutes of patience.
Your one action for today: pick up your remote, open Settings, and check whether your TV is running Android TV or Google TV. If it is, you've got a project to try this weekend. If it isn't, you now know exactly what to look for next time you're shopping for a screen.
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