People Are Vibe Coding the Ads Off Their TVs. Here Is the One Prompt.

You paid for the TV. Then the TV started showing you a sponsored ad before you could even open Netflix.

One person got tired of it. He gave Claude Code the model number of his parents' TV and let it work. It found the TV on the home Wi-Fi, switched off 25 packages the manufacturer had preloaded, and wrote a new home screen. His words: it looks like an Apple TV now.

That post turned into a free GitHub project called cleanyourtv. Within a week it passed 30,000 stars, with debloat lists for 280 TV models from 81 brands, all contributed by people who ran it on their own sets. The link is at the bottom of this page. Before you run it, read the next ten minutes, because it touches a device in your living room and the safety steps matter.

What It Actually Does

Three things, in this order.

Back up. It records every installed package and the TV's settings before it changes anything. The record lives on your computer, and the restore script reads it.

Disable. It turns off the manufacturer's telemetry, the ad services, the sponsored content rows and the preloaded apps you never asked for. It uses a standard Android command that disables a package for the user. Nothing is uninstalled. The files stay on the TV, switched off.

Install. It installs a small native launcher, about 500 KB, built to run on TVs with 1 GB of memory, and sets it as the default home screen. A black home, a dock with your four favourite apps, a shelf that names the focused app in large type, the rest of your apps in a grid when you press Down, and three buttons for inputs, network and settings. No ads, no rows of recommendations, no video previews.

The part that makes it work across so many TVs is that the prompt does not carry a fixed list. The bloat differs by brand. The prompt tells your coding assistant to discover what is on your specific TV, show you the list, and ask before touching anything you might actually use.

Why This Is Worth Your Attention Even If You Never Touch the TV

Nobody at the TV company built this. One person with a coding agent, a model number and a clear goal did it in an afternoon, and two hundred strangers extended it to hundreds of models in four days.

That is the pattern worth noticing. The agent did not need a manual for that TV. It needed access, a goal, and permission to ask before doing anything destructive. The same three things are what an agent needs inside a business: access to the system, a plain goal, and a rule to confirm before it deletes or sends.

If you run a company, your software stack has its own bloatware: tools nobody opens, steps nobody questioned, a login before you can get to the work. The TV is a small, safe place to watch what an agent does when you hand it a goal instead of instructions.

Before You Start

Check these five things. If any one fails, stop here.

1. The TV runs Android TV or Google TV. Sony, TCL, Hisense, Xiaomi, Philips, the Nvidia Shield, Chromecast with Google TV and most sets that have the Play Store. The launcher needs Android 8.0 or newer. Samsung (Tizen) and LG (webOS) are different systems and this project does not cover them. Fire TV gets the debloat only, not the launcher.
2. A computer on the same Wi-Fi as the TV, with Python 3 installed.
3. A coding assistant with shell access. Claude Code is the one the project was built with. Codex and other agents that can run commands work too.
4. Thirty minutes and the TV's remote in your hand.
5. A willingness to read what the agent proposes before saying yes. This is the whole safety model.

Setup, Step by Step

1. Turn on developer options on the TV

Open the TV's Settings, go to About, and press OK on the Build number seven times. A message tells you developer options are on. Go back into Settings, open Developer options, and turn on USB debugging. If your TV also shows a Network debugging or ADB debugging toggle, turn that on too.

2. Get the project onto your computer

Open a terminal and clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv
cd cleanyourtv

Start your coding assistant from inside that folder. Claude Code, for example:

claude

Starting it inside the folder matters. The agent reuses the project's scripts and the existing lists for your TV model instead of inventing its own.

3. Paste the prompt with your TV model

Open the file called PROMPT.md in the repository. Paste its contents into the assistant and fill in your TV's model number where it asks. The model number is on the sticker on the back of the TV, or under Settings, About.

The prompt tells the agent to find the TV on the network, back everything up first, list what it found, and ask you which apps you use. It also tells it to check every step with a screenshot pulled from the TV, so it sees what you see.

4. Accept the connection on the TV

The first time the computer connects, the TV shows a dialog asking whether to allow USB debugging from this computer. Say yes. Then answer the agent's checklist. Keep Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, whatever you open. Disable the rest.

5. Let it install the launcher, then press Home

The agent disables the packages you agreed on in small batches, installs the launcher, and sets it as Home. Press the Home button on the remote. If the TV asks which launcher to use, pick the new one and set it as always.

Done. The ad before Netflix is gone, the home screen is clean, and the TV is noticeably faster because nothing is loading ads in the background.

If You Want It Back the Way It Was

One command. The project saved a record of the TV's state before touching it, and the restore script re-enables every package from the list you applied and puts the stock launcher back as Home:

TV_HOST=192.168.1.50 tools/restore.sh examples/<your-tv>/debloat.txt

Replace the address with your TV's and the path with the list you used. Keep that list. Without the tools, you can also open the TV's own Settings, Apps page and re-enable packages by hand, since nothing was deleted.

The Safety Rules People Learned the Hard Way

The project is a week old and a few hundred people have run it. These are the rules that came out of their reports.

• Back up before anything else. The restore record is written before the first package is disabled. Do not skip it to save a minute.
• Apply lists in small batches and keep the list you applied. If something breaks, you know which batch did it.
• Install the new launcher before disabling the stock one. Done the other way round, Home can land on a factory test app and you are navigating blind.
• On Google TV, the setup wizard may hold your saved Wi-Fi network. Disabling it can delete that network. Leave it alone unless you know why you are removing it.
• Turn off USB and network debugging when you are done. Network debugging on a TV is an open door on your home network, in plain text.
• Firmware updates can bring disabled packages back. The project ships a check tool that compares the TV against your list, so you can re-run the debloat in a minute instead of starting over.
• Some TVs refuse a new launcher. A few China-market sets will not install any launcher at all. The debloat still works. The home screen stays stock.
• A few people bricked sets by disabling the wrong system package. Every one of those cases skipped the "ask before touching" step. Read the list.

What It Will Not Do

• It will not root the TV, flash firmware, or bypass any lock, DRM or copy protection.
• It will not uninstall anything. Disabled, not deleted.
• It will not remove ads inside apps. YouTube ads stay. The project can set Android's Private DNS to a blocking resolver, which catches some in-app ads and misses others.
• It will not work on Samsung or LG TVs.
• The launcher has no blur, no video, no network permission and no background services. That is the point. It will also not look like your old home screen, and some people miss the recommendations row for a day.

Changing the software on a TV may affect its warranty. The project is independent and not affiliated with any TV maker. Read the scripts before you run them. They are short.

The Link

The repository, with the prompt, the launcher source, the lists for 280 TV models and the restore tool, is here:

https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv

Credit to Gathin, who fixed his parents' TV, posted the prompt, and then let the internet fix theirs.

If you tried it on your TV, the examples folder is where your model's list goes so the next person with the same set has a one-minute job instead of a thirty-minute one.