Developers are using AI coding tools to build quick fixes that strip ads, tracking and bloatware from smart TVs, a practice often called vibe coding (describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI write the software).
Several projects have appeared in recent weeks. One, dumbtv, says on its GitHub page that a TV should run "your apps, your HDMI inputs, and nothing else." It removes ads, telemetry (data the TV sends back about how you use it), experiments and Alexa, plus any apps the user picks, across many kinds of smart TV. Another, cleanyourtv, targets Android TV and Google TV over Wi-Fi and swaps the ad-filled home screen for a clean launcher styled after Apple TV. Both say they are fully reversible and leave the TV's root directory, its deepest layer of system access, untouched. Those are the projects' own claims.
The do-it-yourself end is simpler still. Ryan Doyle wrote on X that they found a listing for their TV and asked Claude Code, an AI coding agent, "can you hack this?" The agent walked them through removing "ads, bloatware, spyware" and speeding up a laggy interface. At the other extreme, a developer known as Cretezy built a setup that replaces much of Android TV: an ad-free launch screen, a YouTube substitute, a media manager and a remote button remapper. Cretezy says an AI agent can install it and tailor it to a given TV.
TV tinkering is old. What changed is the time cost: a targeted fix now takes hours rather than days or weeks. Smart TVs come in a sprawl of makers and software versions, so per-model workarounds were expensive to write. Cheaper code makes that sprawl easier to cover, and the mood helps, with streaming prices up and ads more intrusive.
Web ad blockers have played a similar game with publishers for years. The open question is whether TV makers, who control the software updates, will treat these tools as a nuisance to patch, and whether a promise of "no update you did not ask for" survives the next firmware push.