Free My TV
A fast, ad-free home screen for Google TV, LG and Samsung TVs.
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 · LG TVs · Samsung TVs · 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. Pick them and their order right on the TV.
- 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.
- Set up on the TV. Language, your city, temperature, theme, the weather and prices cards, which coins, and the apps on the shelf, in Free My TV's own settings.
- 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 9 or newer) and a computer on the same Wi-Fi.
The easy way: Claude Code
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).
On your computer, get the code:
git clone https://github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv && cd free-my-tv
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.
On the TV, open Free My TV → Home Screen → Free My TV, and accept the debugging prompt (tick Always allow).
The manual way
- On the TV, do step 1 above.
- 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.
- Build:
./build.sh
The first run creates config.properties. Set your city and your TMDB key there, then run it again.
- Install:
adb connect 192.168.1.50:5555
adb install -r FreeMyTV.apk
On TCL TVs, also let it run in the background (TCL blocks it by default, and the switch never starts):adb shell "appops set io.freemytv AUTO_START allow || appops set io.freemytv APP_AUTO_START allow"
- On the TV, open Free My TV → Home Screen → Free My TV.
LG TVs (webOS)
The same home screen as an LG app: the picks, the glass shelf with your apps, the drawer with inputs, weather and prices, day and night, Home Settings and the shelf editor. It installs through LG's own Developer Mode, with nothing rooted or changed on the TV. LG's home screen stays where it is, and Free My TV is one press of a number key away.
You need an LG TV (webOS 3 or newer) and a computer on the same Wi-Fi, with Python 3.
- On the TV, open the LG Content Store and install Developer Mode. Sign in with a free LG developer account, turn on Dev Mode Status (the TV restarts), then turn on Key Server. Write down the IP address and the passphrase it shows.
- On your computer, get the code and build.
config.properties works as for Google TV (your city, your TMDB key):git clone https://github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv && cd free-my-tv
python3 webos/build.py
- Install. The first time, it asks for the TV's passphrase; updates don't:
python3 webos/install.py 192.168.1.50
- On the TV, while Free My TV is open, hold a number key on the remote. From then on, that key opens it from anywhere.
With Claude Code, say "Install Free My TV on my LG TV at 192.168.1.50. I live in Lisbon." It builds the app and hands you the install command, so you type the passphrase yourself.
Developer Mode lasts about 40 days: open the Developer Mode app now and then and press EXTEND. To remove Free My TV, run python3 webos/install.py 192.168.1.50 --uninstall.
Samsung TVs (Tizen)
The same home screen as a Samsung app, with everything the LG one has: the picks, the shelf, the drawer with the inputs, the weather and the prices, day and night, and its own settings. It installs through Samsung's own Developer Mode, with nothing rooted or changed on the TV, and Samsung's home screen stays where it is.
You need a Samsung TV from 2017 or newer (Tizen 3+) and a computer on the same Wi-Fi.
- On the TV, open Apps and type
1 2 3 4 5 on the remote. Turn Developer mode on, type your computer's IP address in Host PC IP, and restart the TV.
- On your computer, download TizenBrew Installer, the community's installer for Samsung TVs, open it and connect to your TV.
- Install from GitHub: type
simbasjungles/free-my-tv. On 2023 and newer TVs it asks you to sign in to your Samsung account once, to sign the app for your TV.
- Straight to it: in the TV's settings, under Start Screen Options, turn on Autorun Last App: the TV turns on into Free My TV.
This build takes your city from the TV's time zone. For your exact city and the trending picks, build it with your own config.properties and TMDB key: open the folder in Claude Code and say "Install Free My TV on my Samsung TV at 192.168.1.50. I live in Lisbon." It sets up Samsung's tools, and on 2023 and newer TVs you sign in to your Samsung account in the browser to make the certificate.
Settings
The first values come from config.properties, created by the first build (Google TV, LG and Samsung use the same file). Most of them can also be changed on the TV, in Free My TV → Home Settings, and the TV's choice wins:
| Key |
What it does |
Default |
tmdb_key |
Your free TMDB key, for the picks |
empty |
tmdb_region |
Your country (two letters): which titles are on which app |
US |
latitude, longitude |
Your city, for the weather and the sunset |
New York |
city |
The name on the weather card |
Weather |
language |
auto (follows the TV), en, es, pt, ru or de |
auto |
show_crypto |
Show Binance crypto prices on home and screensaver |
true |
currency |
Crypto prices in USD, EUR, BRL… |
USD |
temperature |
C, F or auto |
auto |
disable_assistant |
Also turn off Google Assistant |
false |
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;
- 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;
- on Philco TVs, AI PONT (promo channels and app downloads) and the manual;
- on Multilaser TVs, Anoki's screen-content recognition (ACR), the store demo and the manual;
- Google Assistant, only with
disable_assistant=true.
- On TCL TVs, the remote's Netflix, YouTube and Prime buttons keep working through a small accessibility service that only reads those buttons. Pick what each one opens in Free My TV → Remote Buttons; Original turns the service off. On Vestel-made TVs (F&U and other store brands) the same goes for the Netflix button.
- Picture, sound, inputs, remote pairing, Google services and the Play Store are on a protected list, checked before every change.
- Apps that saved a Wi-Fi network are never turned off, since Android would erase the network. If the TV's first setup saved yours, the switch asks you to forget the network and connect again in Settings first (saved networks out of range don't show there; Claude Code can remove them).
Any TV
Free My TV runs on Google TV and Android TV: TCL, Sony, Hisense, Philips, Xiaomi, Vestel-made TVs (F&U) and more, plus streamers like Chromecast with Google TV, the Google TV Streamer, onn 4K and NVIDIA Shield. And on LG and Samsung TVs, as an app.
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.
| What |
Where |
| Apps to turn off |
DEBLOAT in HomeMode.java |
| Apps never to touch |
PROTECTED in the same file |
| Apps on the shelf |
SHELF in HomeApps.java |
| Your brand's live TV app |
LIVE_TV_APPS in the same file |
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 9 to 12, with lighter shadows and no GPU layers on 9 to 11 for their older GPUs).
- 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.
- On LG and Samsung, the same design in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript (
web/), written for the Chromium of older TVs, with no frameworks. webos/build.py packs it with config.properties into an .ipk without LG's tools, and webos/install.py installs it through Developer Mode; on LG it lists and opens apps through the TV's own service bus (Luna), as LG's launcher does. tizen/build.py packs the same app into a Samsung .wgt, which uses Tizen's web APIs for the apps and the inputs. To preview it on a computer: python3 webos/build.py --preview, then open out/webos/index.html (a stand-in lists sample apps).
- Data from TMDB (trending titles, new releases and which app streams what in your country), Open-Meteo (forecast, sunrise and sunset), and optionally Binance (24-hour prices when
show_crypto=true).
The website (freemytv.io) is in docs/: plain HTML, CSS and JS on GitHub Pages.
Privacy
No accounts, no analytics, no tracking. The app talks to TMDB, Open-Meteo (with the coordinates you set, or your time zone's main city), and Binance only when show_crypto=true. Your settings stay on your computer and your TV.
Credits
License
MIT. Fork it, change it, ship it.
Free My TV is a free, ad-free replacement home screen for Google TV, Android TV, LG webOS and Samsung Tizen TVs. It shows trending picks pulled from the streaming apps you already have, weather and crypto prices, with no sponsored content, and one button restores the original factory home screen.