Smart TV owners are using artificial intelligence to remove ads from their screens, disable tracking, and get rid of unnecessary apps. They are using AI agents to do this. Some users claim that their devices have even started to run faster after such changes.
Smart TV owners are using artificial intelligence to remove ads from their screens, disable tracking, and get rid of unnecessary apps. They are using AI agents to do this. Some users claim that their devices have even started to run faster after such changes.
This is reported by TechCrunch.
@gathint, one of the users, decided to change the interface of his parents' TV when he got tired of seeing ads even before Netflix launched. He instructed Claude Code to connect to the device via Wi-Fi, disable 25 pre-installed Xiaomi software components, and create a new home screen similar to the Apple TV interface.
Vibe coded my parents' TV this afternoon!
— Gathin (Ø,G) (@gathint) October 17, 2026
It was showing a sponsored ad before you could even get to Netflix.
Gave Claude Code the model number, it found the TV on wifi, removed 25 Xiaomi packages and wrote a new launcher.
Looks like an Apple TV now lol pic.twitter.com/E5Q4A1b0yI
The developer posted the instructions on GitHub under the name cleanyourtv. According to him, in just two days, several thousand people tried to repeat the experiment on their TVs.
Another user, @DevMuzzammil, followed a similar path and created the dumbtv project.
“Your TV should do what you paid for: run your apps, work with HDMI — and nothing more,” he explains on the project’s Github page.
introducing dumbtv
— Muzzammil (@DevMuzzammil) October 18, 2026
— no spying
— no ads from TV
— fully customizable
to setup just point your agent to this repo — https://t.co/prQLD17Wa4 https://t.co/z41SWJZVXt pic.twitter.com/c6R8EhljiA
And user Ryan Doyle decided to simply send Claude Code a link to his model description and ask: "Can you hack this?"
The AI explained to him what he needed to do to remove ads and unnecessary programs, speed up the menu, and set up a new screen saver. Doyle later posted a video showing how much faster the TV started working.
This is how fast the TV moves now that Claude deleted all the BS laggy bloatware it comes with https://t.co/nUCEjqPwAO pic.twitter.com/g07CEgC1GJ
— Ryan Doyle (@doooyle) October 17, 2026
However, trusting your TV to AI should be done with caution. Users have already complained that the agents sometimes turn off important system components. One Android TV owner even reported that after Claude's intervention, his TV stopped working.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that Claude Code creator Borys Cherny advised users to communicate with AI as a colleague, rather than wasting time on complex prompts.
