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I Asked Claude Code "Can You Hack This?" and It Debloated My Smart TV

October 20, 2026

On October 16 I sent Claude Code a photo of my TV and asked if it could do anything cool to it. About 15 minutes later the ads were gone, the menus were fast, and the screensaver was a live dashboard of my revenue, calendar and weather.

I posted it on X and it took off. The speed video alone got 27,000 likes. Then TechCrunch, Tech Times and GIGAZINE wrote it up.

Here's the whole thing, including a prompt you can paste to do it to your own TV.

The TV

A TCL Q77K. It runs Google TV, which is Android underneath. That's the whole trick: Android has a debug mode, and once it's on, a computer on the same Wi-Fi can control the TV with adb (Android Debug Bridge). It can uninstall apps, change hidden settings and send remote presses.

What I did (one setting)

  1. Settings → System → About → click Android TV OS build 7 times. That unlocks Developer options.
  2. Settings → System → Developer options → turn on USB debugging and wireless debugging.

That was it. I didn't look up the TV's IP or type any commands. Claude scanned my Wi-Fi, found the TV on its own and connected. A popup appeared on the TV asking to allow this computer, I clicked Allow, and from then on Claude drove the TV from my Mac.

What Claude did

Removed the bloat. It uninstalled 9 TCL ad and tracking apps for my user, including TCL Channel, TCL TV+, the "interactive" ACR viewing tracker, the message box and store demo mode. It used pm uninstall --user 0, which hides an app without touching the system image, so any of them can come back with one command.

Made it fast. It set Android's animation speeds to 0.5x. That plus the missing bloat is the difference in the video.

Killed the ad-filled home screen. It installed Projectivy Launcher and set it to take over the Home button, so Google TV's sponsored rows never show. Its first try was disabling the Google TV launcher outright, which made Android throw a recovery screen. It turned it back on right away and switched to the Home-button override. Nothing broke.

Fixed the picture. The TV shipped on Sport mode, the most over-processed preset. Claude switched every input to Filmmaker Mode, turned off Motion Clarity (the "soap opera effect"), set local dimming to High and confirmed ACR tracking was off.

Built a screensaver worth looking at. A small web page on my Mac Mini, opened full screen in a TV browser. It plays Apple TV's aerial drone footage behind my live MRR, today's Stripe earnings, the weather and today's calendar. When a payment lands, a toast slides in: +$550.

Do it to your TV

If your TV runs Google TV or Android TV (TCL, Hisense, Sony, Philips, Chromecast with Google TV, NVIDIA Shield), turn on the two debug settings above, then paste this into Claude Code:

My TV is a <brand + model> running Google TV. Wireless debugging is on.
Find it on my Wi-Fi, connect with adb (I'll click Allow on the TV), then:
1. List every installed package and tell me which ones are ads, tracking or
   manufacturer bloat. Remove those with `pm uninstall -k --user 0` only (never
   touch the system image), and keep a list so each one can be restored.
   Don't remove the launcher, Play Store, or anything the TV needs to boot.
2. Set window, transition and animator animation scales to 0.5.
3. Turn off ACR / "viewing information" tracking if it's on.
4. Install Projectivy Launcher from the Play Store and set it to replace the
   Google TV home screen.
Show me what you're about to remove before you remove it.

Samsung (Tizen) and LG (webOS) TVs don't run Android, so this exact path doesn't apply to them.

Why this works now

None of this is new. People have debloated Android TVs with adb for years. What changed is that it used to mean an afternoon of forum threads and copying package names. Now you ask "can you hack this?" and answer a few questions while it works.

// more from ryan
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