An open-source hit that nobody built for iPhone: Teevy sells for €0.99 and hit #2 on the French Top Paid chart within three days of launch

In mid-October a developer used a coding agent to shut off the ads on his parents' TV, and in three weeks the project reached 53k stars on GitHub. But the setup needs a computer, an SDK, and familiarity with coding agents, and iPhone users had nothing usable. On Oct 31, a €0.99 iPhone App filled that gap, and three days later it was #2 on the French overall Top Paid chart, with zero ratings at the time. Below: how it got into that position, where the money came from, why this gap is no longer worth crowding into, and where this playbook should be used next time.

Mom and Dad's Xiaomi TV

It started with a Xiaomi TV. Developer Gathin T. got fed up with the ads on his parents' TV home screen, so he handed the TV model to Claude Code. It found the TV over Wi-Fi, disabled 25 preinstalled Xiaomi apps, and wrote a new home screen that looks like Apple TV. He posted the before-and-after on X, and the post hit 8.6M views (Cybernews, 10-27). In Oct 17 he packaged the approach as an open-source project, CleanYourTV, and by Nov 6 it had 53,182 stars and 6,802 forks. The project page itself lists 412 media mentions.

The wave hit the French-speaking world last, and hardest. From Oct 26 to Nov 5, French tech sites like hfrance, lacremedugaming and it-connect covered it one after another. The French TikTok titles all said roughly the same thing: "J'ai hacké ma télé avec Claude Code" (I hacked my TV with Claude Code, dembstech, 10-3.16M views). A Spanish post, "A madman used Claude Code to strip the ads off his parents' TV, and now you can do it for free," got 490k views (xabatzz, 10-31).

Most people who watched the videos don't have a computer with Python, JDK and the Android SDK set up, and they don't have a subscription to a coding agent. CleanYourTV's readme says it won't ship as an app in any app store. The community quickly made free versions, but they were all for Android phones (Clean Your TV app, Tellyscope, TidyTV) or Mac / Windows desktops (CleanMyTV). iPhone users who searched the App Store found nothing.

Teevy launched on the same day dembstech's video went up.

What it is

An iPhone app, €0.99 one-time purchase, for cleaning up Android TV / Google TV. The French store page opens with: "Your TV boots slowly, the menus lag, and the home screen is full of ads? Teevy uses your iPhone to clean it up in a few minutes, no tech skills needed."

Three steps to use it: the app finds the TV over Wi-Fi; it walks you step by step through opening the debugging authorization menu for your TV model; then it lists what it will change, and you tap confirm. The changes: it disables preinstalled apps that run in the background ("it deletes nothing"), and replaces the home screen with one showing only the time, weather and your apps. Backgrounds include black, glass, aurora and landscapes, and you can use your own photos. It also throws in a phone remote.

Its real effort goes into easing the fear of "will this break my TV": it creates a restore point before every change, has a "restore everything to original" button, automatically re-checks after a TV system update, and lets people without a TV on hand try the built-in demo TV first. The site says it supports 407 known models, roughly the same as the number of models the CleanYourTV community has tested (about 450). Neither the site nor the store page says whether it used the open-source project's model list directly; unverified.

The developer is Buzzle Partners LLP, a UK LLP, and this is the only app it has on iOS. The package name com.buzzle.teevy shares a prefix with CTV+ (com.buzzle.ctvplus), an IPTV player on Google Play. There's a Toulouse ad agency called Buzzle that works with Google and Meta. Whether it's the same people is only suggested by the name and package match (inference, company entity not verified).

How fast it climbed

Daily rank on the App Store France overall Top Paid chart:

From 11-03 on, it was every day the #1 paid app in France's Utilities category. Other stores: Senegal overall Top Paid #11-05 at #1, Ghana #11-03 at #3, Kenya #11-04 at #4, Algeria #11-05 at #5, Belgium #11-03 at #7. The US, UK, Italy and Canada only charted in category Top Paid, not the overall chart.

Since launch, 6 days ago, it has shipped 3 versions (1.0 → 1.2.1,11-05). Version 1.2 added wireless debugging pairing codes, so Chromecast with Google TV, Google TV Streamer, Philips, Sony and TCL can now connect; it also added an "intercept the Home button only" mode, which leaves the original home screen, casting and Wi-Fi settings alone and opens Teevy's home screen only when you press Home (French update notes, 11-05). These look aimed at "my TV won't connect" and "I don't want the whole home screen replaced" (inference).

There's also a €0.99 version on Google Play, with the store showing "0+ downloads" (11-06). Nearly all of its volume is on iPhone.

Where users come from

The French-speaking wave is confirmed. The top countries are France, Belgium, Senegal, Algeria and Luxembourg, all French-speaking, right when French media and French TikTok were at peak buzz. Other French TikTok accounts are covering it too: ia.decodee with 23k views, melvynx.dev with 16k, it_connect.fr with 8k; an Arabic account from Morocco, amza.zidane, with 25k (TikTok, 11-06) — wait, 7 hmm. These videos are all about CleanYourTV. None of them mention Teevy.

App Store search, inference, fairly confident. The day it hit #2 in French paid charts, it had 0 ratings, which didn't come from word of mouth. The most likely path: people who watched the video searched App Store terms like "nettoyer TV" and found only Teevy. The store page is localized into 28 languages, and the French copy uses "tu," so it doesn't read like a translation. Once it charted, the low-threshold paid charts in small markets like Senegal, Ghana and Kenya gave it extra exposure: Apple's Kenya "Apps for iPhone" page ranks it #5.

Ads, no evidence found. The developer may be tied to an ad agency, but Meta's ad library turns up no Teevy or Buzzle ads. Not finding them doesn't prove they didn't run.

Its own content: almost none. Searching "teevy" on TikTok turns up no relevant videos. On X there were 0 posts in the last ~30 days. The web only has the store page and a few chart sites. 11-06 A Russian account posted "Clean your tv уже на iPhone!?" (Clean your TV is already on iPhone!?, 31k views), and whether that's about Teevy is unverified; Russia isn't one of its charting markets.

In other words, the whole conversation was about CleanYourTV. Teevy made no content of its own and simply caught the "iPhone user" slice of that demand.

What buyers say

11 App Store ratings in France, averaging 3.64 (11-06). The positive reviews all say "simple":

• "Very easy to use, took about 5 minutes at a relaxed pace. Email support replies fast." (France, 11-03,5 stars)
• "Worked the first time, the TV looks new, faster and smoother, and that thousand annoying ads are gone." (Western markets, 11-03,5 stars)

The negative reviews come in two kinds. One is that it didn't meet expectations: "Good idea, but not enough. I didn't get the clean home screen, disappointed." (France, 11-03,3 stars) The other is feeling like a sucker: "All it does is install an apk on the TV. Useless." (France, 11-02,2 stars) That reviewer has a point: technically it's ADB disabling apps plus installing a desktop launcher, which the open-source community already has, for free. 3.64 stars of the bad reviews suggest some people found this out after buying.

Where the money comes from

The first layer is €0.99. Ranking #2 on France's overall paid chart probably means a few hundred downloads a day in Utilities (estimate). After Apple's cut, absolute revenue is small.

The second layer is what it actually wants. The setup flow has a checkbox, on by default, to put CTV+ first in the TV dock (the official FAQ says "if you keep the box checked"). CTV+ is an IPTV player from the same company, ships with no content, and its free tier covers 1 devices. Premium is €1.99/month or €14.99/year, with a 7-day trial (ctvplus.app). Teevy's privacy page says the CTV+ installer is downloaded from ctvplus.app.

So the €0.99 buys a first-place slot on the user's TV home screen, and the subscription comes after. Whether this funnel works is not visible yet: CTV+ has only 50+ downloads on Google Play.

Who it's competing with

Copycats arrived within two days. TVHomeX: Nettoyage TV (developer BiHai Song, listed 11-02, free with Pro upgrade, 11 languages) pitches nearly the same things: manage Android TV from an iPhone, disable preinstalled apps, restore, 12 home screen styles, a glass dock, landscape backgrounds. In France it uses the French name "Nettoyage TV" (TV cleaning), targeting French search terms. It has 1 ratings and has charted in only 1 markets. The same day, PocketADB, a Chinese-language app for TV ADB remote control and app management, also launched, with a more tool-oriented pitch.

The other competitors aren't on iPhone, but all of them are free:

The biggest threat isn't TVHomeX, it's the last two rows. As soon as someone on TikTok says "you don't have to pay, just install this on the TV," the reason to spend €0.99 gets weaker.

How long the heat lasts

This is a classic event curve. France fell from #2 to #5, Spain dropped out of the overall chart from #11-03 at #13, and Belgium and Italy are also sliding. CleanYourTV's buzz spread from English and Spanish markets into French and Russian ones, and Teevy caught the French stretch. Whether it can catch the next wave depends on whether markets like Russian, German and Japanese take off, and it has not charted in any of them.

If it were you

C. That specific slot is already taken and isn't worth crowding into; what's worth learning is how it found the gap. An open-source project blew up, most people who watched couldn't use it, and open-source communities least like building for iOS. So a €0.99 iPhone version, with no content of its own, could ride on someone else's traffic. Teevy took 14 days from the open-source launch to its own store listing, and copycats followed within two.

Who it suits: one person can do it, provided they can ship a decent iOS app within one to two weeks, write localized store copy, and regularly watch the GitHub trending charts and TikTok's tech section.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone who wants to copy Teevy and build another iPhone TV-cleaning tool. French already has Teevy and TVHomeX, Teevy is localized into 28 languages, the buzz is fading, and the tech has no barrier, so you'd be competing on price against an app that sells for €0.99. It's also not for anyone hoping to make big money on this one: the one-time price is so low that earnings depend on what you build afterward.

How to do it: don't build a second Teevy, go find the next Teevy. Watch the weekly GitHub trending chart for projects that ordinary people want but that need a computer and a command line to use, especially ones where videos mention "my parents," "at home," or "no need to pay." Within a week of the project taking off, check three things: is there a usable iPhone path; build an iOS app that does just one thing and sell it cheaply as a one-time purchase; and make the thing users fear most into a selling point (restore points, one-tap revert, carrying settings across models). Those three are where Teevy's good reviews came from. If you want to stay in TVs, look at devices Teevy doesn't cover, like Fire TV (community solution: DumbTV) and Samsung TVs (community solution: CleanFrame), but first confirm whether those devices can be reached from an iPhone (unverified).

How to get users: you don't need to make content yourself. Before launch, see which language's videos are rising (this time it was French), then write the store name, subtitle and screenshots for that language using the terms locals actually search. Once you're on a small market's paid chart, the low-threshold markets give you another layer of exposure. Teevy skipped one step you can fill: in the open-source project's discussions and under related videos, say "it now works on iPhone too," but cite the source and follow the license's attribution requirements.

When to be in before: for TV cleaning the window has already mostly passed, roughly late October through the first week of November. For this playbook, you need to be on the store within 10 to 14 days of the next open-source hit; after two weeks, copycats show up.

What you may have misread: ① Teevy was still holding #10 on the France paid overall chart at the end of November, and it's now taking off in newer storefronts like German and Japanese. That means the demand lasts longer than a one-off event, so TV-cleanup can still work. ② CTV+ is clearly climbing in the store, which means the funnel of "tool gets the home screen, then routes to subscription" really works. Teevy's value sits in that second layer, so it's worth studying closely. ③ On the flip side, if Google tightens debugging authorization for Google TV, or Apple pulls apps over "sideloading apk to other devices", this whole path closes, along with the copycats.