DHH reposted it with "TVs can be fixed too?" A hospital sysadmin's Omarchy-style TV desktop hit 478 stars in 11 days
What it is An open-source desktop for Android TV, LG, and Samsung TVs that looks like Omarchy Linux. Change the theme on your PC and the TV follows. The PC can also cast to the TV and act as a remote.
Why it took off In mid-October, media were hyping "using AI to strip ads from smart TVs." It was the only Omarchy version in a crowd of similar projects. DHH reposted it, and big accounts in the scene listed it. The author shipped a dozen-plus versions in 11 days, each with a video post that @-tagged the scene insiders whose work he used.
CHow you could ride it Don't build another TV desktop. Copy the playbook: the week the next category gets media buzz, make a version for a tight-knit developer community with an identity. Use insiders' assets, @-tag the original creators, and post a good-looking video with each release.
- Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-26 · 494 stars · 7 days +89
GitHub · stars Data 2026-10-27 → 2026-11-08 (13 days, 13 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one
On Oct 22, 2026, Marco Porro, a sysadmin at an Italian hospital, posted on X: "An Omarchy-style Android TV desktop: themes, a Waybar-style top bar, live status, a terminal-style screensaver." DHH quote-posted it with one line: "We can fix smart TVs too?!" Two weeks later, the open-source project, OmarchyTV, had 478 stars and 50 forks on GitHub (GitHub, 11-06). What's worth learning is the playbook: "a hot category × a tight-knit identity community." The star ceiling is also set by that community.
What it is
A desktop (launcher) that runs on a TV. Omarchy is a Linux distro by DHH with 46k stars. Its fans care about its look: Hyprland-style tiled workspaces, a Waybar-style top bar, and a set of color themes. OmarchyTV brings the whole look to Android TV / Google TV, and later to LG webOS and Samsung Tizen. Switch between five workspaces with the remote's number keys, pick from 32 themes that match TV wallpapers, and enjoy a terminal-style animated screensaver. There's also a Grok voice assistant.
What really sets it apart is the PC side. Install a plugin on your Omarchy PC, enter a 6-digit pairing code on the TV, and the TV follows your PC's theme. Your PC screen can be cast to the TV, and the PC can act as a remote. It's MIT-licensed and free.
Setup isn't easy. You have to enable developer options and network debugging on the TV, sideload the APK with adb, and then set it as the default home screen. The README says in capital letters "beta, may not work." It was originally tested only on the author's own 2017-year-old Sony TV and in an emulator.
Why these two weeks
Two trends collided.
Trend one: using AI to clean up smart TVs. On Oct 19, the Hacker News post "An ad-free Android TV" got 444 points and 199 comments. The same day, TechCrunch published "People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again," and The Guardian 10-20 and Canada's CBC 10-25 followed. That week, a dozen-plus TV launcher repos appeared on GitHub at once. The largest, aerial-tv, was created on Oct 20. It has a tvOS style, targets TV ads, and is now near 10k stars. OmarchyTV says it was built on one of these (Gathin's tv-vibehack).
Trend two: the Omarchy community. Among many "ad-free, Apple-TV-looking" desktops, only this one looked like Omarchy. That's why DHH reposted it. The Omarchy aggregator Omarchy Central wrote about it the same day, and omarchyarchive has archived his posts one by one (34 so far).
How the stars came
The timeline is clear:
| Date | What happened | star |
|---|---|---|
| 10-22 | Launched on X with a DHH quote-post. The GitHub account was still under review, so it first went up on GitLab. | — |
| 10-23 | He asked on X for help unlocking GitHub. DHH replied "email me." | — |
| 10-26 | Made the "Omarchy people to follow" list by insider account tcballard (#13). The same post announced the GitHub launch. | 0 |
| 10-27 | 99 | |
| 10-28 | The only peak: +191 in one day | 290 |
| 10-29 ~ 11-02 | 2.13.x releases one after another, community PRs merged | Daily +22~31 |
| 11-03 ~ 11-06 | Fell back. 11-05 shipped 2.14.0-beta | 5~21 per day, reaching 478 |
The data is GitHub's daily star count. Three things are worth noting.
Getting locked out gave it an extra round of exposure. Four days of follows built up on GitLab, then cashed in all at once when it moved back to GitHub on 10-26. That's why stars bunched up on 10-27 and 10-28. I couldn't verify which post drove the 10-28 +191.
Every release was a post with images and video, @-tagging insiders. From 2.10 to 2.14 over 11 days. He used MIT-licensed work from people in the scene and credited them: tcballard's Tokyo Roadster theme and wallpaper, Simon Loffler's SpaceX TV plugin, and Erik Johansson's animated wallpaper. People who get @-tagged usually repost, so each release brought several people's audiences along. He also took a jab at Musk: "your TV joined the Elon universe" (Grok assistant + SpaceX TV).
Treat contributors as a channel. Merged 13 LG webOS PRs from @tozes in one go and gave public shout-outs; also posted "merged 5 more community PRs" as its own tweet. Contributors bring their own circles in.
The channels it didn't use also tell a story. There's no HN post of its own. TechCrunch covered cleanyourtv and dumbtv and didn't mention it. No TikTok, no ads. Its spread stayed entirely inside the Omarchy community: Omarchy Central, omarchyarchive, LockerGnome (11-02), one YouTube video, and r/omarchy.
Who it's competing with
| Project | Scale | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Projectivy Launcher | Google Play: about 1.79M installs | Mass-market, sold direct through the store, no Omarchy themes or PC linkage |
| FLauncher | About 590k installs on Google Play | Minimal open source, no theme ecosystem |
| aerial-tv | Near 10k stars (repo created 10-20) | Same wave. tvOS style, aimed at anyone who wants to block ads |
| Tigris / tvOS-Launcher / tvhome-zh | 607 / 311 / 300 stars | All Apple TV look, Android only |
| cleanmytv / Plume_Launcher | 340 / 344 stars | Ad-blocking tool, no themes |
| omalauncher | 554 stars | Also Omarchy-style, but for phone home screens |
The clearest comparison is aerial-tv versus this one. They started the same week. The mass-market one reached near 10k stars, and the Omarchy-only one reached 478. Differentiation is why DHH was willing to repost it, and it also locked the project into a small circle. I haven't seen anyone copy OmarchyTV since. The followers copied the upstream tv-vibehack instead.
If it were you
One takeaway: Don't build another TV desktop. Learn the playbook instead. The TV ad-blocking wave has been over for more than two weeks. There are over a dozen similar projects, and the leader is near 10k stars. A large share of OmarchyTV's few hundred stars came from one DHH repost and an existing community. If you copy the topic with a different name, you'll probably get a few hundred stars too.
Who it fits: People already inside a tight-knit developer community with an identity (a distro, editor, keyboard, or terminal-theme scene), who know a few of its big accounts and can get permission to use their assets.
Who it doesn't fit: People aiming for tens of thousands of stars; people with no contacts in any community; people unwilling to support a pile of TV models and handle issues (it has 33 open issues after 11 days).
How to do it:
- Wait for the next week when a category is being hyped by media. Start that same week. Build a version for one community, not a mass-market one that competes with the leaders.
- Fork someone else's open-source base, credit the source clearly, and ship a first working version in three to four days.
- Build the features that look good in screenshots first (screensaver, animated wallpaper, boot screen), then the practical ones. Distribution runs on visuals.
- Use insiders' themes, wallpapers, and plugins directly. Ask for permission publicly on X beforehand, and @-tag the original creators in each release post.
How to get users: Post one video per release and @-tag the people whose work you used. Proactively submit to the community's aggregators and directories (here, Omarchy Central, omarchyarchive, and tcballard's list). Publicly praise every PR author. If a leader in the community replies, that's your star floor.
When it's too late: The window for this TV-desktop wave has mostly closed (my inference). OmarchyTV's own daily gains have fallen to single digits to the twenties. This playbook needs to wait for the next hot topic and launch within a week of it.
What would show I got it wrong: If OmarchyTV later lands on Google Play for direct install and climbs back past a thousand stars, that shows a "community-specific version" can grow beyond its community, and then building a TV desktop for another community is worth it. If a project that only does TV themes and PC linkage, tied to no community, takes off, that shows the real demand is "PC and TV working together," not the Omarchy skin.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Projectivy Launcher Android 2020-08 About 1.79M installs Mass-market, sold direct through the store. No Omarchy themes or PC linkage FLauncher Android 2021-06 About 590K installs Minimal open source, no theme ecosystem or cross-device linkage pengchujin/aerial-tv Open source 2026-10-20 9951 stars Same wave. tvOS style, mass-market ad blocking. OmarchyTV serves only the Omarchy aesthetic community Tigris / tvOS-Launcher / tvhome-zh Open source 2026-10 607 / 311 / 300 stars All Apple TV look, Android only. OmarchyTV has the Omarchy look, also covers webOS / Tizen, and links to PCs tv-vibehack / cleanyourtv(Gathin) Open source 2026-10-19 330 stars (mirror); named by TechCrunch OmarchyTV's base. The other is a prompt for agents plus a simple desktop; OmarchyTV is a finished product with ongoing releases cleanmytv / dumbtv / Plume_Launcher Open source 2026-10 340 / unverified / 344 stars Ad-blocking tool, no themes or community ecosystem SimonSchubert/omalauncher Open source 2026-10-02 554 stars Also Omarchy-style, but a phone launcher Vendor's built-in desktop / Google TV Big-company features — All TVs Ads and slowness, the pain points this wave addresses - Where users come from
- Verified Platform event: the media wave around AI-stripped smart-TV ads: TechCrunch 10-19, The Guardian 10-20, HN "An ad-free Android TV" 444 points; a dozen-plus TV launcher repos appeared the same week
- Verified X: DHH quote-posts and replies: DHH quote-posted "We can fix smart TVs too?!" (archived by omarchyarchive); 10-23 reply helped unlock the GitHub account
- Verified X: author posts releases often, tags insiders: omarchyarchive archived 34 posts; each one tags @dhh / @tcballard / @sighmon and others
- Inferred Insider list + GitHub move: tcballard's "Omarchy people to follow" ranked it #13, in the same post that announced the GitHub launch; then 10-28 gained +191 in a single day
- Verified Niche media / aggregators: Omarchy Central 10-23, LockerGnome 11-02, webconsulting.at 10-28, a YouTube video, r/omarchy
- Verified Community contributors: publicly thanked for merging 13 PRs from @tozes, and "5 more community PRs"
Why OmarchyTV (piermark/omarchytv) took off
Channel: GitHub · research day 2026-11-06 · data card gh_piermark/omarchytv
One line
OmarchyTV is a TV desktop launcher built by Marco Porro, a sysadmin at an Italian hospital. It brings the look of DHH's Linux distro Omarchy (Hyprland-style workspaces, a Waybar-style top bar, Omarchy themes and wallpapers, terminal-style screensavers) to Android TV / Google TV, LG webOS and Samsung Tizen. It also ships a PC plugin that lets an Omarchy machine push themes, casting and remote control to the TV. MIT-licensed and free.
Verdict: it's the product of two trends colliding. One was the mid-2026-10 media wave around "using AI to clean up smart TVs" (TechCrunch, the Guardian, HN at 444 points). The same week, a dozen TV launcher repos appeared. The other was the Omarchy community: DHH himself quote-posted it ("We can fix smart TVs too?!"), and big accounts in the Omarchy circle passed it along. Among a crowd of launchers pitching "no ads, looks like Apple TV," it picked a distinct identity: the TV for Omarchy fans, linked to the PC. So it got a few hundred stars from the Omarchy circle, far less than the mass-market projects of the same period (aerial-tv has nearly 10k stars).
Data
| Date | star | Daily adds | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-22 | — | — | Released the 2.10.1-beta first on GitLab (the GitHub account was locked) |
| 10-23 | — | — | DHH replied to help unlock GitHub |
| 10-26 | 0 | — | GitHub repo created; Marco posted "officially live on GitHub" |
| 10-27 | 99 | — | First time the repo shows up in our data |
| 10-28 | 290 | +191 | The only peak |
| 10-29 ~ 11-02 | 316→427 | +22~31/day | Versions shipped one after another (2.13.x), community PRs merged |
| 11-03 ~ 11-05 | 443→457 | +5~16/day | Decline |
| 11-06 | 478 | +21 | 2.14.0-beta released (11-05) |
Source: our github repo_day data; live GitHub API 11-06: 485 stars / 50 forks. 33 open issues, forks/stars about 10%, no sign of star-buying (suspect is empty).
Timeline and growth tactics (with evidence)
- Platform event: the "AI strips the ads from smart TVs" wave. 10-19 ~ 10-25. HN's "An ad-free Android TV" hit 444 points / 199 comments (10-19). TechCrunch's 10-19 "People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again" named cleanyourtv (Gathin23) and dumbtv; The Guardian 10-20 and CBC 10-25 followed up. The same week, a batch of new Android TV launchers showed up in our database: pengchujin/aerial-tv (created 10-20, 9951 stars), lesnolie/Tigris (607), tv-vibehack (330), Plume_Launcher (344), cleanmytv (340), tvhome-zh (300), tvOS-Launcher (311). OmarchyTV calls itself "Based on tv-vibehack by @gathint", so it's part of this wave.
- 10-22 X launch + DHH quote-post. Marco posted "OmarchyTV is out in beta" (x.com/MarcoPorro/status/2113250090915627161), and DHH quote-posted "We can fix smart TVs too?!" (per the tweet archived by omarchyarchive.com). Omarchy Central wrote it up the same day.
- 10-23 GitHub account locked, which turned into extra exposure. Marco asked for help on X (666 views). DHH replied, "email me… @kdaigle was very helpful last time" (x.com/dhh/status/2113578907924410423). Mike Gannotti posted an introduction the same day.
- Marco moves 10-26 to GitHub and rides tcballard's "Omarchy people to follow" list. Marco tweets "Honored to be #13 ("The Desktop Builder") in @tcballard's Omarchy community lineup… OmarchyTV is officially live on GitHub". The stars he built up on GitLab converted in one go: 99 stars the day after the repo went up, +191 on day three. He then wrote "The response since OmarchyTV went live on GitHub today has been wild" and posted "Almost 300⭐️", which lines up with 10-28's 290 stars.
- Frequent releases, with a visual post and video for each one. From 11 days, 2.10 to 2.14, omarchyarchive archived 34 of his posts. Each one tags insiders (@dhh for themes, @tcballard for wallpapers, @sighmon for the SpaceX plugin, @erikrjohansson for animated wallpapers, @ncfrontiersman for OmaFire), and the people tagged often repost. He also leaned into the Musk orbit: "Your TV just joined Elon's universe" (Grok voice assistant + SpaceX TV).
- Treating community contributions as growth. Publicly thanked PR authors (a merge of 13 LG webOS PRs from @tozes, "5 more community PRs"). Contributors bring their own circles.
- Niche media / aggregators. Omarchy Central (10-23), omarchyarchive (archives each post), the webconsulting.at knowledge base (10-28), LockerGnome (11-02), a YouTube video "Theme Sync, Screensavers, And A Remote Built Into Your Desktop," and an r/omarchy thread.
- Channels we didn't find: no HN post for it (checked our hackernews data); not in the local x-radar corpus; no ads, no TikTok.
Competitors
| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How OmarchyTV differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projectivy Launcher | Android(Play) | 2020-08 | About 1.79M installs (Google Play library) | Mass-market, store-installed, mature; no Omarchy themes, no PC link |
| FLauncher | Android (Play) / open source | 2021-06 | About 590K installs | Minimal open source; no theme ecosystem, no PC link |
| ATV Launcher Pro / Monet Launcher | Android(Play) | 2018 / 2026-05 | 80k / 120k installs | Paid on the store / dynamic color extraction, single platform |
| pengchujin/aerial-tv | Open source | 2026-10-20 | 9951 stars, +7 in 2231 days | Same wave, tvOS style, aimed at the mainstream pain point of ad-cleaning domestic TVs; OmarchyTV serves only one niche aesthetic circle |
| lesnolie/Tigris, techgenius1/tvOS-Launcher, mclhm8182/tvhome-zh | Open source | 2026-10-20 / 10-28 / 10-19 | 607 / 311 / 300 stars | All have an Apple TV / tvOS look; OmarchyTV has the Omarchy look, and covers webOS / Tizen too |
| tv-vibehack / cleanyourtv(Gathin) | Open source (prompt + launcher) | 2026-10-19 | 330 stars (ToomRamcharan mirror); named by TechCrunch | The base OmarchyTV builds on; theirs is a prompt for an agent to clean up your TV, while OmarchyTV is a finished, continuously updated product |
| cleanmytv, dumbtv, Plume_Launcher | Open source | 2026-10 | 340 / unverified / 344 stars | Ad-removal tools with no theme ecosystem |
| SimonSchubert/omalauncher | Open source | 2026-10-02 | 554 stars | Same Omarchy style, but a phone launcher, not a TV |
| omarchy-googletv plugin | Omarchy plugin marketplace | 2026-10 | Not verified | Controls Google TV from the PC top bar without replacing the TV desktop |
| Vendor's built-in desktop / Google TV | Big-company features | — | All TVs | Has ads and is slow, which is exactly the pain point this wave is solving |
Why it made the charts
- Timing: it landed in the media wave about "AI removing ads from smart TVs" (TechCrunch 10-19, HN at 444 points), so the TV launcher category had traffic that week.
- Rode the Omarchy community's momentum: Omarchy itself has 46k stars, and DHH personally quote-posted it and helped with the account. tcballard's list, omarchyarchive and Omarchy Central archived it post by post, giving it a ready-made circle willing to star side projects.
- The GitHub migration concentrated stars into one day: GitLab had been collecting attention for 4 days, and once 10-26 moved over, about 290 stars came in between 10-27 and 28. That peak was really the attention from the earlier days cashing in at once.
- The author was diligent and good at posting: over 11 days he shipped more than a dozen versions, each with a visual post tagging insiders. He used screensavers, retro CRT and arcade-style content as shareable material, things that are fun to look at and play with.
- Brought people from the circle in to build it: directly used insiders' MIT themes, wallpapers and plugins with credit, publicly thanked PR authors, so everyone had a reason to repost.
Differentiation
- Most launchers in the same wave are "ad removal + looks like Apple TV." OmarchyTV is the only one that adopts the Omarchy aesthetic, and it comes as an ecosystem linked to the Omarchy PC: two-way theme sync, PC-to-TV casting, the PC as a remote, an MCP service, Grok voice. It is also cross-platform, with Android TV / webOS / Tizen / phone companion / Linux+macOS plugins.
- Is the differentiation why it took off? Yes, and it's also its ceiling. Because it's the Omarchy version, DHH and the big accounts in the circle reposted it. But because it's the Omarchy version, it can only reach that small circle. aerial-tv, aimed at the mass market in the same period, got nearly 10k stars; OmarchyTV has 478, and its daily gains have already dropped to single digits to the twenties.
Visibility
It spreads within the niche. Media and aggregators in the Omarchy circle (Omarchy Central, omarchyarchive) covered it, LockerGnome wrote a piece, and DHH quote-posted it. TechCrunch, HN and other mainstream tech outlets didn't mention it (TechCrunch wrote about cleanyourtv and dumbtv). No revenue involved.
Copycats
No copycats of OmarchyTV found. The copies went after the upstream tv-vibehack / cleanyourtv instead (e.g. tvhome-zh, android-tv-makeover).
Takeaways
- "Hot category × hot community": in the week a category gets media hype, build a dedicated version for an identity-driven community (Omarchy, DHH fans). Community leaders are likely to repost it themselves.
- Use others' work as fuel: use insiders' MIT themes and plugins with credit and @ the original authors. Each release becomes a multi-party co-promotion.
- One visual post per release: features like screensavers, CRT and boot self-test, which look good in a screenshot, get reposted more than practical features.
- Even a small accident can be turned into exposure: when GitHub locked the repo, a public call for help got a reply from DHH, and gave the "GitHub launch" a moment worth announcing.
Uncertain
- 10-28 Whether it was a specific tweet that drove the +191 stars (whether DHH retweeted the GitHub post, how far the tcballard list spread) was not verified. The GitHub stargazer timestamp API was rate-limited at the time, so the data could not be pulled.
- The r/omarchy post was blocked by Reddit (403), so its engagement numbers weren't read.
- Real install count is unknown: the APK can only be sideloaded, and release download counts weren't pulled.
- The tweet where DHH quote-retweeted it was seen via a paraphrase on omarchyarchive; the original tweet's engagement wasn't checked directly.
Sources
- github.com/piermark/omarchytv (README,v2.14.0-beta)
- omarchycentral.com/news/omarchytv-puts-an-omarchy-style-home…
- omarchyarchive.com/creators/marcoporro/ (34 tweets archived, including DHH's "We can fix smart TVs too?!")
- x.com/dhh/status/2113578907924410423 ; x.com/MichaelGannotti/status/2113588058574532803
- lockergnome.com/free-tiling-tv-launcher-replaces-smart-tv-ho… (2026-11-02)
- techcrunch.com/2026/10/19/people-are-using-ai-to-make-their-…
- Our libraries: github repo_profile / repo_day (2026-10-27~11-06); hackernews story ("An ad-free Android TV" 444 ranking); googleplay app_profile (Projectivy and FLauncher install counts)