Free My TV: a Brazilian dev used Claude to rework his own TV and open-sourced it the same day the story broke, 18 days, 5917 stars
What it is An open-source TV home screen that replaces the ad-filled home pages built into Google TV, LG, and Samsung sets. It shows only your apps, popular-movie picks, and the weather. No root, one-click restore.
Why it took off It rode the October wave of "let Claude clean up my TV," launching the day TechCrunch ran its story. Rivals only covered Android; it quickly added Samsung and LG, and the UI was attractive enough to film. The Portuguese-speaking community and English repost accounts carried it further.
CHow you could ride it Don't build another TV home screen. Watch for the next "use AI to rework a device" trend, and within 48 hours cover the platforms the mainstream solutions missed. Ship a finished product that makes a 15-second video, post it in your native language first, and let repost accounts amplify it.
- Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-19 · 6,021 stars · 7 days +458
GitHub · stars Data 2026-10-21 → 2026-11-08 (19 days, 19 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one
On Oct 19 2026, Brazilian developer Simba (@SimbasJungles on X) posted in Portuguese: "I vibe-coded my TV with Claude." The clip showed a Google TV whose full-screen recommended ads were gone, replaced by a frosted-glass home screen like Apple TV's. Two hours later he put the code on GitHub, calling it Free My TV. The same day, TechCrunch and Mashable both ran pieces on "people using AI to make smart TVs dumber." By Nov 6, the repo had 5917 stars and 1023 forks, ranking third among the "AI cleans up TV" projects of that wave. This piece explains how it pushed through the crowd of projects launched the same week, and whether you can still ride the trend.
What the post said
The original post is just two paragraphs. The first is the result: "Stripped out the bloated preinstalled apps and ads, rebuilt the system UI, and went with a clean design modeled on AppleTV. Uses about 70% less RAM, and the interface is 3x faster." The second is the breakdown: built with Opus 5.5 over ADB and Wi-Fi. Compared with stock Google TV, RAM goes from 282 MB to 96 MB, zero ads, trending recommendations pull from TMDB, crypto prices come from Binance, and it auto-dims after sunset.
The next day he posted again: "Open-sourced for 1 days, +900 stars, freemytv.io +150k visits" (self-reported, unverified), and teased "next up, Samsung Tizen and LG webOS."
Notably, the post said "removed preinstalled software," but the later README puts safety first: "No root. Nothing is uninstalled. One button brings back the factory home screen." Around the same time someone had bricked a TV using Claude (TechCrunch mentioned this), so he quickly pulled back from "modifying the system" to "just replacing the home screen," which gave people the confidence to install it.
What it is
A TV home screen (launcher), MIT-licensed, written in Java. Once installed, pressing Home shows this:
- A row of frosted-glass app tiles, containing only the streaming apps you use;
- Three popular-movie picks each hour, chosen only from apps you have installed, with no ad slots;
- A drawer with hourly weather, sunrise and sunset, and crypto prices;
- A light/dark theme that follows the real sunset in your city, with a poster-and-big-clock screensaver;
- Later additions: Continue Watching, a Plex library, phone-based TMDB key entry via QR code, and 26 languages.
There are three installation methods. The README puts "hand it to an AI assistant" first: enable developer mode on your TV, then tell Claude Code, Codex, or Antigravity: "Install Free My TV (github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv) on my 192.168.1.50 TV, I live in Lisbon," and it handles the rest. The second is downloading the prebuilt APK and installing it with adb; after that the TV checks for updates weekly. The third is building it yourself. LG uses its official developer mode, Samsung uses TizenBrew, and none require root.
Why this one
The timing was handed to it. From Oct 15 to 17, Ryan Doyle and others posted on X about "having Claude clean up my TV." Gathin's cleanyourtv repo was created on Oct 17 and now has 52,550 stars. TechCrunch and Mashable ran stories the same day on Oct 19, followed by the Guardian and CBC. People had long been fed up with home-screen ads (Mashable cited a TiVo report that over a third of people find ads excessive), and in March Google TV removed Projectivy's "override default home screen" toggle, so the old workaround became harder to use. Free My TV launched on the very day the press coverage hit.
It fills a blank spot: Samsung and LG. Most of the current wave only covers Android / Google TV. Mashable says plainly that cleanyourtv's prompt doesn't work on Tizen, webOS or Fire TV. Samsung and LG are the two largest installed bases worldwide, and their users were left out. Free My TV pushed "Samsung and LG" in late October 1.0. Reposters picked up the angle right away: the TikTok video from @nelsonxlee with 99k views says, in its own words, "Free My TV works on Google TV, LG and Samsung".
It delivered a finished product, not a prompt. The core of cleanyourtv and dumbtv is a PROMPT for AI plus a list of things to disable. Free My TV is a polished interface you can screenshot and film in 15 seconds, and it comes with numbers you can overlay as captions (the README gives 96 MB vs 242 MB at 60 fps, measured on a 98-inch TCL). Short video needs exactly that.
The community picked it up. In 19 days it merged 190 PRs, with a string of external contributors; between 1.0 and 1.3 it added prebuilt APKs, auto-updates, and multiple languages. Forks make up 17% of stars, higher than the typical 5000+ star repos of the same age (about 11%). One reason is a README section called "Make it yours," which encourages you to fork and customize.
Where users come from
| Channel | What happened |
|---|---|
| The author's Portuguese X post | 10-19 starting point; video plus RAM comparison, next-day results, teasing Samsung and LG |
| English repost accounts | Multiple Instagram reels "Developer Simba used Claude and ADB…"; TikTok @nelsonxlee 99k views, @quickfinesse 14k, a Russian-language @kakaduai with 8k; AI news accounts on Threads and Facebook |
| Brazilian community | TikTok @silfrancys Portuguese "updating a Samsung TV with Claude" with 113k views; Portuguese YouTube tutorials that say outright "for Samsung, use simbasjungles/free-my-tv, installed via TizenBrew" |
| Reddit subreddits | r/ClaudeWorkflows has an LG install guide; someone on r/Tizen asked about freemytv.io; derivative projects appeared on r/AndroidTVApps and r/SideProject |
| Tutorial blogs | Install guides on Medium, bitdoze.com, and kevinsingh.com; the project's own domain freemytv.io captures search traffic |
| Inside GitHub | Trendshift site-wide top 25:10-20 #16, 10-21 #9, 10-22 #22; in the Java language chart it stayed in the top five for a long time (few breakout new Java repos, so it stood out) |
What didn't work was Hacker News: only one post, with 1 points. The mainstream outlets named cleanyourtv and dumbtv, and didn't mention it. Its stars mostly came from social repost accounts and the Portuguese-speaking community.
The star curve has the classic hotspot shape: Trendshift logged 10-20 and a single-day +1,320,10-22; the daily numbers show +1,234; it kept declining after that, +7 over the last 553 days, +7 over the first 2,211 days, and +43 on the most recent day. The last code push was 10-31.
Who it's competing with
| Project | Platform | star(11-06) | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| cleanyourtv | Android / Google TV | 52,550 | Fire starter; the prompt gets a blocklist for 427 device models, pitched as "the TV for your parents"; no matter Samsung or LG |
| aerial-tv | domestic TVs like Xiaomi and TCL | 9,951 | tvOS-style home screen, audiences don't overlap |
| tv-detox | old Android TV | 2,192 | minimal home screen + cleanup prompt |
| dumbtv | mainly Fire TV | 1,956 | deep de-tracking |
| glasshouse | rooted LG | 1,891 | needs root; deep features, high barrier |
| cleanyourtv-app / tellyscope | operates Android TV from a phone | 1,665 / 1,539 | no computer, not a home screen |
| Projectivy, FLauncher, etc. | Android-based | Long-established | available in the store, but Google's March update blocked it |
Same idea, a dozen-plus copies in one week. It's not the first or the biggest; it has roughly one-ninth the stars of cleanyourtv. But it has the most complete build and the widest platform coverage. Copycats have already started: someone forked it into a HY300 projector version (GSZ TV) and an onn box version, and there's an "LG webOS 60fps glass home screen" with a description almost word-for-word identical (303 stars).
If it were you
C. Don't build another TV home screen: this wave has peaked, all three major TV systems already have someone on them, and copycats are only pulling a few hundred stars. What's worth learning is the playbook: ride a hot spot someone else has lit, fill the platform gap the mainstream options miss within 48 hours, and ship a polished product with a video you can post.
Who it's for: developers with a pile of devices (projectors, car head units, TV boxes, NAS, routers) who can ship something installable and working in two or three days. Non-native English speakers with some following in their own language circle are a plus; Simba started by growing in the Portuguese-speaking community before English repost accounts amplified it.
Who it's not for: anyone wanting to build yet another home screen or cleanup tool for Google TV, LG, or Samsung; anyone without the matching device to test on; anyone expecting ongoing maintenance to keep stars climbing (hot-spot projects follow a spike curve).
How to do it: watch for topics like "rebuild X with AI" that suddenly surface on X. After the spike, check which platform, device, or language community the mainstream options left out, and build that gap. Deliver a real product: screenshots, a 15-second video, and a number you can caption (memory, frame rate, boot time). In the README, make the first install method "paste this repo URL to your AI assistant", and state on the first screen: "no root, nothing deleted, one-click restore." Open gaps worth a look: niche devices like Nvidia Shield, projectors, and car head units (someone on the original post asked "can you do it for Shield?"), but the pool is small and I haven't verified whether anyone has already built them.
How to get users: first post on X in your native language, "I used AI to rebuild my xx," with a before/after video, and open-source it within two hours. Then give AI news accounts on Instagram and TikTok a ready-made angle to repost (a one-liner like "works even on Samsung and LG"). Post install tutorials in device-specific subreddits on Reddit. Don't count on HN.
Deadline: between 48 hours and a week after the hot spot appears. Free My TV launched the day TechCrunch published; two weeks later, similar projects were already filling Trendshift.
How I could be wrong: ① In the next "AI rebuilds device X" wave, a finished project filling an empty platform gap fails to reach 1000 stars within a week, which would mean TVs were just a big enough topic this time; ② Free My TV keeps adding hundreds of stars a week a month after its last update, which would mean "ad-free TV home screen" is a long-term position, worth more than this estimate; ③ Google changes how the Home key is handled again, blocking launchers like this on Android, and every follower goes to zero together.
Data and sources
- GitHub: simbasjungles/free-my-tv README and Releases; daily stars and forks (10-21 to 11-06).
- Trendshift (trendshift.io/repositories/312457): daily star gains, site-wide rank, and merged PRs from 10-20 to 10-22.
- Author's X posts (10-19 and the following day).
- TechCrunch and Mashable (10-19) coverage of using AI to clean up smart TVs.
- TikTok: @nelsonxlee, @silfrancys, @quickfinesse, @kakaduai view counts (11-06); Portuguese install tutorials on YouTube.
- Reddit posts in r/ClaudeWorkflows, r/Tizen, r/AndroidTVApps, r/SideProject, and r/Projectivy_Launcher.
- Competitor star counts from GitHub (11-06).
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Gathin23/cleanyourtv Open source 2026-10-17 52,550 stars / 6,705 forks The core is a blocklist of 427 device models in the AI prompt (debloat), covering only Android/Google TV. Free My TV only replaces the home screen, doesn't disable or uninstall anything, and also covers Samsung and LG. pengchujin/aerial-tv Open source 2026-10-20 9,951 stars A tvOS-style home screen for domestic TVs like Xiaomi and TCL, aimed at a different audience. Ansub/tv-detox Open source 2026-10-18 2,192 stars Minimal home screen + cleanup prompt, fewer features and platforms. humblemuzzu/dumbtv Open source 2026-10-18 1,956 stars Mainly Fire TV, focused on de-tracking and deep cleanup. udhaykumarbala/cleanyourtv-app / man15h/tellyscope Open source 2026-10-21 / 10-22 1,665 / 1,539 stars Operates Android TV cleanup from a phone, no computer needed; not a home screen product. rorygallagher2024/glasshouse Open source 2026-09-07 1,891 stars Requires a rooted LG; Free My TV uses developer mode on LG instead, no root. Projectivy Launcher Android Years ago The most mainstream third-party launcher for Android TV, repeatedly recommended by major tech media. Store-installable and mature, but Google's 2026-03 TV update blocked its "override default home screen" toggle; Android-only. FLauncher / ATV Launcher / AT4k Launcher Android Years ago A ready-made alternative named by TechCrunch. Android-only, no hot-spot recommendations; the AT4k premium version charges $4.99. TizenTube / TizenBrew Open source 2023–2024 2,455 / 1,716 stars Only YouTube ad removal on Samsung TVs / an app-install channel; Free My TV's Samsung version uses TizenBrew for installation. Google TV apps-only mode Big-company features Already there Built into the system Turns off recommendations but still shows ads (cretezy.com article, HN 444 points). - Where users come from
- Verified Author's own X post (Portuguese): at 2026-10-19 17:17 UTC @SimbasJungles posted "I vibecoded my TV with Claude" plus a RAM comparison video, then created the repo two hours later; follow-up posts claim "1 days, +900 stars, +150k visits".
- Verified Hot spot / media (category level): TechCrunch and Mashable reported the AI TV cleanup wave on 10-19 (naming cleanyourtv and dumbtv); Free My TV launched the same day and caught the demand.
- Verified Instagram/TikTok/Facebook/Threads repost accounts: TikTok @nelsonxlee at 99k views ("Free My TV works on Google TV, LG and Samsung"), @quickfinesse 14k, @kakaduai, @reporadarai; several Instagram reels titled "Developer Simba used Claude…"; Threads @rammcodes_; Facebook Repo Radar AI.
- Verified Portuguese / Brazilian circle: TikTok @silfrancys Portuguese Samsung tutorial at 113k views; a Portuguese YouTube tutorial names simbasjungles/free-my-tv for Samsung installation.
- Verified Reddit: LG install tutorial in r/ClaudeWorkflows, a question in r/Tizen, and derivative versions appearing in r/AndroidTVApps and r/SideProject.
- Verified Tutorial blogs / SEO: install guides on Medium, bitdoze.com, and kevinsingh.com; own domain freemytv.io.
- Verified GitHub Trendshift / Java language chart: site-wide top 25:10-20 #16, 10-21 #9, 10-22 #22 on Trendshift; long-term #2–#5 on the Java language chart.
- Inferred Hacker News: only one post with 1 points, which didn't take off.
Research report on simbasjungles/free-my-tv (Free My TV)
In one line: an open-source, ad-free home screen (launcher) for Google TV / Android TV, LG webOS, and Samsung Tizen, written with Claude Code. The README says "paste the repo URL to your AI assistant and it will install it on your TV" and restores the original home screen in one click. Data date: 2026-11-06. Main sources: our GitHub library (repo_profile / repo_day), trendshift.io, the author's X posts, TechCrunch / Mashable, Reddit, and TikTok (TikHub).
Verdict
Free My TV didn't light the fire itself. It rode the mid-October 2026 wave of "let AI hack your smart TV": Ryan Doyle's X post from 10-15–17, and Gathin's cleanyourtv (repo created 10-17, now 52,550 stars) turned "use Claude Code over ADB to remove ads and swap the home screen" into a viral topic, and TechCrunch and Mashable covered it the same day 10-19. The author, Simba (Brazilian, @SimbasJungles), posted a Portuguese X post at 17:17 UTC ("I vibecoded my TV with Claude… about 70% less RAM, the UI is 3x faster," with an Apple TV-style video) and created the repo two hours later. It landed in third place in this wave (cleanyourtv at 52.5K, aerial-tv for domestic TVs at 9.9K, free-my-tv at 5.9K), thanks to two differences:
- It's a finished product, not a single prompt: The core of cleanyourtv / dumbtv is a blocklist of debloat packages in the AI prompt. Free My TV is a polished launcher (a glass-style app shelf, hourly TMDB trending recommendations limited to apps you've installed, weather, crypto prices, light and dark themes that follow sunset, a screensaver, 26 languages), and it later shipped a ready-made APK with automatic updates on the TV.
- The only one covering both LG webOS and Samsung Tizen: the mainstream options in this wave only target Android/Google TV (Mashable explicitly says cleanyourtv's prompt doesn't apply to Tizen, webOS or Fire TV). Samsung and LG are the two largest by installed base worldwide. Free My TV launched 1.0 "Samsung and LG" in late October, installed via TizenBrew and LG Developer Mode / Homebrew Channel, no root needed.
Momentum has clearly faded: +7 stars in the last 553 days, +7 in the first 2,211 days; Trendshift shows merged PRs at 11-01 since 0, and the last push was 10-31.
1. Data
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Stars / forks | 5,917 / 1,023 (fork/star ratio 17%; the median for new repos of the same age with 5000+ stars is about 11%) | GitHub repo 2026-11-06 |
| Repo created | 2026-10-19 19:29 UTC | GitHub repo |
| Single-day peak | Trendshift: 10-20 +1,320, 10-21 +947, 10-22 +710; our repo observed +1,234 at 10-22 (observation starts 10-21) | trendshift.io/repositories/312457; GitHub repo |
| 7-day star gains | +553 (+7 over the first 2,211 days) | GitHub repo |
| Trendshift site-wide top 25 | 10-20 #16, 10-21 #9, 10-22 #22; Java language chart #2~#5 for two weeks running | trendshift |
| Community engagement | 19 days, 190 PRs merged, 6+ contributors; the changelog for 1.3 versions lists a long run of external contributor PRs | trendshift;GitHub Releases |
| Website traffic (author-reported) | "Day 1 of open source +900 stars, freemytv.io +150k visits" | Author's X post (unverified) |
| GitHub trending | Not in our trending table (repos under 60 days old don't qualify, which doesn't mean it isn't hot) | GitHub repo database SCHEMA |
2. Competitors
Same wave of "AI cleans up your TV" open-source projects (all appeared in mid-to-late October)
| Project | Platform | Repo created | Scale (11-06) | How it differs from Free My TV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gathin23/cleanyourtv | Android / Google TV | 10-17 | 52,550 stars / 6,705 forks, +7,367 in 7 days | The spark. The core is a PROMPT.md for AI plus a debloat list of 427 community-tested models, with an Apple TV-style home screen; no Tizen/webOS support. Named by TechCrunch, Mashable, Cybernews and wccftech. Free My TV only swaps the home screen and doesn't uninstall or disable anything. |
| pengchujin/aerial-tv | domestic TVs like Xiaomi and TCL | 10-20 | 9,951 stars | A tvOS-style desktop for the Chinese market; the target audience doesn't overlap |
| Ansub/tv-detox | old Android TV | 10-18 | 2,192 stars | Minimal home screen plus cleanup prompt, pitched as making old TVs fast again |
| humblemuzzu/dumbtv | mainly Fire TV | 10-18 | 1,956 stars | Deeper tracker and ad removal cleanup, Fire TV focused |
| udhaykumarbala/cleanyourtv-app | Android TV (phone-operated) | 10-21 | 1,665 stars | cleanyourtv's phone app; no computer or AI needed |
| man15h/tellyscope | Android TV (phone-operated) | 10-22 | 1,539 stars | 3MB phone tool, debloat plus app installs |
| rorygallagher2024/glasshouse | Rooted LG webOS | 09-07 | 1,891 stars | Requires root; Free My TV doesn't need root on LG |
| NelsonEU/arn0-tv | Samsung Tizen | October | Not in our database (r/ClaudeAI post) | Personal project, only tested on 2022 Q70B |
Long-established launchers and tools
| Product | Channel | Launched | Scale | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projectivy Launcher | Google Play | Years | The most popular third-party launcher for Android TV, repeatedly recommended by XDA, Android Police and Android Authority | Mature, installable from the store, with paid premium features; but the March 2026 Google TV update removed its "override default home" toggle (r/Projectivy_Launcher). Free My TV uses ADB plus an accessibility service to take over the Home button, sidestepping this. |
| FLauncher / ATV Launcher / AT4k Launcher / Wolf Launcher | Play / open source | Years | Named at the end of TechCrunch's article: FLauncher, ATV, Projectivy | Android only; AT4k premium at $4.99 |
| TizenTube / TizenBrew | Open source (Samsung) | 2023–24 | 2,455 / 1,716 stars | Only removes YouTube ads / acts as an app-install channel; Free My TV's Samsung build uses TizenBrew for installs |
| Google TV "apps-only mode" | Big-company features | Already there | Built into the system | Turns off recommendations, but a cretezy.com article (444 points on HN) notes ads still appear in apps-only mode |
Verdict: Lots of people are doing the same thing, and most surfaced the same week. Free My TV isn't the first or the biggest; within this wave, it has the most finished product and the broadest platform coverage.
3. Growth tactics (where users come from)
- The author's own X post (in Portuguese, 10-19): the starting point. The post included a RAM comparison (282 MB → 96 MB) and an Apple TV-style interface video; the next day came "1 days open source, +900 stars, +150k visits", with Tizen and webOS versions teased. X was the main stage for this wave (TechCrunch cited posts from Doyle, Gathin, Mihir Gupta and others). Our x-radar corpus doesn't include these posts (not finding them doesn't mean they don't exist).
- Secondary spread by English repost and AI news accounts (confirmed, main channel): multiple Instagram reels such as "He replaced his TV's software with Claude. Developer Simba used Claude and ADB…" and "OMG bruh… someone used Claude Code to build an ad-free, Apple TV-style…"; Threads @rammcodes_; Facebook pages Repo Radar AI and learnaifaster; TikTok @nelsonxlee (99k views, "Two developers open-sourced… Free My TV supports Google TV, LG and Samsung, dumbtv handles Fire TV", using the comment-for-tutorial hook of asking viewers to reply "TV"), @quickfinesse (14k), @reporadarai, and Russian-language @kakaduai (8 thousand). These accounts framed "Claude can hack your TV" as the topic, and Free My TV was repeatedly named as the one that supports Samsung and LG.
- Brazil / Portuguese-speaking: TikTok @silfrancys in Portuguese, "updating a Samsung TV with Claude" (113k views, link pinned); the Portuguese YouTube tutorial "como mudar toda sua tv com claude code de graça!" explicitly says "for Samsung, use the same repo simbasjungles/free-my-tv, installed via TizenBrew". There is also a Brazilian name among the external contributors (@BrunoGiacomazzi).
- Reddit: r/ClaudeWorkflows has a tutorial post on installing Free My TV on LG webOS; r/Tizen has someone asking "Has anyone cleaned up a Tizen TV with freemytv.io?"; r/AndroidTVApps has a launcher derived from it.
- Tutorials / long-tail SEO: indexed by Medium ("How to install Free My TV…"), bitdoze.com ("Replace Smart TV Home Screen & Remove Ads (Every TV OS)"), kevinsingh.com, repowise and SkillsLLM. The project's own domain freemytv.io captures search traffic.
- Hacker News didn't help: the only HN post was a 1-point submission (acossta); during the same period, HN discussion centered on cretezy's article (444 points), the TechCrunch coverage (39 points) and a Samsung root shell (858 points). Free My TV wasn't among them.
- On GitHub: stayed in Trendshift's top 25 overall for 3 days, and held #2 on the Java language chart for a long time. There are few viral new Java repos, so it stands out on the language chart.
No signs of paid acquisition or star farming: the fork ratio is high (17%), with 190 merged PRs and many external contributors, consistent with real usage. One reason for so many forks is the install flow: to use TMDB recommendations or change the city you have to build it yourself, and the README has a "Make it yours" section encouraging forks and customization.
4. Why it took off
- Timing: during the week of 10-15~19, "AI vibe-coding your TV" exploded on X, TikTok and mainstream tech media at once (TechCrunch 10-19, Mashable 10-19, Guardian 10-20, CBC 10-25). The demand was ready-made, and Free My TV went live the day TechCrunch published. The background sentiment also helped: TiVo reported that over a third of people find home screen ads excessive, and Roku's annual report listed "earning more from the home screen" as a growth priority (cited by Mashable); Google TV's March 2026 update blocked Projectivy's override toggle, making the old workaround harder.
- Differentiation filled a gap: the mainstream options only supported Android-based systems, so Samsung and LG users could only watch from the sidelines. Within days, Free My TV added Tizen and webOS, which gave repost accounts a fresh angle: "this even works on Samsung and LG" (in the words of @nelsonxlee and @quickfinesse).
- Strong demo material: the Apple TV-style glass UI, hot poster recommendations and concrete RAM/frame-rate numbers (96 MB vs 242 MB, 60 fps) work well for short video. "One-tap restore, no root, nothing uninstalled" eased viewers' risk worries, especially since others had bricked their TVs with Claude during the same period (mentioned by TechCrunch).
- "Hand the repo to AI and it installs itself": the first install method in the README is to tell Claude Code / Codex / Antigravity a single sentence. That matches the whole narrative, and it made people who don't know adb willing to try.
- Fast iteration, the community picked it up: 190 merged PRs in 19 days; 1.0 → 1.3 added a ready-made APK, auto-updates, 26 languages, phone-scan entry of the TMDB key, Continue Watching and Plex.
5. Differentiation, and whether it rode the wave
The differentiation = "a finished home-screen product + coverage of all three major TV systems + only swaps the home screen, leaves the system alone, one-tap restore." That's really why it ranked third among a pile of same-week projects. But the overall pool was provided by this wave: its star count is roughly one-ninth of cleanyourtv's, and cleanyourtv took most of the traffic and media coverage by going first, with the "parents' TV" story and the model list. Without this wave, a new launcher would struggle to reach thousands of stars in 3 days; without Tizen/webOS and product polish, it would sit at the tv-detox level (2 thousand stars).
6. Visibility and copycats
- Visibility: the category has been widely covered (TechCrunch, Mashable, Guardian, CBC, Cybernews, wccftech), but the coverage named cleanyourtv and dumbtv; Free My TV itself spread mainly through social repost accounts, tutorial blogs and Reddit subforums. No revenue involved (MIT open source, no paid tier).
- Copycats: there's already a batch. GSZ TV is built on Free My TV (r/SideProject, targeting the Magcubic HY300 projector); r/AndroidTVApps has an "Apple TV-style build for the onn 4K box"; a similar project on trendshift uses nearly identical wording, "Fast, ad-free 60fps home screen for LG webOS TVs: frosted glass app shelf, live weather, trending picks" (303 stars); others include Jarvis322/matinee (121 stars), Plume_Launcher, and "Your own Google TV home screen and phone remote, with an optional Claude assistant" (217 stars).
7. Takeaways
- Within 48 hours of a hot spike, find a platform or audience the mainstream options don't cover (here, Samsung/LG) and fill it. Repost accounts will then build the "differentiated angle" for you.
- A finished product you can screenshot and record 15-second video from spreads better than a bare prompt. Pair it with concrete numbers (RAM, fps).
- Make "give your AI assistant the repo URL" the first install method, pushing the installation hurdle onto the user's own agent.
- Build traction in a native-language community first (Portuguese), then let English repost accounts amplify.
- Put the risk promises in the headline ("One button to undo", no root, nothing uninstalled).
8. Uncertain
- Actual install count: release download numbers weren't retrieved because of GitHub API rate limits; the author's "150k visits" is unverified.
- The author's X post views and likes weren't obtained (not in the x-radar corpus); unclear which Instagram repost account drove the most traffic.
- Unclear whether the pause after 10-31 is the author shifting focus or a temporary break. If Google changes how the Home button is handled again (as it did to Projectivy in March), the Android version could break.
- Our database only has daily data from 10-21 onward; the star growth from 10-19~20 relies on trendshift.
Sources
- Repo README / Releases: github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv, /releases
- Trendshift:trendshift.io/repositories/312457
- Author's X post: x.com/SimbasJungles/status/2112231637840765012
- TechCrunch 2026-10-19:techcrunch.com/2026/10/19/people-are-using-ai-to-make-their-…
- Mashable 2026-10-19:mashable.com/tech/smart-tv-ads-claude-code-ai-cleanup
- Reddit: r/ClaudeWorkflows/comments/1xbql2n, r/Tizen/comments/1xh8odn, r/SideProject/comments/1xo44ym, r/AndroidTVApps/comments/1xf2m65, r/ClaudeAI/comments/1xbzlih, r/Projectivy_Launcher/comments/1ruhn0n
- TikTok (TikHub search 2026-11-06): @nelsonxlee, @silfrancys, @quickfinesse, @kakaduai, @reporadarai
- YouTube Portuguese tutorial: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HjDhvUiit8
- Tutorials: medium.com/@dedupedai, bitdoze.com/smart-tv-custom-home-screen-remove-ads/, kevinsingh.com/p/free-my-tv-an-ad-free-home-screen
- HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220596 (1 points); our hackernews library has TV-related stories since 10-10
- Our GitHub repos: repo_profile (TV / launcher / webOS / Tizen related repos, 2026-11-06)