Free My TV

A fast, ad-free home screen for Google TV, LG and Samsung TVs.

Trending picks from your own apps, the weather at a glance, and a look that follows the sunset.
Open source. Built with Claude Code. One button to undo.

freemytv.io · Install · LG TVs · Samsung TVs · Any TV · Make it yours

• No ads. No sponsored rows, banners or autoplaying promos. Not one.
• Your apps, front and center. The streaming apps you actually use, on a glass shelf. Pick them and their order right on the TV.
• Trending, not sponsored. Three fresh picks every hour from what's trending this week and the latest releases, only from apps you already have. Movies and Shows get their own tabs.
• Weather and markets, one press away. The hour-by-hour forecast (or the next 5 days), sunrise and sunset, and live crypto prices.
• What's playing. Music, a podcast or the radio going on in the background shows on the home screen and the screensaver: the title, the artist and the app, from any app that tells Android what it plays (Home Settings, off until you turn it on).
• Light by day, dark by night. It follows your city's real sunset, the way your phone does.
• A screensaver to match. Full-screen photos of the picks with a big glass clock. Optionally (Watch from the screensaver, in Home Settings), OK opens the title on screen in its app, and any other button just closes it.
• Your own photos (Google TV and Android TV). Send them from your computer (up to 100): the screensaver shows them, and without picks one is the home screen's background each hour.
• Fast. 60 fps, every frame in 16.6 ms, on the TV's own chip. The home screen uses 96 MB of memory instead of 242 MB (−60%).
  _{Measured on a 98″ TCL Google TV running Android 14.}
• Set up on the TV. Language, your city, temperature, theme, the weather and prices cards, the forecast's hours or days, which coins, and the apps on the shelf, in Free My TV's own settings.
• Safe. No root. Nothing is uninstalled. One button brings back the factory home screen.

About ten minutes. You need a Google TV or Android TV (Android 8 or newer) and a computer on the same Wi-Fi.

1. On the TV, turn on developer mode: Settings → System → About → press Android TV OS build 7 times. Then Settings → System → Developer options → turn on USB debugging. Write down the TV's IP address (Settings → Network & Internet).

2. On your computer, open an AI coding assistant (Claude Code, Codex or Antigravity) and say:

   Install Free My TV (github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv) on my TV at 192.168.1.50. I live in Lisbon.

   It downloads the code, installs the tools it needs, builds the app and puts it on your TV, and asks before anything important. Swap in your TV's IP and your city.

3. On the TV, open Free My TV → Home Screen → Free My TV. That's when the TV asks Allow USB debugging? for Free My TV: tick Always allow and accept.

No tools to install besides adb. The APK on the latest release has no TMDB key, so the home screen has no picks, and it takes your city from the TV's time zone (change it in Home Settings → City).

1. On the TV, do step 1 above.
2. On your computer, download FreeMyTV.apk from the release and install it:

   adb connect 192.168.1.50:5555
   adb install -r FreeMyTV.apk

   On Android 14, Google Play Protect may hold the install with Risky app blocked: choose More details → Install anyway.
3. On the TV, do step 3 above.

If you built Free My TV yourself before, switch back to Original and uninstall it first: your build and the release are signed with different keys. For the picks, build it yourself with your TMDB key (below).

1. On the TV, do step 1 above.

2. Tools: a JDK (17+), the Android SDK command-line tools (build-tools 34, platform android-34) and adb. On a Mac:

   brew install --cask temurin android-commandlinetools android-platform-tools
   sdkmanager "build-tools;34.0.0" "platforms;android-34"

   On Linux, get OpenJDK 17, Android's command-line tools and adb from your package manager, then run the same sdkmanager line. On Windows, use Git Bash (which Claude Code uses there) or WSL.

3. Build:

   ./build.sh

   The first run creates config.properties. Set your city and your TMDB key there, then run it again.

4. Install:

   adb connect 192.168.1.50:5555
   adb install -r FreeMyTV.apk

   If the install seems stuck, look at the TV: on Android 14, Google Play Protect may hold it with Risky app blocked ("built for an older version of Android"), since Free My TV targets Android 13. Choose More details → Install anyway. Updates don't ask again.

   Chromecast with Google TV on Android 14 keeps port 5555 closed even with USB debugging on: turn on Wireless debugging (Developer options), pair with adb pair <address:port> <code>, then run adb tcpip 5555 over that connection. Port 5555 closes again at every restart, so after one, Original, the watchdog and the boot check can't reach ADB until you run adb tcpip 5555 again (the pairing stays).

   On TCL TVs, also let it run in the background (TCL blocks it by default, and the switch never starts):

   adb shell "appops set io.freemytv AUTO_START allow || appops set io.freemytv APP_AUTO_START allow"

5. On the TV, open Free My TV → Home Screen → Free My TV. The TV asks Allow USB debugging? once more, now for Free My TV itself: tick Always allow and accept. (Run adb disconnect 192.168.1.50:5555 first: on Android 8 to 10 the TV can hand that answer to a computer that's still connected.)

The same home screen as an LG app: the picks, the glass shelf with your apps, the drawer with inputs, weather and prices, day and night, Home Settings and the shelf editor. It installs through LG's own Developer Mode, with nothing rooted or changed on the TV. LG's home screen stays where it is, and Free My TV is one press of a number key away (or in LG's app list, on remotes without them).

You need an LG TV (webOS 3 or newer) and a computer on the same Wi-Fi, with Python 3.

1. On the TV, open the LG Content Store and install Developer Mode. Sign in with a free LG developer account, turn on Dev Mode Status (the TV restarts), then turn on Key Server. Write down the IP address and the passphrase it shows.
2. On your computer, get the code and build. config.properties works as for Google TV (your city, your TMDB key):

   git clone https://github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv && cd free-my-tv
   python3 webos/build.py

3. Install. The first time, it asks for the TV's passphrase; updates don't:

   python3 webos/install.py 192.168.1.50

4. On the TV, while Free My TV is open, hold a number key on the remote. From then on, that key opens it from anywhere. On a remote without number keys, open it from LG's app list on the home screen, like any other app.

With an AI assistant, say "Install Free My TV (github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv) on my LG TV at 192.168.1.50. I live in Lisbon." It builds the app and hands you the install command, so you type the passphrase yourself.

With the webOS Homebrew Channel, you can skip the computer: add the repository https://freemytv.io/webos/apps.json in the Channel's settings, and Free My TV shows up in its list. That's the release build: it takes the city from the TV's time zone, and the picks need your own build with a TMDB key. If you installed your own build, don't update it from there, or the release replaces it.

On webOS 6 and newer, LG doesn't let apps installed through Developer Mode see which apps the TV has. Free My TV then shows the well-known ones it finds (Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Plex and more) and asks the TV, once, for the access LG's phone app uses: a message on the TV asks whether to allow Free My TV. Allow it, and from the next start all your apps show, with their icons.

Older LG TVs (webOS 3) don't let Free My TV see their apps at all, so the shelf stays empty. There your computer asks the TV instead (the TV asks once whether to allow it), and the list and icons are built into the app. Run it again after installing new apps on the TV:

python3 webos/apps.py 192.168.1.50 && python3 webos/build.py && python3 webos/install.py 192.168.1.50

Developer Mode lasts about 40 days: open the Developer Mode app now and then and press EXTEND. To remove Free My TV, run python3 webos/install.py 192.168.1.50 --uninstall.

The same home screen as a Samsung app, with everything the LG one has: the picks, the shelf, the drawer with the inputs, the weather and the prices, day and night, and its own settings. It installs through Samsung's own Developer Mode, with nothing rooted or changed on the TV, and Samsung's home screen stays where it is.

You need a Samsung TV from 2016 or newer (Tizen 2.4+) and a computer on the same Wi-Fi. (2015 models, on Orsay or Tizen 2.3, can't run it; a Google TV streamer on HDMI can.) 2016 TVs can't run TizenBrew, so on those build it yourself (below); TV Settings isn't in the drawer there, since apps can't open the TV's settings.

1. On the TV, open Apps and type 1 2 3 4 5 on the remote. Turn Developer mode on, type your computer's IP address in Host PC IP, and restart the TV.
2. On your computer, download TizenBrew Installer, the community's installer for Samsung TVs, open it and connect to your TV.
3. Install from GitHub: type simbasjungles/free-my-tv. On 2023 and newer TVs it asks you to sign in to your Samsung account once, to sign the app for your TV.
4. Straight to it: in the TV's settings, under Start Screen Options, turn on Autorun Last App: the TV turns on into Free My TV.

This build takes your city from the TV's time zone. For your exact city and the trending picks, build it with your own config.properties and TMDB key: open the folder in Claude Code and say "Install Free My TV on my Samsung TV at 192.168.1.50. I live in Lisbon." It sets up Samsung's tools, and on 2023 and newer TVs you sign in to your Samsung account in the browser to make the certificate. Your signed build installs with python3 tizen/install.py 192.168.1.50, which needs only Python: no Tizen Studio, and no Rosetta on Apple Silicon Macs.

The first values come from config.properties, created by the first build (Google TV, LG and Samsung use the same file). Most of them can also be changed on the TV, in Free My TV → Home Settings, and the TV's choice wins:

Changed something? Run ./build.sh and install again. Keep freemytv.keystore: updates are signed with it.

Free, and it takes two minutes: create an account at themoviedb.org, then open Settings → API and request a developer key. Paste the API Read Access Token (or the API Key) after tmdb_key=. It's your key: config.properties stays out of git.

With a free Watchmode key (watchmode_key= in config.properties), a pick opens its own page in the streaming app instead of the app's home. The free plan (2,500 credits a month) is enough: each title costs two requests the first time and is remembered after that. It works where the app takes the title's web address (tested: Prime Video and JioHotstar); where it doesn't, the pick just opens the app, as without a key.

On Google TV and Android TV, with the TV connected over adb (see Install), send photos or whole folders from your computer:

python3 tools/photos.py <TV IP> beach.jpg hills.jpg Holidays/

They land in the app's own folder on the TV (no permission needed); on Android 11, which keeps adb out of other apps' folders, they go through Free My TV itself. The next time the home screen, the screensaver or Free My TV's settings open, the app imports each one: turned upright, cropped to 16:9, resized for the TV and saved without its GPS and other tags; what was sent is then deleted. The screensaver shows them in the order you sent them, instead of the picks' photos; without a TMDB key, one of them is the home screen's background, a new one every hour. Home Settings → My Photos: the arrows turn them on or off, OK removes them. Up to 100; JPEG, PNG and WebP, and HEIC on Android 9 and newer.

On the TV: Free My TV → Home Screen → Original. The factory home screen, screensaver and every app come back exactly as they were. If the new home screen ever crashes three times in five minutes, it switches back by itself.

To remove it for good, switch to Original first, then uninstall Free My TV (Settings → Apps). Uninstalled it while it was on? Install it again and pick Original: the list of what it turned off is kept in the TV's settings, so everything comes back.

• It becomes the home screen and, unless screensaver=false, the screensaver.
• It turns off, without uninstalling:
  • the stock home screen and screensaver (the screensaver stays with screensaver=false);
  • Google TV's recovery home, Play Games and YouTube Music;
  • on TCL TVs, the TCL Channel, messages, store demo, hotel menu, manuals, mirroring and logging apps;
  • on Philco TVs, AI PONT (promo channels and app downloads) and the manual;
  • on Multilaser TVs, Anoki's screen-content recognition (ACR), the store demo and the manual;
  • on KTC-made TVs (NextStar), Anoki's screen-content recognition (ACR), the store demo and the manual;
  • Google Assistant, only with disable_assistant=true.
• On Google TV, the Assistant's results for films and shows come from Google TV's home app, which is off in Free My TV mode: asking it to play a show can end in "Sorry, I don't understand", and a search can show only YouTube videos. Opening apps, questions and apps' own voice search (YouTube's, for one) still work; Original brings it all back.
• On TCL TVs, the remote's Netflix, YouTube and Prime buttons keep working through a small accessibility service that only reads those buttons. Pick what each one opens in Free My TV → Remote Buttons; Original turns the service off. On Vestel-made TVs (F&U and other store brands) and Xiaomi (Formovie) projectors the same goes for the Netflix button, and on KTC-made TVs (NextStar) for the Tabii button. On Sony TVs, the BRAVIA CORE, Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube and Crunchyroll buttons (and Google Play, on remotes that have it) can each open the app you pick, or keep Sony's default. On Xiaomi TVs whose remote has a Mi button instead of Home, that button opens Free My TV instead of PatchWall (or, if you pick it, PatchWall as before, or another app). On Xiaomi TVs, the YouTube button opens YouTube again (Google TV's home screen answered it), and the PatchWall button can open the app you pick. On Xiaomi TVs sold in Russia, the same goes for the Okko, VK, Rutube, KION, Wink and IVI buttons, which keep Xiaomi's default until you pick another app. On Hisense TVs, the Prime Video, YouTube, Disney+, All Apps, Settings and profile buttons, which Google TV's home screen answered, open what you pick (All Apps opens Free My TV's own; Netflix stays with the TV).
• With Home Settings → Now Playing widget on (it starts off), what an app is playing shows in place of the prices while it plays, on the home screen and the screensaver. Android hands that only to a notification listener, so turning the widget on allows ours through the TV's ADB; turning it off, Original and the switch back after crashes take it away. Where the TV refuses it, the row says so.
• On HY300 projectors, whose stock home screen was the only way to them, the bottom drawer gets Keystone (keystone, zoom and projection mode) and Screen Mirroring (the projector's Miracast receiver), and HDMI opens through the projector's own player.
• Free My TV → Sleep Timer turns the TV off after 5 minutes to 4 hours, with the minutes left over any app (top center, or the corner you pick). It presses the remote's Sleep key through the TV's own ADB, so it works in Free My TV mode; Original stops it.
• Picture, sound, inputs, remote pairing, Google services and the Play Store are on a protected list, checked before every change, and so are Android's own pieces and factory menus. Before anything goes off, the TV is asked whether its inputs or its remote's Input key depend on it; those stay on.
• On Google TV, the setup app goes off before the stock home screen and comes back after it, so its recovery screen never takes over the Home button in between.
• Apps that saved a Wi-Fi network are never turned off, since Android would erase the network. If the TV's first setup saved yours, the switch asks you to forget the network and connect again in Settings first (saved networks out of range don't show there; Claude Code can remove them).

Free My TV runs on Google TV and Android TV: TCL, Sony, Hisense, Philips, Xiaomi, Vestel-made TVs (F&U), KTC-made TVs (NextStar) and more, plus streamers like Chromecast with Google TV, the Google TV Streamer, onn 4K, the Xiaomi Mi TV Stick and NVIDIA Shield. And on LG and Samsung TVs, as an app.

Any other TV: plug a Google TV streamer into HDMI and free that one. Same steps, same home screen.

A different brand or model: ask Claude. Free My TV is made to be adapted by AI. Open the folder in Claude Code and say "set it up for my Sony": it reads your TV, finds its home screen and its promo apps, updates the lists below and walks you through a test. CLAUDE.md tells it how.

It's your code, and Claude Code finds its way around it. Try:

• "Add Crunchyroll to the shelf."
• "Show the prices in euros."
• "Add Catalan."
• "Switch to the night look an hour after sunset."

• A plain Android app, no Gradle, no libraries. build.sh runs aapt2 → javac → d8 → zipalign → apksigner and makes a 2 MB APK.
• It uses the TV's own ADB, from inside the TV. The app connects to 127.0.0.1:5555 with its own key (that's the Allow USB debugging? prompt) and runs the same commands you would: cmd package set-home-activity, settings put secure screensaver_components, pm disable-user. Nothing listens to the network.
• Drawn by hand on one Canvas, with Android 13 shaders for the frosted glass and the sky (plain fills on Android 8 to 12, with lighter shadows and no GPU layers on 8 to 11 for their older GPUs).
• A safety net. A watchdog in a separate process brings back the stock home screen after three crashes in five minutes, and a boot check keeps your choice after TV updates.
• On LG and Samsung, the same design in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript (web/), written for the Chromium of older TVs, with no frameworks. webos/build.py packs it with config.properties into an .ipk without LG's tools, and webos/install.py installs it through Developer Mode; on LG it lists and opens apps through the TV's own service bus (Luna), as LG's launcher does. tizen/build.py packs the same app into a Samsung .wgt, which uses Tizen's web APIs for the apps and the inputs. To preview it on a computer: python3 webos/build.py --preview, then open out/webos/index.html (a stand-in lists sample apps).
• Data from TMDB (trending titles, new releases and which app streams what in your country), Open-Meteo (forecast, sunrise and sunset), and optionally Binance (24-hour prices when show_crypto=true).

The website (freemytv.io) is in docs/: plain HTML, CSS and JS on GitHub Pages.

On Google TV, LG and Samsung, each language is one file, app/assets/i18n/<lang>.json, keyed by the English text in the code. Automatic follows the TV's language and uses any language that has a file (English otherwise); Home Settings → Language lists them all. Today: English, Portuguese, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Romanian, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Thai. Portuguese, Spanish, German, Russian, Thai and Turkish were translated by hand and are the reference (fix them by hand); the others were machine-made, and corrections from native speakers are welcome.

• Add a language: python3 tools/translate.py --new ca, then fill app/assets/i18n/ca.json by hand, or with ANTHROPIC_API_KEY set, python3 tools/translate.py --fill --lang ca (only the strings go to the API).
• After changing text in the code: python3 tools/translate.py lists what each language lacks; --fill translates only that (the hand-translated ones, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Russian, Thai and Turkish, are left for a person unless --lang names them), --prune drops strings the code no longer uses. Run python3 tools/translate.py --check to validate all catalogues without writing files.
• Text built at runtime has placeholders ("{n} min ago"), so each language puts the words in its own order. A key like "unit|Automatic" is the same English in another place, where a language may need another word.
• Counts have plural forms: "plural|one:{n} season|other:{n} seasons" is translated with one form per plural category the language uses (Russian "one:{n} сезон|few:{n} сезона|many:{n} сезонов|other:{n} сезона", Japanese just "other:{n}シーズン"), and Android's plural rules pick the one for each number.
• Limits: right-to-left languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian) would need the layout mirrored, so they aren't there yet. Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Hindi are drawn with the TV's system font (Inter has no such letters).

No accounts, no analytics, no tracking. The app talks to TMDB, Open-Meteo (with the coordinates you set, or your time zone's main city), and Binance only when show_crypto=true, and Watchmode only when you set a watchmode_key. The Now Playing widget reads what apps are playing (title, artist, the app) through a notification listener, the only way Android shares it: Free My TV allows the listener only while the widget is on, never reads a notification with it, and asks Android to unbind it as soon as it connects, so it stays unbound. What's playing never leaves the TV. Your settings stay on your computer and your TV.

• Built with Claude Code.
• The LG version builds on what @danielthejoker18 found in FreeMyTvWebOS (MIT): installing through Developer Mode and opening apps through the TV's service bus.
• On Samsung TVs it installs with TizenBrew Installer by @reisxd.
• This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
• Links to the titles in the streaming apps by Watchmode.
• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Prices from the Binance public API.
• Icons: Material Symbols (Apache 2.0). Font: Inter (SIL OFL 1.1). Coin logos: cryptocurrency-icons (CC0). Samsung app logos: Simple Icons (CC0).
• Not affiliated with Google, TCL, LG, Samsung or any streaming service. App names and logos belong to their owners.

MIT. Fork it, change it, ship it.