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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.<br> Open source. Built with Claude Code. One button to undo.

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

<img src=".github/preview.webp" width="880" alt="The Free My TV home screen: a glass shelf of apps, trending picks, and a drawer with the weather and crypto prices"> </div>

What you get

• 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 (up to six, in Home Settings) from what's trending this week and the latest releases, only from apps you already have, and from the services you choose. The focused one opens wide and the others show their posters. Movies and Shows get their own tabs, and on Google TV your own Plex library can join in.
• Continue Watching (Google TV and Android TV). Home Settings → Top of the screen puts what you left halfway in your apps on top, with its progress, and OK picks it up in its app. Or a big clock, or the picks.
• Your TMDB key from your phone. Home Settings → TMDB key shows a QR code: scan it and paste the key. On LG and Samsung, type it with the remote.
• 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).
• The status at a glance, and a mouse (Google TV and Android TV). Home Settings → Status icons puts Wi-Fi or Ethernet, Bluetooth audio and a USB drive at the top of the home screen; off, nothing listens for them. A mouse or an air-mouse remote works too: hover moves the focus, the wheel scrolls, a click picks.
• 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%).<br>_{Measured on a 98″ TCL Google TV running Android 14.}
• Set up on the TV. Language, your city, temperature, theme, how many picks and which streaming services they come from, 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.

Install

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

The easy way: an AI assistant

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.

The ready APK

No tools to install besides adb. The APK on the latest release has no TMDB key: add yours on the TV for the picks (Home Settings → TMDB key, below). It takes your city from the TV's time zone (change it in Home Settings → City).

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.

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.

   Install it with adb like this, not by opening the APK on the TV: from a file manager or a browser, Play Protect can refuse it outright with App blocked to protect your device (in some countries it blocks sideloaded apps that have an accessibility service or a notification listener, which Free My TV uses for the remote's buttons and Now Playing; #378).

   On TCL TVs, also let it run in the background (TCL blocks it by default, and the switch never starts). An uninstall takes the permission back, so run it again after every new install:

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

3. On the TV, do step 3 above.

For the picks, add your TMDB key in Home Settings → TMDB key (below).

Updates come to the TV. Once a week the APK from the release looks for a newer release and downloads it; the home screen then says so once, and Home Settings → Updates (the last row) installs it through Android's installer, which asks first (and, the first time, asks to allow Free My TV to install apps). OK on Updates also checks right away. The download must come from this repository's releases, match the size and SHA-256 GitHub lists, be newer, and be signed with the project's key. A build you made yourself checks only when you press Updates, and only says when a new version is out: build it again to update.

The manual way

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). An uninstall takes the permission back, so run it again after every new install:

   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.)

   On some TCL TVs (Android 11, Realtek), a second background killer, TGuard, can stop the switch while it measures the original home screen: the settings screen closes and the TV's own home screen stays. Android runs the switch again by itself within a minute or two; then press Home: Free My TV opening means it went through.

LG TVs (webOS)

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 (change it in Home Settings → City), and for the picks you type your TMDB key in Home Settings → 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: