Vibe encoding has arrived on televisions. Social media is flooded with posts from people using LLM and open source tools to remove ads and tracking, trim bloat to make the operating system run faster, and even completely change the look and organization of their home screens. While many things are fun (one user turned their TV home screen into a Pokémon city: I think there’s also a level of frustration behind this. And television companies should take note.
Several vibe-coded TV deflation projects exploded in popularity over the weekend. Cleanyourtv (known as tv-vibehack until the 19th), tv-detox, and dumptv claim to accomplish similar things: remove sponsored ads, unlock your TV to run faster, and block unwanted data collection that tracks what you’re watching, without hacking or rooting the TV. By default, all of them also replace the TV’s built-in app launcher with simpler ones. Many users are going a step further and vibrate coding their own replacement launchers, such as the Pokémon one below.
Most of the projects we’ve seen so far focus on TVs running Android and Google TV operating systems (such as TCL, Hisense, Sony, and previous Amazon Fire products), using existing developer modes and Android Debug Bridge (ADB) to modify settings and apply (and remove) packages. According to the GitHub pages, they may also work with some Fire TV products that use a custom fork of Android (although probably not on the new Vega-based Fire TV Sticks). Because they use built-in development tools, they do not require root access or firmware hacking, and they are reversible. Even projects that completely change the look of the interface simply use Android’s ability to install custom launchers, in many cases with the help of Claude Code or a similar tool to also create the new launcher.
As Edge friend Chris Person points out in his Aftermath post, none of this requires AI. These projects take advantage of the capabilities that already exist in Android and, in some cases, reinvent the wheel. Android removal programs that use ADB have been around for years, as have replacement launchers that make the Google TV OS look like Apple TV. AI simply made the process easier and faster.
There’s nothing similar available for Samsung’s Tizen OS or LG’s webOS, other than rooting the TV, which is a whole different level of device hacking and control. While there is a webOS vibration hack for LG TVs that is based on cleanyourtv, it doesn’t actually do the same thing, essentially streaming the Apple TV-like launcher from an always-on device on the same network. They also won’t work for Roku or Vizio’s SmartCast.
These projects, or any OS coding someone might try, won’t necessarily stop all data collection. A good rule of thumb is that if the TV is connected to the Internet, at least some data is collected. Dumbtv blocks certain manufacturer and advertising partner addresses that your TV sends data to, but since it’s usually encrypted in transit, it’s impossible to know what exactly is being sent. Blocking data is similar to what you can do with Pi-hole to block malicious DNS requests on your network.
Televisions have increasingly become a means for companies to collect viewing data and serve ads. Using automatic content recognition (ACR) and fingerprinting, manufacturers can know what content you’re watching, send that information to their advertising partners, and then display targeted ads on the TV.
However, ACR is not only used for advertisements. It allows companies to measure audience metrics and can generate program recommendations based on what you’ve watched. It’s important to note that users must agree to ACR tracking, and there are ways to cancel it after the fact in a TV’s menus (although those options aren’t always easy to find). There are also options in most menus (again, usually hidden) to turn off targeted ads.
But even after doing that, there is always the concern that companies will still collect a certain amount of your data and use it in ways that you are not comfortable with. Whether it is true or not does not do much to calm those fears. Vibration Coding Weekend, on the other hand, is a way for people to try to take control of their TVs to get the user experience they want.
There are also dangers when vibrating your TV. A person who tried to hack a Samsung TV with Claude blocked it. The only way to completely avoid ACR, ads, or any type of data collection is to never connect it to the Internet. A firmware download to a USB stick can apply critical updates instead of Wi-Fi or Ethernet. If you still want to stream content, one option is a streaming device that doesn’t use ACR, like an Apple TV 4K (get a top-of-the-line model before the expensive new one replaces it). But any transmission requires sharing a certain amount of data with someone to function correctly.
The biggest takeaway from the vibe coding weekend is that the current state of TV operating systems has people fed up. Most people won’t stop watching TV anytime soon, but the experience needs to improve. The ads, data collection, and messy layouts are too irritating. AI now allows anyone to code their own solution and it will only get easier. If TV manufacturers do not take note and make changes, there is a chance that users will make the changes to them.
