Claude Code slims down smart TVs: disables 25 apps, reduces home screen memory usage by 57%

Beating AI News Flash: Developer Mihir Gupta spent an afternoon using Claude Code to revamp his laggy TCL smart TV at home. The TV has only 2GB of RAM, and the AI helped him disable 25 pre-installed apps and background services, and replaced the ad-filled native launcher with a new interface he coded himself. The launcher's RAM usage dropped from 192MB to 83MB, a reduction of about 57%.

The new launcher mimics the Apple TV design, retaining frequently used apps, HDMI inputs, and settings entry, and can also automatically switch wallpapers among 12 nature landscape photos. The entire installation package is only 4.7MB.

No Root or flashing is required. After the user enables developer mode on the TV, Claude Code can connect to the device via Wi-Fi and ADB, inspect pre-installed software, back up configurations, write the new launcher, and verify results through screenshots. The author has open-sourced all the code, prompts, and recovery scripts.

This is not the first time someone has used AI to revamp a TV. In early September, engineer Mert Cobanov used Claude Code to clean up a 4-year-old Android TV. On October 17, developer Gathin open-sourced a similar project, tv-vibehack, and Gupta's work was inspired by it.