Free My TV

Overview

Free My TV is an open-source replacement home screen and screensaver for TVs. It runs on Google TV and Android TV, and is available as an app for LG webOS and Samsung Tizen TVs. It presents the user's apps on a shelf, trending picks from installed streaming apps, weather details, and optional crypto prices, with a day/night appearance that follows the local sunset. Installation does not require root; the app uses the TV's own ADB from inside the TV, and users can switch back to the original home screen.

Key Features

• Ad-free home screen with no sponsored rows, banners or autoplaying promos.
• App shelf for the streaming apps a user actually uses, with app selection and order editable on the TV.
• Trending picks refreshed hourly from TMDB, limited to apps already installed; Movies and Shows have separate tabs.
• Weather drawer with hourly forecast, sunrise and sunset, plus optional Binance crypto prices.
• Day and night appearance that follows the real local sunset, with a matching screensaver.
• Measured 60 fps performance and lower memory use than the stock home screen on a tested TCL Google TV, plus one-button restore to Original.

Use Cases

• Replacing an ad-heavy stock home screen on Google TV or Android TV with a cleaner launcher.
• Adding a similar home-screen app to LG webOS or Samsung Tizen TVs.
• Showing trending titles from the user's installed streaming apps without sponsored placements.
• Checking weather, sunset times and optional crypto prices directly on the TV.

Getting Started

• On Google TV or Android TV, enable developer options and USB debugging, and note the TV's IP address.
• Use an AI coding assistant or the manual build path; for manual installation, clone the repository, set city and TMDB key in config.properties, run ./build.sh, then install the APK with adb.
• On LG TVs, install Developer Mode from the LG Content Store, enable Dev Mode Status and Key Server, build with python3 webos/build.py, and install with python3 webos/install.py.
• On Samsung TVs, enable Developer mode with the computer's IP in Host PC IP, use TizenBrew Installer, and install from GitHub using simbasjungles/free-my-tv.

Deployment & Requirements

• Google TV or Android TV (Android 8 or newer) and a computer on the same Wi-Fi for installation.
• For manual Android builds: JDK 17 or newer, Android SDK command-line tools with build-tools 34 and platform android-34, and adb.
• For LG: an LG TV with webOS 3 or newer, Python 3, a computer on the same Wi-Fi, and a free LG developer account.
• For Samsung: a Samsung TV from 2017 or newer (Tizen 3 or newer), a computer on the same Wi-Fi, and TizenBrew Installer.
• A free TMDB API key for trending picks; an optional free Watchmode key supports opening title pages in streaming apps.

Before You Adopt

• License: MIT. Review its terms before using, modifying, or distributing the project.
• On LG TVs, the installation relies on LG Developer Mode, which must be extended periodically to keep the app available.
• TCL TVs block background execution by default, so TCL installs need an extra app-ops command to let Free My TV run in the background.
• On Samsung TVs from 2023 and newer, installing requires a one-time Samsung account sign-in to sign the app for the TV.
• The app has no accounts, analytics or tracking, but it contacts external services for picks, weather, prices and optional title links.
• If the TV saved a Wi-Fi network during first setup, the switch may ask the user to forget and reconnect the network before proceeding.