Your TV's home screen is a billboard. Sponsored rows, autoplaying promos, banners for shows you will never watch. Free My TV is an open source home screen for Google TV and Android TV, with LG webOS and Samsung Tizen versions, that replaces all of that with your own apps on a clean shelf, a few trending picks from apps you already have, and the weather. It went from zero to over 4,000 GitHub stars in its first week.

The pitch that matters for developers: no root, nothing uninstalled, and one button brings back the factory home screen. The authors measured 60 fps and 96 MB of memory for the home screen versus 242 MB for the stock one on a 98 inch TCL Google TV running Android 14.

This guide covers three install paths: letting a coding agent do it, the manual adb route for Google TV, and the LG webOS route people keep searching for.

Before you start

  • A Google TV or Android TV on Android 8 or newer, or an LG TV on webOS 3+, or a Samsung TV from 2016+
  • A computer on the same Wi-Fi
  • For Google TV: adb (and a JDK 17 plus Android SDK if you build it yourself)
  • For LG: Python 3 and a free LG developer account

On the TV (Google TV): open Settings, System, About and press "Android TV OS build" 7 times. Then Settings, System, Developer options, and turn on USB debugging. Write down the TV's IP address from Settings, Network & Internet.

Option 1: let your coding agent install it

The README is written so Claude Code, Codex or Antigravity can do the whole job. Open your agent and say:

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

Swap in your TV's IP and your city. The agent clones the repo, installs the build tools, builds the APK and pushes it over adb, and it asks before anything important. When it finishes, go to the TV, open Free My TV, then Home Screen, then Free My TV. The TV asks "Allow USB debugging?" for the app itself. Tick "Always allow" and accept.

Option 2: the ready APK with adb (Google TV)

No build tools needed besides adb. Download FreeMyTV.apk from the latest release, then:

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, then Install anyway. The release APK ships without a TMDB key, so you get the home screen without trending picks, and it guesses your city from the TV's time zone.

Two device quirks from the README worth knowing:

  • Chromecast with Google TV on Android 14 keeps port 5555 closed. Turn on Wireless debugging, run adb pair <address:port> <code>, then adb tcpip 5555. Port 5555 closes again on every restart.
  • TCL TVs block background start by default. Allow it: 
adb shell "appops set io.freemytv AUTO_START allow || appops set io.freemytv APP_AUTO_START allow"

Option 3: build it yourself for trending picks

The picks need a free TMDB API key. With a JDK 17+, Android build-tools 34 and platform android-34 installed:

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

The first run creates config.properties. Set your city, tmdb_key and tmdb_region (two letter country code) there, then run ./build.sh again and install with the same two adb commands as above. Most settings can also be changed later on the TV under Free My TV, Home Settings.

LG TVs: install through webOS Developer Mode

This is the path with the most search interest, so here it is step by step. Nothing is rooted, and LG's own home screen stays in place. Free My TV becomes one number key press away.

  1. On the TV, install Developer Mode from the LG Content Store, sign in with your free LG developer account, turn on Dev Mode Status (the TV restarts), then turn on Key Server. Note the IP and passphrase.
  2. On your computer: 
git clone https://github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv && cd free-my-tv python3 webos/build.py python3 webos/install.py 192.168.1.50

The first install asks for the TV's passphrase. Type it yourself; if you use a coding agent, it builds the app and hands you the install command for exactly this reason.

  1. On the TV, with Free My TV open, hold a number key on the remote. That key now opens it from anywhere.

On webOS 6 and newer, LG hides the installed app list from Developer Mode apps, so Free My TV shows the well known ones first and asks the TV once for wider access. Allow it and all your apps appear. On webOS 3, refresh the app list from your computer:

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

Developer Mode expires after about 40 days, so open the Developer Mode app now and then and press EXTEND. To remove it: python3 webos/install.py 192.168.1.50 --uninstall.

Samsung TVs in one paragraph

On the TV, open Apps and type 1 2 3 4 5 on the remote, turn on Developer mode, enter your computer's IP as Host PC IP and restart. Then use the community TizenBrew Installer on your computer and install from GitHub with simbasjungles/free-my-tv. 2023 and newer models ask you to sign in to a Samsung account once to sign the app.

Honest caveats

  • Developer options and USB debugging stay on while you use it. Treat your home network accordingly.
  • The release builds have no picks until you build with your own TMDB key.
  • On LG, Developer Mode needs extending roughly every 40 days or the app stops launching.

Use cases with copy-paste prompts

Each page has who it is for, the steps and a prompt you can paste into your coding agent.

Use case: Install an ad-free home screen on Google TV with Claude Code

Use case: Put Free My TV on an LG TV through webOS Developer Mode

Use case: Set up trending picks, weather and prices with your own TMDB key

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