aerial-tv

Aerial is a tvOS-style home screen for the Xiaomi, TCL and other TVs sold in China, whose stock launchers are wall-to-wall show recommendations and membership badges. You get a clock, your apps in a grid, Bing's photo of the day or your own wallpaper, and Apple TV's aerial films as the screensaver. No ads, no feeds. It's MIT licensed and free.

Install takes ADB and a few minutes: flip on debugging with the brand-specific button combo from the README, then paste a prompt into Claude Code or Codex, run the one-line curl | bash installer, or adb install the APK from GitHub releases. Solo or a household, it's free per TV. Google TV owners have Free My TV for the same job. LG, Samsung and Huawei sets aren't supported.

The catch: it stays in charge by fighting the firmware. It holds secure-settings access, an accessibility service, a notification listener used only to restart itself, and an optional switch that turns ADB back on whenever Xiaomi shuts it off. The APKs are hand-built, five releases landed in a single day, and a firmware update can undo the takeover.