A senior AI engineer has demonstrated how Claude Code can revitalise Android TV performance by selectively cleaning system files and reducing animations, without rooting the device, offering a potential solution to sluggish smart TVs.
A developer has shown how an Android TV can be made noticeably more responsive by using Claude Code to carry out a selective clean-up of the system, according to Tom’s Hardware. Mert Cobanov, a senior AI engineer at Refik Anadol Studio, said on X that he asked Claude to connect to his television over ADB and remove unnecessary software, install FLauncher and reduce animation timing, all without root access. He said the result was a set-up that felt smoother than when the television was new, four years ago.
The appeal of the approach is clear in a category long plagued by weak processors, limited memory and slow storage, as Tom’s Hardware notes. Android TV sets often ship with preloaded apps and services that consume resources, and performance can worsen over time as software updates accumulate. That has helped create a market for external streaming boxes and HDMI sticks, although those add cost and complexity for viewers who would prefer a simpler one-device set-up.
Cobanov has since published a short guide on his “Clean up your Android TV” website, which explains the process in four steps. According to the site, users first enable developer options, switch on debugging, find the television’s IP address and then use Claude Code or Codex with a prepared prompt. The instructions are designed to work on Windows, Mac and Linux, and they focus on disabling unused factory apps rather than deleting them.
That distinction matters. Cobanov says the changes are reversible because nothing is uninstalled, and the agent keeps track of everything it disables. If needed, a user can ask it to restore all changes, or re-enable individual apps. Related tools already exist for Android TV app management, including ADB-based utilities that can freeze or remove applications without root access, which underlines both the demand for this kind of control and the broader frustration with locked-down smart TV software.
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