dumbtv

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The story

I had a Fire TV Edition television that had become painful to use. Menus lagged, apps took ages to open, and the home screen was mostly ads. When I looked, it had 129 MB of free memory, and much of the rest went to apps that started on their own and to Amazon services that report what you watch.

So I asked a coding agent to clean it up over ADB, and posted what happened. People asked for the scripts, so I put them here and shared them. Since then, owners of about twenty other TVs and sticks have run it and sent back what they found.

dumbtv is that cleanup, made safe to run on someone else's TV.

What it does

On a Fire TV stick, Cube or Fire TV Edition television, from your computer, with no root:

• Removes the ads and tracking. Disables Amazon's sponsored rows, ad services, screen fingerprinting (ACR), telemetry and experiments, and turns off ad tracking and usage reporting.
• Blocks what cannot be disabled. A small open-source DNS filter on the TV stops Amazon's telemetry and automatic updates from reaching their servers. Everything else, including your streaming apps, works as before.
• Replaces the home screen with dumbtv home: your apps, your inputs and a clock. 107 KB, open source, no internet access.
• Leaves your apps alone. Nothing you watch is removed unless you name it.
• Can all be undone with one command.

Quick start

You need a computer with adb and about ten minutes. On the TV, turn on ADB: Settings → My Fire TV → About, press OK on the device name 7 times, then Developer Options → ADB debugging. The TV's IP address is under Settings → My Fire TV → About → Network (on a Fire TV Edition television: Settings → Network, then the connected network).

With a coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini and others): clone this repository, open the agent in it, and say:

Clean up my Fire TV. Its IP address is (the address from the Network screen).

It reads AGENTS.md, asks you a few questions, and runs the steps below.

By hand:

git clone https://github.com/humblemuzzu/dumbtv && cd dumbtv
adb connect <tv-ip>:5555        # press Allow on the TV
./scripts/preflight.sh          # what the TV is and what would change; changes nothing
./scripts/configure.sh          # a few questions
./scripts/all.sh                # asks before each step, reboots the TV twice
./scripts/verify.sh             # checks the result

Works from macOS, Linux and Windows (WSL or Git Bash). The same steps, one at a time, are at dumbtv.org/start.

Rather not do it yourself? Tell us about your TV and we will help.

What you choose

configure.sh asks, and nothing is decided for you:

Question	Default
Do you watch Prime Video?	yes: its servers stay reachable
Keep Alexa and the voice button?	yes
Replace Amazon's home screen with dumbtv home?	yes
Run the DNS filter on the TV?	yes
Any apps you want removed?	none
Replace the YouTube app with SmartTube (no ads, no Shorts)?	no

Your answers are saved in dumbtv.conf; run configure.sh again to change them.

What changes

Amazon packages	About 50 disabled: ads, sponsored content, ACR, telemetry, crash and usage uploads, experiments, update nags. Disabled, never deleted.
Protected packages	The few Amazon will not let anyone disable lose background running; the DNS filter blocks what they upload.
Settings	Ad tracking limited, interest-based ads off, usage reporting off, home-screen autoplay off.
DNS	personalDNSfilter runs on the TV and blocks about 400 Amazon telemetry, ad and update hosts. YouTube, the Appstore and your other apps are not blocked.
Home screen	dumbtv home instead of Amazon's: no promo tiles, no sponsored rows.
Your apps	Untouched.

How it works explains each part and why it is needed. dumbtv.org/blocked lists every package, what it does and what you lose without it.

dumbtv home

Rows	Grid	Options

A home screen that shows your apps and your HDMI inputs, and nothing else. Accent colours, tile sizes, rows or a grid, wallpapers, adaptive backgrounds, renaming and hiding, and the icons of an icon pack you install, all from the remote. HOME lands on it in a fraction of a second.

It is plain Java with no libraries and no internet permission, so it cannot send anything anywhere. On Fire OS 7 and 8 its only permission is run at startup, used to restart the DNS filter when Android kills it. It works on its own, without the rest of dumbtv:

adb connect <tv-ip>:5555
./launcher/install.sh

launcher/README.md covers the settings, wallpapers, icon packs and how it takes over the HOME button.

Tested on

Each row is a report from the person who ran it. tested means the whole pass ran and verify.sh passed on that device. dumbtv.org/tv has every model with its menu paths and quirks.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗