My 2019 Shield TV Pro showed a Google home screen full of recommendations, ran the Assistant all the time and sent statistics to NVIDIA. In one morning, Claude cleaned it up with the open source tool cleanyourtv: 23 apps disabled, a new home screen, and everything stays reversible.
The problem
The Shield is plugged into an LG OLED TV and driven with the LG remote. I only use four apps: Canal+, Plex, SmartTube and Deezer. Everything else (recommendations, Assistant, NVIDIA services, preinstalled apps) uses memory and network for nothing.
How Claude went about it
- Access: I turn on Network debugging in the developer options. Claude drives the Shield over ADB from my PC.
- Backup first: before changing anything, it saves the package list, settings and system properties.
- Three batches, approved one at a time:
- telemetry and leftover gaming apps (NVIDIA statistics and diagnostics, Google feedback, partner auto-installs, GameStream);
- my choices (Google Assistant, Play Movies, the system Prime Video, Live Channels);
- secondary NVIDIA services (SMB sharing, registration, beta, voice hotword…).
- Disable, never uninstall: an update can re-enable a package, but nothing is lost. One script puts everything back as it was.
- Close up: Network debugging is turned off at the end, and Claude checks the port is really closed.
I kept NVIDIA updates, Chromecast, the Ambient screensaver, YouTube and AI upscaling.
A home screen I like
The Google home screen is replaced by the cleanyourtv one: the time, a dock with my four apps, and in the background photos of Earth taken from the International Space Station, changing every 15 minutes. It’s the same home screen as on my second Shield, shown in screenshots here.
I also tried a background with posters of my latest Plex movies: dropped, too busy.
What got in the way
- The LG remote goes through HDMI-CEC. Its color keys reach the Shield, but Android doesn’t pass them on to the new home screen: no shortcuts inside apps.
- The mic button does nothing anymore, since the Assistant is disabled. That was intended.
- Building the home screen on Windows needed JDK 21 and a specific Java setting, which Claude found and documented.
Takeaway
The most useful part isn’t the list of apps to switch off, it’s the method: full backup, batches approved one by one, reversible disabling, access closed at the end. Claude left everything in a README, including the command to rerun after a Shield update.