man15h/tellyscope

Tellyscope

Debloat your Android TV, install apps, and browse and transfer files on it, all from your phone. No root, no PC.

Your TV at a glance	Control the TV, dock your apps	Review every app Debloat turns off	Install apps
Send files to the TV	Block ads, tweak the TV, add a launcher	Make a launcher Home	Advanced monitor: what is using the CPU, RAM and network

_{Rendered from the app's screenshot tests with sample data. The Install dialog is drawn to match the app, and Advanced monitor joins parts of its longer page.}

What it does

Tellyscope talks to your Android TV, Google TV, NVIDIA Shield or Fire TV over Wi-Fi using ADB, the debugging protocol developers use. Shield and Fire TV haven't been tested on real hardware yet.

• Connect. Finds TVs on your Wi-Fi, or add one by IP. Works with network debugging and with Android 11+ wireless debugging and its pairing code. TVs reconnect by themselves.
• See how it's doing. Free space, CPU, RAM, temperature and network speed, plus what's paired or plugged in. Advanced monitor has CPU and RAM by app, processes, network and data used.
• Debloat. Matches your TV to one of 330+ tested lists (adapted from cleanyourtv) and shows every app it will turn off before it does. Untick anything you use. No list for your model? Pick from the maker's lists, or by hand.
• Apps. See what's running and what's on the TV. Turn off apps you don't want, turn them back on any time, and uninstall the ones you added yourself.
• Install apps. From an APK, split APKs or an .apks/.xapk/.apkm bundle on your phone. It says first whether it's new, an update or an older version.
• A better home screen. On TVs with the Play Store, pick a recommended launcher (Projectivy, AT4K, Dispatch or FLauncher), install it and make it Home. Switch between launchers, or back to the TV's own, from the Home screen card in Tweaks; only the TV's own is ever turned off. A launcher's accessibility service turns on only if you say yes.
• Send files. To and from the TV's Download and Movies folders.
• Remote. D-pad, Back, Home, Menu, mute and volume, typing on the TV, a dock of up to four apps, restart the TV, and Screen off for music with the picture off (Android 13 or older).
• Tweaks. Block ads with Private DNS, faster animations, clear caches, take a screenshot.
• Who has access. See every computer the TV allows over ADB, remove all but this phone, and answer the TV's "Allow debugging?" prompt from your phone.

_{A TV after Tellyscope.}

Safety rules

Debloating a TV can break it if done carelessly. Tellyscope keeps to these rules, and contributions must too:

1. Disable, never uninstall, what came with the TV. Built-in apps get pm disable-user, which Undo or pm enable reverses. Uninstall is offered only for apps you installed (pm list packages -3), after a confirm. Tellyscope never runs pm uninstall --user 0. 2. Record before changing. Before its first change on a TV, Tellyscope notes which apps were already off. Every change goes into that TV's History with an Undo (except uninstalls), and Restore everything turns back on only what Tellyscope turned off. 3. Protected list. Apps the TV needs to boot, update, stay on Wi-Fi, show web pages, show its home screen or take input can't be stopped or disabled, with no override. A TV's list can only add warnings, never remove protection. When you switch home screens, the old launcher is turned off only after Home is checked to open the new one. 4. You see it first. Every change names the apps it touches and asks before it runs. 5. No root, no exploits. Only what ADB allows on a stock TV. 6. Nothing left on the TV. Two small helpers run from /data/local/tmp: one reads app names and icons and is deleted at once, the other runs the Remote and is deleted when the Remote closes. 7. Private. No ads, tracking or accounts. The only internet requests fetch the debloat lists from GitHub (or your own fork) and check for a new version every 30 minutes, which you can turn off in Settings. Everything else stays on your Wi-Fi, except the DNS lookup of each TV's name during the scan.

Get it

• GitHub Releases: download Tellyscope-.apk and open it on your phone. -alpha pre-releases are test builds that install next to the regular app.
• Obtainium or Orion Store: tap the badge above on your phone for automatic updates.

Setting up your TV

1. On the TV, open About in Settings and press OK on Build (Fire TV: your device's name) 7 times. 2. In Developer options, turn on USB debugging (Fire TV: ADB debugging), and Network debugging or Wireless debugging if your TV lists it. 3. Open Tellyscope, pick your TV's brand under Add your TV, and tap Connect when your TV shows up. The app shows the exact menu names for your brand. 4. On the TV, check the key matches the one Tellyscope shows, tick Always allow from this computer and press Allow. With wireless debugging, type the 6-digit pairing code instead.

Building

Modules: :app (the phone app, Kotlin and Jetpack Compose), :adb (pure Kotlin ADB library on Kadb), app/src/helper (the on-TV label helper) and :cli (a desktop smoke test, not shipped). You need JDK 25 and the Android SDK with platform 37.

./gradlew build          # assemble, unit tests and lint
./gradlew :app:installDebug

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. If you have an Android TV, a device report helps even if nothing worked.

Why the name?

In Wallace & Gromit's 2002 short The Tellyscope, Wallace builds a contraption so he can change the channel without leaving his armchair.

Star History

License

GNU General Public License v3.0. Third-party credits are in NOTICE.