Unshitifying our TV
A couple of weeks ago my partner and I got a brand new beautiful 2025 Philips Smart TV with OLED and the whole shebang. Now, you would expect that after spending over a thousand Euros on a screen, its user experience would be impeccable, right? ... Right?
The experience started with an optional Google login. We politely declined. We got a list of applications where we could select which ones we wanted to install. We deselected Netflix, Disney+, and a handful of other services and continued our way. Then we arrived on the main screen and got bom-bar-ded with a full page background advertisement for a show you could watch on one of the streaming services we explicitly remember to have deselected. And more, these apps were even installed anyways!
I felt a new hyperfocus bubbling up: Making the user experience of our new TV somewhat bearable.
Our first hurdle: Without a Google account, you are not able to install any custom applications. My girlfriend succumbed and entered the credentials of her Google account she wishes she could get rid of, but it's just not possible this day and age.
The most important app for us personally is SmartTube. This cannot be downloaded via the pre-installed browser on the TV. Sigh. I downloaded BrowseHere, navigated to the Github page and downloaded the SmartTube apk file. Our first success (over an hour later)!
There were a handful of other apps, including Jellyfin which could be an article in itself, and then our VPN app of choice, but even then, the ads on the Home screen were bothering me. But then I found Projectivity Launcher, downloaded it from the App Store, and voila! Gone are the annoying backgrounds, and you can hide any app you wish not to see on your homescreen. All clean!
The downsides which remain are:
- You still need to be logged in to Google, otherwise you can't download any apps.
- There's AI marketing everywhere. AI Ambilight, AI this, AI that. You can turn all of this off.
- Sometimes the TV boots to the original Home screen, but on the bright side, you see how much you improved your TV.
- (Not TV related) There's still no way to disable ads on Twitch. And our national TV app found a way to break whenever the VPN is turned on.
But for now, this is acceptable, and we got a couple of nice 4K UltraHD blurays to go with it. :-)