Cleaning up a Sony Bravia Android TV
· 2 min read
Sony committed to Android TV at the premium end very early. A 2016 Bravia still has an excellent panel and software that drags, which is exactly the situation this site exists for.
What to look for on a Bravia
adb shell pm list packages | grep -iE "sony|bravia|sonyericsson"
The usual prefixes are com.sony.dtv.* and com.sonymobile.*. The dtv stands
for digital TV and covers nearly all of Sony's own software.
The three families
Genuine utilities. Picture settings, calibration, input management. This is the good part of Sony's software and you will not want to touch it.
Sony service apps. Tied to the brand's ecosystem. If you do not use them, they come off without drama.
Usage reporting and recommendations. Packages with analytics, metrics or
promotion in the name.
The Sony-specific detail
On many Bravias, the picture-settings section depends on a Sony package that looks dispensable at first glance. If your television suddenly loses its picture modes, that is the cause.
It is a good illustration of why we insist on going one at a time: the package name does not always say what it does.
Performance
On older Bravias with 2 GB of RAM, what you notice most is not removing apps but reducing what runs in the background. To see what is consuming it:
adb shell dumpsys meminfo | head -30
Common models
The XG, XF and WF series, and the KD-43/49/55 range. Tell us about yours.