Removing ads from the home screen

You pay for a television and its home screen fills with sponsored content. It is the reason most people end up on this site.

Where the advertising comes from#

There are three distinct sources, and they are worth telling apart because each is fixed differently:

1. Google's launcher. The Android TV home screen includes "Recommendations" and "Channels" rows that mix in sponsored content. It comes from com.google.android.tvlauncher and com.google.android.tvrecommendations.

2. The manufacturer's layer. Many add their own promotions row on top. This is Xiaomi's PatchWall, TCL's recommendations, and equivalents on nearly every brand.

3. Ads inside the apps. That no longer depends on the television.

The gentle route: the settings#

Before touching anything over ADB, try what is already there:

• Settings → Device preferences → Home screen: on many models you can switch off the rows and the autoplay previews.
• Settings → Privacy → Ads: reset the advertising ID and switch off personalisation.
• Settings → Channels: remove the ones you do not want.

On many models that alone improves the home screen considerably.

The complete route: change the launcher#

If you want a home screen with nothing on it, the answer is not to remove the launcher but to replace it. Install an alternative, check it, and only then disable the factory one.

Order matters: removing the launcher with nothing else installed leaves you staring at an empty screen. We have the options that work.

The packages usually involved#

adb shell pm list packages | grep -iE "launcher|recommend|ads|promo|sponsor"

Careful with com.google.android.tvrecommendations: on some models it is a dependency of the system launcher and removing it takes the launcher down. It is one of those cases where the directory is the difference between "it works" and "there goes my afternoon".

What cannot be removed#

Ads inside third-party apps. If YouTube shows you ads, that is YouTube, and no system package will change it.