DumbTV
humblemuzzu/dumbtvReviewed by AI
What it does
dumbtv is a set of scripts you run from your computer against a Fire TV stick, Cube or Fire TV Edition television over ADB, with no root. It disables about 50 Amazon packages for ads, sponsored rows, screen fingerprinting and telemetry, turns off the ad and usage-reporting settings, puts a small DNS filter on the TV for what cannot be disabled, and can replace the home screen with its own launcher showing your apps and HDMI inputs. Your streaming apps stay. One script undoes everything. You need adb and about ten minutes; on Windows, WSL or Git Bash.
How easy it is to install
C · install 1 or 2 tools · Windows
You install Android platform-tools (adb) on your computer, turn on ADB debugging in the TV's hidden developer menu, and run four shell scripts that ask before each step; on Windows that means WSL or Git Bash.
Numbers on GitHub
- Stars
- 1,824on Oct 31, 2026
- Downloads
- 5,4021,250 this week
- Growth
- +139stars in 4 days
Stars over time
Facts
- Runs on
- Windows, macOS, Linux
- You need to install
- Other tools
- Disk space
- not determined
- Accounts or keys
- None
- Cost
- Free · MIT licensed scripts and launcher; the catalog of devices is CC BY-SA 4.0.
- License
- MIT (Permissive)
- Can replace
- Launcher
- Last update
- Oct 27, 2026
Risk signals (4)
- Attentiondisables system apps on your tv
README: "About 50 [Amazon packages] disabled: ads, sponsored content, ACR, telemetry, crash and usage uploads, experiments, update nags. Disabled, never deleted." The run reboots the TV twice; ./scripts/restore.sh re-enables them and a factory reset also removes everything.
AI review
- Attentionblocks system updates
README "Good to know": "Fire OS updates are blocked while the DNS filter runs, since an update would switch a lot of this back on." The DNS filter blocks about 400 Amazon telemetry, ad and update hosts.
AI review
- Infodownloads third party apps
LICENSE and README: personalDNSfilter (GPL-2.0) from F-Droid, HaGeZi's blocklists (GPL-3.0) and SmartTube (MIT) are not bundled but downloaded by the scripts from their upstream releases; replacing the YouTube app with SmartTube, which removes YouTube's ads, is offered and is off by default.
AI review
- Infocoding agent runs the steps
README Quick start: you can clone the repository, open a coding agent in it and say "Clean up my Fire TV"; the agent reads AGENTS.md and runs the scripts against your TV for you.
AI review
Evidence is shown in its original language.
What Radar could not check
- Whether it works on your exact TV model: the README lists about two dozen devices tested by their owners, some only partly.
- Whether a future Fire OS update puts the disabled packages and settings back.
- What the TV loses in practice from the disabled packages beyond what the project documents.
- Whether Amazon treats the change as a reason to refuse support or warranty on the device.