Show HN: My Kids TV – Calm, ad-free replacement home screen for Google TV

A calm, ad-free home screen for your child's TV, with only the films and shows worth their time.

The stock home screen on most TVs is built to keep everyone watching: ads, autoplay, whatever is trending. My Kids TV replaces it with something made for a child. One title at a time, picked for their age from a catalog where every title earned its place: fun to watch, well made, and leaving something behind.

It runs on Google TV and Android TV, and as an app on LG (webOS) and Samsung (Tizen) TVs. It is free, open source, and nothing about your child ever leaves the TV.

One title, shown well. A large window with the picture, the name, the story in one line, and why it's worth watching: Must-watch, Learn something or Kids love it. Three thumbnails under it show what's next.

Something new every few seconds, never in their face. The window moves on every 10 seconds and a fresh set arrives every 30. The moment your child picks up the remote, everything holds still so they can choose.

Movies and Shows, from the catalog for their age: 4-6, 7-10 or 11-13.

Only what you can play. A title appears only if it's on an app you have (Netflix, Prime Video, JioHotstar, Disney+, ...), and opens straight in that app. Once your child opens a title, it isn't suggested again.

A quiet night sky, a greeting with their name and the weather, and your apps underneath. Press down for the week's weather, your HDMI input and the settings.

A screensaver after 10 minutes without a key press: the titles' pictures full screen, slowly drifting, with the time.

Everything below sits behind a parent PIN.

Privacy: no ads, no accounts, no tracking. The app talks only to TMDB (titles and pictures) and Open-Meteo (weather). What your child opened is remembered on the TV and nowhere else.

Age Titles For example

4-6 86 My Neighbor Totoro, Bluey, Paddington 2, The Magic School Bus, Finding Nemo

7-10 314 Coco, The Iron Giant, Planet Earth, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Wolfwalkers, Taare Zameen Par

11-13 400 Princess Mononoke, Interstellar, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Man Who Knew Infinity, Dangal

Wide search. Best-of lists (Common Sense Media, BFI, children's film awards), sweeps of TMDB, and TMDB's recommendations for every title kept: about 4,800 candidates.

Hard rules. Official age ratings, enough votes, a good audience rating.

Judged one by one. Jev, TypeSafe's System One model, rates each title for that age: right for the age, lasting value, must-watch, how much a child will enjoy it and, from 7, how well it's made.

A clear policy, in code. Mostly English-language titles plus the outstanding few from elsewhere; the best come up most often; the famous ones every family has seen come up only now and then.

A person reviews every borderline title before it ships.

Every candidate, judgment and decision is in catalog/, so any choice can be read, questioned and changed. The lists are also an open dataset (CSV and JSON, CC BY 4.0) for parents, schools and developers.

About twenty minutes. You need the TV and a computer on the same Wi-Fi.

On the TV: Settings → System → About → press Build 7 times. Then Developer options → USB debugging on. Note the TV's IP address (Settings → Network & Internet).

On your computer: open an AI coding assistant (Claude Code, Codex, ...) in this folder and say:

Set up My Kids TV on our TV at 192.168.1.50 for my 8-year-old.

It asks a few questions (age, first name, city, the streaming apps you pay for, a parent PIN, the YouTube button), builds the app and installs it, asking before anything important.

On the TV: open My Kids TV → Home Screen → My Kids TV, and allow USB debugging when asked.

You'll need a free TMDB API key for the titles. It stays on your computer and your TV. Optional: put a child-photo.png next to build.sh to show your child's picture in the settings; it is packed into your own build only and never committed.

app/ Android TV app (Java, no Gradle): HomeView draws the home screen, Recs picks the titles web/ The same home screen for LG and Samsung (HTML, CSS, ES5) webos/ LG package tizen/ Samsung package catalog/ The catalog pipeline: candidates → rules → Jev → policy → review data/ The open dataset tools/ check.sh (all builds and translations), translate.py (25 languages), webapp.py docs/ TECHNICAL.md: builds, adb and every TV brand's quirks

./build.sh # MyKidsTV.apk (JDK 17 and the Android command-line tools) tools/check.sh # Android build, 25 translations, LG and Samsung packages TYPESAFE_API_KEY=... python3 catalog/pipeline.py --band 7-10 all # rebuild a catalog

The design principles are in PRODUCT.md; the setup flow an AI assistant follows is in CLAUDE.md. Issues and pull requests are welcome.

Status: running daily on a Haier Google TV (Android 14). The LG and Samsung apps build and pass the checks, and still need a run on real TVs.

Use it at your own risk. My Kids TV is a free, independent project, provided as is, without warranty (see the LICENSE). It has run daily on one family's TV, not on every model.

It changes how your TV starts up. It becomes the home screen and turns off some preinstalled apps (never uninstalls them). Original in its settings puts everything back.

USB debugging stays on so the app can switch modes. Keep the TV on your home Wi-Fi, and never open port 5555 on your router.

It's a calmer home screen, not a lock. Apps like YouTube still work inside, and the picks come from a curated list, not a guarantee. You know your child best; please keep an eye on what they watch.

Not affiliated with Google, any TV maker, or any streaming service. All names and trademarks belong to their owners.

Credits

Titles, pictures and availability: TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.

Title judgments: Jev by TypeSafe. Weather: Open-Meteo.

MIT License, see LICENSE.

Thanks to Free My TV for the inspiration and the open-source code My Kids TV grew from.