Getting Rid of Launcher Ads on Nvidia Shield TV Pro

#

A few years ago, Android on the Nvidia Shield starting putting ads directly in the launcher (even if you rolled back to earlier android versions). They are using hard-coded addresses (so DNS blocking like Pihole doesn’t work) so it was proving not trivial to stop the stock app launcher from showing ads.

Recently the ads have gotten a bit worse so I decided to check online if there was a viable solution to get rid of ads on the home screen.

Happily there are a few launchers that could replace the stock Android launcher (I ended up going with Projectivy Launcher), there are just a few steps to ensure that the stock launcher does not come back. Install your desired launcher before moving on.

Following along with this reddit post, I made a quick direnv setup for NixOS to pull the android tools and quickly turn off the stock launcher and recommendations.

.envrc

#

if grep -q "NixOS" /etc/os-release; then
  use nix
fi

shell.nix

#

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
pkgs.mkShell {
  buildInputs = [
    pkgs.android-tools
  ];

  shellHook = ''
    echo "Android tools environment activated!"
  '';
}

Once you activate the direnv with ‘direnv allow’, you follow the reddit post to enable debug mode and run these commands

adb connect x.x.x.x

adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.tvlauncher

adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.tvrecommendations

If you have another launcher installed, it should just pop up now and you are in the clear!