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Clean Frame: A Personal Home Screen for Samsung The Frame

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Clean Frame is a quieter home screen for Samsung The Frame TVs running Tizen. It shows your apps, a photograph and the time, with an interface designed for the TV remote. The project was built for one specific TV, the author's own Samsung The Frame, and the code and setup notes are shared as a starting point for others to fork and adapt. The author stresses that it is used at your own risk. Most of the work went into making it run well on that one TV, while very little went into making it portable. Setup scripts reflect the author's computer, TV and firmware, so users should expect to adapt them and test the result on their own hardware.

The author recommends forking the repository and building on it, ideally with a coding agent that can help understand and adapt the setup. Users can start with a browser preview, which requires Node.js 22+ and Python 3.10+, before moving on to TV installation. Native Home or startup changes need particular care, and the setup guide covers the risks and recovery steps.

The interface can be customized in several ways. Users can choose a List or Dock layout, display icons, names or both, and pick a photograph with a light or dark background. Typography, focus and glass materials are adjustable, and fifteen wallpapers are available. Home apps can be chosen and reordered, and installed apps on the TV can be discovered. Preferences are saved locally. Glass and blur effects are rendered ahead of time so the TV only loads finished images.

The reference hardware is a Samsung QA55LS03DAWXXY, firmware 2130.0, Tizen 9.0. Signed app installation and Netflix and YouTube launches were confirmed on that setup, but several behaviors, including normal power-on after streaming and Art Mode navigation, still need physical verification. No compatibility is claimed for other TVs.

Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing