I got Hermes to bring a 10-year-old Xiaomi TV back to life, running as smoothly as new — all without root or flashing a custom ROM. There's a Xiaomi TV 4 in my bedroom, 65 inches, bought in 2016, going on ten years now. Back in the day it was the main TV in the living room, and watching shows on that big 4K screen was a real treat. Over time the system got laggier and laggier — just switching menus meant waiting two or three seconds. After we got a new TV for the living room, it got moved into the bedroom as a second-stringer, mostly just

💡 What You Will Learn

I got Hermes to bring a 10-year-old Xiaomi TV back to life, running as smoothly as new — all without root or flashing a custom ROM. There's a Xiaomi TV 4 in my bedroom, 65 inches, bought in 2016, goin

📜 Table of Contents

• Assess First, Don't Just Start Poking (It Judged Whether This Was Even Worth Doing)
• Installing Tools, Enabling Debugging — Me Doing My Part on the TV Side
• Checkup Results: 2GB of RAM, Only 26MB Free
• When It Actually Got to Work, Xiaomi Had Locked Down All the Standard Moves
• Reboot and Verify — It Insisted I Test with a Cold Boot
• What Really Struck Me Was How the AI Went About the Work

I Had Hermes Bring a 10-Year-Old Xiaomi TV Back to Life, Running as Smooth as New — No Root, No Flashing

I have a Xiaomi TV 4 in my bedroom, 65 inches, bought in 2016, going on ten years now. Back in the day it was the main TV in the living room, and watching stuff on that big 4K screen was a joy. Over time the system got laggier and laggier — just switching menus meant waiting two or three seconds. After we got a new TV for the living room, it got moved into the bedroom and demoted to second string, mostly just serving as a monitor over HDMI, and I couldn't be bothered to touch its built-in system.

A few days ago I came across a piece of news: an engineer overseas hooked an AI up to his own Android TV and had it automatically clean up the system, and after the cleanup it ran smoother than a new machine. Instead of figuring it out myself, I threw that news straight at Hermes — the AI assistant I use daily — and first asked whether this was even legit, and whether my laggy TV could be saved this way.

Its response was nothing like the "AI chat" most people picture.

Assess First, Don't Just Start Poking (It Judged Whether This Was Even Worth Doing)

Hermes first dug into the news and came back to me with a few points: in principle it works over ADB, no root needed, reversible, low risk; but the engineer in the story only had one line — "unbelievably smooth" — with zero actual test data, and his tutorial was written for stock Android, so a domestic TV's customized system would probably not be so cooperative.

Its conclusion was that it was worth a try. It also drew a line for itself: only disable, never uninstall, and every step must be reversible. I said, let's do it.

Installing Tools, Enabling Debugging — Me Doing My Part on the TV Side

Hermes first checked my computer and found ADB wasn't even installed, so it went to Google's official site, downloaded the official tool package, and installed it. Then it gave me a checklist: go into settings to find the product model, press the remote button seven times to enable developer mode, then turn on ADB debugging.

The connection got stuck twice. The first time the TV flat-out refused — the debugging toggle hadn't actually taken effect. The second time it connected but showed "unauthorized," with an authorization prompt popping up on the TV screen. I used the remote to tap Allow, and only then was the key handed over.

Once connected, it didn't rush to act — it just looked without touching: read the model, read the system, read the memory, listed all 90-plus apps, then checked what was running in the background.

Checkup Results: 2GB of RAM, Only 26MB Free

This TV is rated at 2GB of RAM, and after subtracting system and VRAM usage, about 1.6GB is actually available, with the system still stuck on Android 6.0.1. After booting up and stabilizing, 35 app processes were permanently resident in the background, leaving only 26MB of free memory.

More than half of those processes were things I'd never opened since buying it: Xiaomi ad services, the store, payment wallet, game center, Xiaomi Music, karaoke, content push, data analytics, user manual, video calling, weather/calendar/alarm... They all share one trait: you never use them, but they all auto-start on boot, stay resident in the background, and wake each other up. TV makers run thin margins on hardware and make their money from boot ads and preinstalled slots, so an old TV with already stingy specs gets its memory occupied year-round — of course it's going to lag.

After the checkup it gave me a tiered list: 21 preinstalled apps in the ad, store, and analytics categories were recommended for cleanup; things I might actually use like screen casting, Mi Home, and the input method, it had me confirm one by one; and apps I'd installed myself were left untouched. I looked at the list and said: "Clear the whole first tier, keep the rest."

When It Actually Got to Work, Xiaomi Had Locked Down All the Standard Moves

This was the most interesting part of the whole process to watch. Hermes first issued the standard "disable" command — Xiaomi's system rejected everything, returning "insufficient permissions." It switched to the "hide" command — still rejected. Then it tried the fallback command from older Android versions and found it had long since been removed. The domestic customized system had welded the door to debloating shut.

Then I watched it switch approaches, and finally it found the only viable method: removing the preinstalled apps from the "current user." It explained the principle to me: the installation packages are still lying in the TV's system partition, they just no longer load or run, and a factory reset restores everything 100% — no root, no flashing, no deleting system files, and the TV won't get bricked.

Before acting, it did two more things: first it tested with a single app, the ad service, to confirm this path worked; then once the backup was done, it cleared all 21 preinstalled apps in one go, and optimized the window animation speed along the way.

Reboot and Verify — It Insisted I Test with a Cold Boot

After the cleanup it wouldn't let me draw conclusions right away — it insisted I reboot the TV, saying the key question was whether these preinstalled apps would auto-start after a reboot. After a Xiaomi reboot, the ADB toggle turns off automatically, so I re-enabled authorization, it reconnected, and the data came out:

72MB doesn't sound like much, but this is an old TV with only 1.6GB of available memory — that's like gaining nearly a twentieth out of thin air. Not a single one of the 21 preinstalled apps came back after reboot. The difference in feel was quite obvious — swiping the home screen, opening settings, switching apps, all noticeably more responsive. This dust-collecting old TV had basically been brought back from the dead on the spot.

What Really Struck Me Was How the AI Went About the Work

I've been tinkering with devices for many years, and I was debloating Android systems over a decade ago. Back then you had to connect the debug bridge yourself, look up package names, search forums one package at a time for "can this be deleted," and then type out commands one by one while risking a brick.

This time, all I did the entire way through was three things: turn on ADB on the TV, say "clear the whole first tier" to the list, and tap authorization once more after the reboot. Assessing whether it was legit, doing a checkup first instead of poking blindly, making a list and waiting for my sign-off, switching paths on its own when commands got locked, backing up before acting, and insisting on a reboot to verify when done — Hermes did all of it itself. This is no longer "using AI to look up a tutorial." It has hands, it has judgment, and it keeps a fallback.

From writing code to tidying up old appliances at home, these tinkering jobs that used to require experience and guts now have a barrier so low it's just "do you dare let it try." If you've got an old Android TV at home that's laggy as hell and you're a bit handy, you can have your AI assistant walk through this same approach.

How many years has your smart TV been running? How laggy is it now? Let's chat in the comments.