Tshaka Armstrong is a nerd. Co-Founder of the non-profit digital literacy organization, Digital Shepherds, he’s also been a broadcast technology reporter, writer and producer for Good Day LA. Big on social justice, Tshaka has also traveled the country helping facilitate Android dev workshops and conferences for underserved youths as VP of Outreach for IDEAA.
In addition to being an award-winning broadcast storyteller, he’s also covered tech online and in print for everything from electropneumatic paintball gear, to parenting gadgets, and film industry tech for Rotten Tomatoes.
Tshaka has covered Amazon launches, GDC, Apple Keynotes, Samsung Unpacked, E3, CES, emerging VR/AR tech, and more, either online or on television.
He blathers on about his many curiosities on social media everywhere @tshakaarmstrong.
In a previous article, I showed you how to deactivate ACR on your newer TCL TVs, and I said we’d cover disabling Gemini for TV in a separate article. Why? Because there were already quite a few steps to cover in that article since with a TCL TV with Google, you’re deactivating TCL’s automatic content recognition in their software and any ad tracking or ACR that Google has baked into the Google TV operating system.
I also wrote that things aren’t quite so cut and dry when it comes to removing Google, with some on these interwebs saying that it isn’t actually possible to completely remove Gemini for TV. Is it? The answer to that is a bit nuanced, so let’s look at your options!
Why remove Gemini for TV?
LG showed that life’s not so good
As we’ve talked about in articles here and here, your smart TVs are likely spying on you. They’re listening to and “watching” almost everything coming through your TV’s screen and speakers.
In this case, Google is fairly well known for its data collection via ad networks, and, of course, there are a lot of people who have concerns about AI agents and their access to your data and how companies like Google and OpenAI are handling that data. Are they selling it to third parties? Is it a slippery slope, given the types of government overreach we’re seeing, and will access to our data become a problem?
Your reasons are your own, and who am I to judge? So let’s get on with it!
Roll your TV/streamer back
Maybe
Depending on which help desk you read, or which Reddit thread, there are those who say you may be able to get your TV or streamer back to the state it was in before the update that added Gemini for TV. And, when I say “help desk,” I mean Google’s actual support pages. There’s a caveat to this, though: it may depend on the age of your TV or streamer. In my case, the TCL TV I currently have for review was one of the first to get Gemini for TV out of the box, so rolling it back won’t help. If you had your media playback device before Android 14, you may be able to roll it back to when Google Assistant provided agentic assistance to your Google TV. Here’s how that’s done:
- Go to Settings.
- Select Apps, then See All Apps.
- Scroll down to System Apps and select Google TV.
- Select Uninstall Updates.
Once you’ve done that, while still in the Apps menu, scroll down to Manage Updates and deselect Auto-update apps to stop Google TV from reinstalling the Gemini for TV update. And, I’m going to reiterate: YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY where rolling back to a previous operating system state is concerned! I cannot promise this will work for you because I don’t have enough devices at home right now to test it. These directions come directly from Google's own support pages.
If you can’t remove it
Then disable it
You can read my review and thoughts on the excellent TCL QM7L SQD-Mini LED TV, here. On this Google TV, you’ll find a microphone switch on the bottom of the TV where the IR sensor is located. You can simply slide it to the “Off” position to disable Gemini from listening to you. That’s on the hardware side, and for this specific TV model.
There are a few other things you can do to disable microphone access and disable apps from sharing info on the screen. I covered how to turn off apps sharing or tracking you in a previous article, but I didn’t go into detail on disabling the microphone, so let’s cover that now.
From your home screen on your Google streamer, click on your profile picture and go to Settings.
- Select Privacy.
- Then click on Voice Assistant
- Find Gemini for TV and toggle it off.
For the TCL QM7L, click the settings cog on the remote and choose All settings.
- Scroll to Accounts & Profiles.
- If you have multiple accounts, as I do, choose the appropriate account.
- Scroll down to Voice assistant.
- On the right side of the screen, you’ll see Gemini for TV at the top. Scroll to the right so you’re in the Gemini for TV settings and disable everything. Scorched earth here, people! Leave nothing running.
I’m all about being thorough, so now we’re going to go back to Settings, then Privacy, and toggle the Microphone access option to the off position. As you see in this settings menu above, turning the microphone off disables it for all apps and services.
Now, I want to be clear that just turning the microphone off via the hardware and software doesn’t disable Gemini itself. But we can minimize the amount of access that Gemini has to our viewing and listening by following the steps in this article and in the article I wrote about disabling automatic content recognition. Following the steps in both appears to be as close as we can get to “removing” Gemini for TV, at least on TCL's newer SQD-Mini LED TVs.