Modern (and not-so-modern) Android TVs often come with built-in Bluetooth for connecting other smart devices, such as voice-enabled remotes. This is nice.
However, for reasons beyond my understanding, Google and most TV manufacturers decided to leave Bluetooth discoverability always enabled on the device with no option to turn it off, resulting in annoying neighbors spamming consent pairing dialogs on the TV whenever they want. This is not nice.
The sensible solution would be for manufacturers to add an option to disable Bluetooth in the TV settings, but unfortunately that's not how modern software development works.
Since this is not an isolated problem, other people have come up with alternative solutions that involve installing an app:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/6dwczn/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/tdfh0e/
- https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/5196128
Of course, my Android TV does not support that app (thanks, market fragmentation!), so here's my solution to disable Bluetooth:
- Enable USB Debugging on your TV just like any other Android device
- Connect to the TV through the network:
adb connect <tv-ip-address> - Run
adb shell svc bluetooth disable
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