StudyOnTV: The open-source app that locks TVs until kids pass a quiz

Managing screen time usually feels like an endless domestic war. Pulling the plug is too harsh, and smart plugs only fool kids until third grade. A clever new open-source Android tool wants to turn this conflict into a fair game.

StudyOnTV flips screen time into an earn-as-you-go system. The premise is dead simple: learn first, watch later. Kids must answer a set of quiz questions correctly to unlock a predetermined block of viewing time on their Android TV, tablet, or phone. Once that time expires, the screen locks back up.

TV remote quizzes with zero cloud baggage

Most parental control apps make you register accounts, buy monthly subscriptions, or host complex home servers. StudyOnTV takes the opposite approach by running entirely on the client device.

Everything stays local. The app spins up a tiny HTTP server on the TV and saves quizzes in local SQLite storage. Parents simply scan an on-screen QR code from their phone while on the same Wi-Fi network, punch in an admin password, and manage settings via a clean web interface.

Interaction is tailored to living room hardware. Kids can navigate multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions purely using the TV remote's D-pad. On tablets and phones, it supports touchscreen inputs, offline LaTeX math rendering, and handwritten answers.

Objective questions are graded instantly on-device. For handwritten or subjective answers, parents can grade them manually or plug in API keys for DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, or a local Ollama instance to handle grading automatically.

Designed for real living rooms

What makes StudyOnTV stand out is how gracefully it handles real-world household dynamics.

In many homes, grandparents watch television during the day while kids come home in the late afternoon. Total lockouts break the living room for everyone. StudyOnTV solves this with flexible schedule blocks: grandparents can watch freely without spending credits during the day, while quiz gates only kick in between 5 PM and 9 PM.

It also comes with sharp anti-bypass guardrails. When quiz mode triggers, active video players are paused and media audio is muted. The app can block access to system settings to prevent kids from tampering with clocks.

To counter wild guessing, wrong answers feed into an accumulated review pool using spaced repetition. These penalty tasks persist across device reboots and daily resets, meaning careless guesses just stack up more homework.

Why it matters

We think StudyOnTV's biggest triumph is replacing daily parent-child arguments with a predictable, transparent loop.

Instead of begging for 10 more minutes, kids earn screen minutes through their own effort. Shifting screen time from a contested privilege into an earned reward dramatically lowers household friction.

Its privacy architecture is equally commendable. By skipping cloud accounts and keeping everything strictly inside your local network, it protects children's study habits and home routines from commercial data harvesting while staying entirely free.

There are still practical hurdles. Aggressive Android TV background task killers mean parents will likely need to grant accessibility or overlay permissions manually depending on their TV brand. But as an open-source weekend project, StudyOnTV solves a universal parenting headache with remarkable empathy and technical finesse.