Hisense with VIDAA: what you can clean up when there is no ADB

Almost everything on this site starts from the same idea: you connect the set over ADB, list the packages and disable the ones that are surplus. On a Hisense running VIDAA you cannot do that, and it is better said in the first line than halfway down the page.

VIDAA is not Android. There is no ADB, no installing apps from outside its own store, and no pm disable to run. If that is what brought you here, it does not exist, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling something.

Now the useful part: there is a good deal you can clean up, just by another road.

What actually bothers people, and where it comes from#

When somebody looks up how to clean up a Hisense, it is nearly always one of three things:

A home screen full of content recommendations they never asked for. Adverts appearing in rows of their own. And the feeling, a correct one, that the television is watching what it shows.

Of those three, the last one matters most and has the clearest fix. It is called ACR.

The setting that changes the most: content recognition#

ACR stands for automatic content recognition. The set samples what appears on screen, matches it against a database, and so knows what you are watching. Not only inside its own apps: it covers what comes in over HDMI and over the aerial too. The console, the set-top box, ordinary broadcast television.

It arrives switched on, and it is turned off in the settings:

Settings → System → Advanced settings → Privacy, where you switch off "device usage data" and the collection of app usage data.

The exact path changes between VIDAA versions and between models, so if your menu is not worded the same, find the privacy section and read down it: what you are after is any box mentioning viewing information, usage data or service improvement.

This breaks nothing. The set carries on exactly as before; it simply stops sending out the detail of what you watch.

Personalised advertising#

The same privacy section usually holds an option for interest-based ads. Switching it off does not remove the adverts — that is not in your hands — but it does stop them being chosen from a profile of you.

It is a two-second setting that almost nobody touches, because it is buried in a submenu.

Apps: what you can and cannot do#

This is where VIDAA looks least like Android. From the home screen you can select an app and, if the system permits it, a bin icon appears to remove it.

The important words are if it permits it. System apps and the ones there under a commercial agreement do not offer that option: no bin, no menu, no way round it. Those stay.

What you can do with all of them is reorder the home screen and push what you do not use to the end. They do not disappear, but they stop being the first thing you see.

The VIDAA account#

The set works without signing in to a VIDAA account. You will need one to install apps from its store, but for watching television, using the HDMI inputs and running the apps that came installed, you do not.

One account fewer is one fewer identifier to attach to what you watch. If you have never created one, do not; if you created one during setup without thinking, you can sign out.

Check this after every update#

This is the point that catches people out. Some VIDAA updates reset the privacy settings to their factory values, or present the terms and conditions again in a way that, if you accept quickly with the remote, switches back on what you had switched off.

It is not a theory: it is what owners report. So when the set tells you it has updated, go back to the privacy section and check it is still as you left it. Thirty seconds.

What cannot be done, however much you read#

Installing apps that are not in the VIDAA store. There is no sideloading.

Disabling system components. There is no package list to reach.

Changing the launcher or putting another interface on top. The VIDAA home screen is the only one there is.

And a practical warning: there are pages promising to "root VIDAA" or to install APKs on a Hisense. At best they do not work; at worst they leave you with a set that will not boot and no warranty. This site does not go there.

And if you want to go one step further: the network#

When the system will not let you touch anything inside, there is still the door everything leaves by: the connection.

A television whose telemetry and advertising domains are blocked at the DNS level cannot report anything, without touching the set at all. It is done at the router or with your own resolver on the home network, and it covers every television in the house at once, not just this one.

That said, two honest warnings. First: blocking blind breaks things. The same domains that serve adverts sometimes serve the artwork, the search or the updates themselves, and you end up with an app that will not load and no idea why. Second: this is no longer a television setting, it is administering your network, and if you do not fancy maintaining it, do not start.

For most people the settings in the sections above give 80% of the result for 5% of the work.

The option almost nobody considers#

If after all this the system still gets in your way — because it is slow, because the store does not have what you want, because the recommendations come back — there is a way out that makes more sense on a closed set than on an Android one: leave it as a screen.

A mid-range external player costs little, keeps updating for years, and turns your Hisense into what you probably wanted: a good panel with an interface you get to choose. The set stays connected to the internet only if you want it to; leave it off the network and ACR has nobody to report to.

What has already been sent does not delete itself#

Turning off content recognition stops what is collected from now on. It does not delete what the set sent during the months or years it has been on in your living room.

In the European Union there is something to be done about that, and it is the lever most ignored precisely on the televisions where nothing can be disabled in software: data protection law gives you the right to ask the manufacturer what it holds about you, and to ask for it to be erased.

You do it through the manufacturer's privacy form, with the set's serial number to hand. The answer takes time and does not always arrive complete, but it is a right rather than a favour, and on a closed system it is the only route that reaches what has already left the house.

In short#

On a Hisense running VIDAA there is no debloating. There are four settings: turn off content recognition, turn off personalised advertising, remove the apps the system lets you remove, and do not link an account you do not need. That takes out most of the problem, with no risk, no cables and no warranty lost.

And if you have a Hisense running Google TV rather than VIDAA — Hisense sells both, depending on model and market — then everything else on this site applies. Check in the set's own settings before assuming.