LG with webOS: what you can clean up when there is no ADB

webOS is, of the three closed systems that dominate the market, the one that treats its owner best in one specific respect: it lets you uninstall considerably more apps than the other two. And the worst in another: the home screen on recent versions carries more commercial content than it ever has.

Like Tizen and VIDAA, it is not Android: no ADB for the owner, no sideloading, and no package list to disable. If that is what you came for, it is not here.

What is here are several settings that change the set quite a bit, and one in particular that almost nobody knows by name.

Live Plus: LG's name for watching what you watch#

Every manufacturer does automatic content recognition. Samsung calls it "viewing information services"; LG calls it Live Plus.

It does the same thing: identifies what appears on the screen and reports it. And as on the other brands, it is not limited to the set's own apps: it reaches what comes in over HDMI and over the aerial too — the set-top box, the console, ordinary broadcast television.

It arrives switched on, and it is turned off here:

Settings → All Settings → General → System → Additional Settings → Live Plus, switched off.

Four levels of menu, under an option whose name does not say what it does. That is why it is still on in the vast majority of LG sets sitting in people's homes.

On some webOS versions you will find it under Privacy & Security instead, with something called "content recognition service" or "viewing information" beside it. Same thing: turn it off.

The home screen adverts#

The same area of the settings holds options for adverts and their personalisation. Turning them off does not empty the home screen — the commercial slots stay — but it does stop what appears being chosen from a profile of you.

It is worth going in and reading that section one option at a time. On webOS they are spread across more places than on Tizen, and it is easy to switch one off and miss three.

Apps: here there is real room#

This is the part where webOS beats its competitors.

Press the home button, go into the app bar and look at the far right for the card with a pencil on it: that is edit mode. As you move across the apps, the ones that can be uninstalled show a cross above them.

The shortcut works too: put the cursor on the app in "My Apps", hold OK, and a bin appears in the corner.

Now the small print, which is the same on every closed system: not all of them have it. Apps that are part of the system and the ones there under a commercial agreement show neither cross nor bin. Those stay, and there is no way round it.

A recent case illustrates it well: a preinstalled Microsoft assistant arriving on LG televisions through an update, with no way to uninstall it. You can move it to the end of the bar, and that is that.

What you can do with all of them is reorder the home bar and push what you do not use to the back. It is half an hour well spent: it changes what you see every time you turn the set on.

The LG account#

The set works without signing in. The account is needed for the store and some services; for watching television and using the HDMI inputs, it is not.

If you have never created one, do not. If you created one during setup without thinking, you can sign out from the settings.

Check after every big update#

On webOS, updates move things around more often than on other systems: menus get reorganised, options get renamed, and settings occasionally go back to their factory values.

When the set tells you it has updated, go back to Live Plus and check it is still off. And if the menu is no longer where you left it, look under Privacy & Security.

What cannot be done#

Installing apps that are not in LG's store. The webOS developer mode exists, but it is meant for developers with their own app, and the installations expire after a few days.

Disabling system components. There is no package list.

Changing the interface. The webOS home bar is the only one.

And the usual: be sceptical of anything promising to "root" your LG. At best it does not work; at worst you are left with no television and no warranty.

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

When nothing can be touched inside, there is still the connection.

Blocking telemetry and advertising domains at the DNS level on the router leaves the set unable to report, and it covers every device in the house at once.

Two honest warnings. Blocking blind breaks things: the same domains sometimes serve artwork, search or updates, and you end up with an app that will not load and no idea why. And this is no longer a television setting: it is administering your network, with the upkeep that brings.

For nearly everybody, Live Plus off and a reordered home bar give most of the result for a fraction of the work.

The option almost nobody considers#

If the system still gets in your way — because it slows with the years, because the home screen fills up again after every update — the sensible way out on a closed television is to leave it as a screen and put an external player in front of it.

LG panels, the OLEDs above all, last a great deal longer than the software running on them. Replacing a hundred-euro player every four years is cheaper than replacing the television because its interface became unbearable.

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 an LG running webOS there is no debloating. There is a function called Live Plus that ought to be switched off and that almost nobody finds, some advert options scattered around the settings, and — this is the best part of webOS — a fair number of apps that genuinely do uninstall. With that and a reordered home bar, the set looks a good deal more like the one you thought you bought.