How to Stop Your Smart TV From Spying on You (and Make It Dumb Again)

Your smart TV probably knows more about what you watch than any streaming service does. Most of them ship with automatic content recognition (ACR): the TV fingerprints whatever is on screen, using screenshots, audio or other digital signatures, and matches it against a database. That covers apps from other companies and, on many sets, whatever comes in over HDMI. The result is a viewing history that feeds the manufacturer’s ad business.

Samsung’s own support page says its version can capture your viewing history (programs and how long you watched them), TV identifiers and your IP address. The good news is that ACR is optional everywhere, so the first fix takes two minutes and a remote. The fun fix, which blew up in October 2026, is pointing an AI coding agent at your TV and letting it rip out the ads and bloat.

How to know if your TV is spying on you

During setup, every smart TV asks you to accept a pile of agreements. One of them is the viewing information (ACR) agreement, and most people tap “Accept all”. If you did, assume ACR is on. Open the settings below and check: if the Samsung or LG switch is enabled, your TV is reporting what you watch.

Turn off ACR on a Samsung TV

• 2022 to 2026 models: Settings → All Settings → General & Privacy → Terms & Privacy, then untick I consent to Viewing Information Services.
• Newer models with Privacy Choices: the same switch is in Privacy Choices (in settings or as an app on the home screen). If it is greyed out, use the Terms & Privacy route above.
• 2018 and 2021 models: Settings → Terms & Privacy.
• While you are there: untick Interest-Based Advertisements. Samsung says this won’t reduce how many ads you see, only how they are picked.

Turn off ACR on an LG TV

• Live Plus (LG’s ACR): on webOS 26, Settings → All Settings → System → Additional Settings → Live Plus, and switch it off. On older webOS versions it is under General → System → Additional Settings.
• Withdraw the agreement: Settings → All Settings → Support → Privacy & Terms → User Agreements, and untick Viewing Information. Leave the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy alone; those are the ones apps need.
• Delete what was already collected: Support → Privacy & Terms → Delete My Personal Information → Delete Viewing Information.

Other brands

The setting has a different name on every brand, but it is always in the privacy or system menu. Look for Viewing Data on Vizio, Samba Interactive TV on Sony and Smart TV Experience on TCL and other Roku TVs, and switch it off. Menu names move between firmware versions, so if you can’t find it, search the settings for “privacy” or “viewing”.

Go further: debloat your TV with an AI agent

Turning off ACR stops the tracking, but the sponsored rows, ad screensavers and laggy launcher stay. In October 2026 a wave of people started fixing that by giving an AI coding agent their TV’s model number and asking it to clean the thing up. TechCrunch covered it as people “using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again”. Two open-source projects grew out of it:

• cleanyourtv strips the bloat from Android TV and Google TV sets over Wi-Fi and installs a small Apple TV-style launcher. No root, nothing uninstalled, and a one-line restore.
• dumbtv targets Fire TV and Android or Google TV: it disables ACR, ad and analytics packages, filters telemetry with an on-device DNS blocker and replaces the home screen. Every step is reversible with its restore script.

Both work the same way. Android-based TVs have the same debug bridge (ADB) as Android phones, so the agent runs ordinary commands from your laptop:

• Turn on developer options and network (ADB) debugging on the TV, then run adb connect <tv-ip>:5555 and allow your computer once.
• Back up the list of installed packages first, so there is something to restore.
• Disable the manufacturer’s telemetry, ad services and preloaded junk with pm disable-user, instead of uninstalling them.
• Install a minimal launcher and make it the default home screen.

Rules that keep your TV from becoming a brick

• Disable, never uninstall system packages, and keep the restore script next to the backup.
• Make the agent ask before every package. The bloat differs by brand, and some packages that look like junk run the remote, HDMI-CEC or the app store.
• Don’t let it touch firmware, the bootloader or system partitions. People have reported bricked Android TVs and half-finished Fire TV runs, so stay in ADB-only territory.
• Start from a project’s prompt (cleanyourtv and dumbtv both publish theirs) instead of a bare “hack my TV”. Agents do much better with a tested plan.

Samsung and LG: block it at the router, or keep the TV offline

Samsung’s Tizen and LG’s webOS don’t give you a shell, so the ADB trick doesn’t apply. Community root exploits for webOS exist, but they only work on certain older firmware and LG patches them, so check that your exact version is supported before you try one. The two reliable options are:

• Block the trackers on your network. A DNS blocker such as Pi-hole or AdGuard Home on a home server can drop the TV’s telemetry and ad domains for every device in the house.
• Never connect the TV. Turn it into a dumb display: keep it off Wi-Fi and plug in a streaming box or a small computer you control. HDMI and the antenna keep working; the TV has nowhere to send data.

A tiny always-on box that runs your DNS blocker can also run your media server and self-hosted AI, which is how a lot of people end up with their first homelab.

The TV hacks are changing every day, and what works depends on your exact model. Inside the Tinkerer Club, members share which TVs, prompts and blocklists actually worked for them, and help each other when an agent run goes sideways.