{"slug": "webos", "name": "webOS", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 9, "warners": 1, "score": 3.997, "rising": 1.02, "first": "2025-12-16", "latest": "2026-10-20", "why": "WebOS itself is actually pretty neat once you get root on the device", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 4, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "WebOS itself is actually pretty neat once you get root on the device", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "webos-internals.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://webos-internals.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["webOS", "WebOS"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802612192, "item_id": 50163262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163262", "by": "theshrike79", "date": "2026-10-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WebOS, no Android TV crapola to deal with", "excerpt": "My basic advice for media consumption in 2026: - Buy the biggest LG C -series OLED TV you can afford and/or fit (WebOS, no Android TV crapola to deal with) - Never connect it to the internet, LG wants to add all kinds of AI crap to it. - Set it to Filmmaker Mode[0] to disable all of the \"improvements\" it tries to do to the image - Buy an Apple TV Done. The ATV can turn the TV on and off and adjust the volume. You won", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 793828592, "item_id": 49614287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49614287", "by": "Confiks", "date": "2026-09-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WebOS itself is actually pretty neat once you get root on the device", "excerpt": "> Is there anyone who has done a technical write up and investigation into the firmwares? I extracted the firmware and filesystem of a webOS 3.5 and webOS 24 TV previously so I could remove the spying bits and get an internet connected TV back. I asked Claude Opus 5 to do some analysis on the ACR implementation yesterday. I haven't had time to check it myself, so it might give some insight but take it with a grain of", "context": "", "use_case": "smart TV operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG TVs caught spying even when offline or on standby"}, {"id": 785680785, "item_id": 49105049, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105049", "by": "kiririn", "date": "2026-07-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "TVs running Roku or WebOS do have nice control APIs", "excerpt": "TVs running Roku or WebOS do have nice control APIs https://developer.roku.com/dev/docs/external-control-api https://github.com/chros73/bscpylgtv", "context": "", "use_case": "TV control API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Turning a Dumb AC Unit Smart (Without Losing My Security Deposit)"}, {"id": 764810128, "item_id": 47800633, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47800633", "by": "Confiks", "date": "2026-04-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's nice that webOS in general is very well documented", "excerpt": "I recently bought a second hand eight year old 4K LG TV. Pretty cheap too. All models running webOS 3.x and 4.x are trivially rootable as LG never provided an update against DejaVul [1]. There's a handy website to check which models are rootable [2]. You can write directly to the (old!) Wayland socket; haven't tried a libwayland yet that is compatible. IIRC the last public exploit for all LG TVs for webOS > 5 was in ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codex Hacked a Samsung TV"}, {"id": 760532034, "item_id": 47533252, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47533252", "by": "1234letshaveatw", "date": "2026-03-26", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dumped it and switched to my built in LG OS (WebOS based I think).  Works fine", "excerpt": "My google dongle got progressively worse and worse. Frequent disconnects, I found out you had to like orientate it a special way, youtube kept having issues. Dumped it and switched to my built in LG OS (WebOS based I think). Works fine, does basically the same thing as my Google dongle did without the slow degradation march", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["rooting lg tv", "smart tv operating system", "tv control api"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49612329", "title": "LG TVs caught spying even when offline or on standby", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50158942", "title": "An ad-free Android TV", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101198", "title": "Turning a Dumb AC Unit Smart (Without Losing My Security Deposit)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791212", "title": "Codex Hacked a Samsung TV", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47530981", "title": "Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512816", "title": "VitruvianOS \u2013 Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"warn": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 802612192, "item_id": 50163262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163262", "by": "theshrike79", "date": "2026-10-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WebOS, no Android TV crapola to deal with", "excerpt": "My basic advice for media consumption in 2026: - Buy the biggest LG C -series OLED TV you can afford and/or fit (WebOS, no Android TV crapola to deal with) - Never connect it to the internet, LG wants to add all kinds of AI crap to it. - Set it to Filmmaker Mode[0] to disable all of the \"improvements\" it tries to do to the image - Buy an Apple TV Done. The ATV can turn the TV on and off and adjust the volume. You won", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 793860192, "item_id": 49616262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49616262", "by": "necovek", "date": "2026-09-08", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "after that I had full control of it.", "excerpt": "I'll just throw this out here: https://www.webosbrew.org/rooting/ I believe I did have to connect it to the network to get it to some web page or other, but after that I had full control of it. My LG TV is a bit older, though (2021 or so).", "context": "", "use_case": "rooting LG TV", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG TVs caught spying even when offline or on standby"}, {"id": 793828592, "item_id": 49614287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49614287", "by": "Confiks", "date": "2026-09-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WebOS itself is actually pretty neat once you get root on the device", "excerpt": "> Is there anyone who has done a technical write up and investigation into the firmwares? I extracted the firmware and filesystem of a webOS 3.5 and webOS 24 TV previously so I could remove the spying bits and get an internet connected TV back. I asked Claude Opus 5 to do some analysis on the ACR implementation yesterday. I haven't had time to check it myself, so it might give some insight but take it with a grain of", "context": "", "use_case": "smart TV operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG TVs caught spying even when offline or on standby"}, {"id": 785680785, "item_id": 49105049, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105049", "by": "kiririn", "date": "2026-07-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "TVs running Roku or WebOS do have nice control APIs", "excerpt": "TVs running Roku or WebOS do have nice control APIs https://developer.roku.com/dev/docs/external-control-api https://github.com/chros73/bscpylgtv", "context": "", "use_case": "TV control API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Turning a Dumb AC Unit Smart (Without Losing My Security Deposit)"}, {"id": 764810128, "item_id": 47800633, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47800633", "by": "Confiks", "date": "2026-04-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's nice that webOS in general is very well documented", "excerpt": "I recently bought a second hand eight year old 4K LG TV. Pretty cheap too. All models running webOS 3.x and 4.x are trivially rootable as LG never provided an update against DejaVul [1]. There's a handy website to check which models are rootable [2]. You can write directly to the (old!) Wayland socket; haven't tried a libwayland yet that is compatible. IIRC the last public exploit for all LG TVs for webOS > 5 was in ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codex Hacked a Samsung TV"}, {"id": 760532034, "item_id": 47533252, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47533252", "by": "1234letshaveatw", "date": "2026-03-26", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dumped it and switched to my built in LG OS (WebOS based I think).  Works fine", "excerpt": "My google dongle got progressively worse and worse. Frequent disconnects, I found out you had to like orientate it a special way, youtube kept having issues. Dumped it and switched to my built in LG OS (WebOS based I think). Works fine, does basically the same thing as my Google dongle did without the slow degradation march", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features"}, {"id": 760270880, "item_id": 47516930, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47516930", "by": "codepoet80", "date": "2026-03-25", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "webOS is still around -- sorta!", "excerpt": "webOS is still around -- sorta! https://www.webosarchive.org", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "VitruvianOS \u2013 Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"}, {"id": 756433664, "item_id": 47277104, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47277104", "by": "xd1936", "date": "2026-03-06", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "typing \"webos20090606\" or \"upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart\" into the webOS \"Just Type\" universal search bar", "excerpt": "Reminds me of typing \"webos20090606\" or \"upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart\" into the webOS \"Just Type\" universal search bar, which revealed a hidden developer mode switch that allowed sideloading of apps. https://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/Getting_started", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"I'm obviously taking a risk here by advertising emoji directly.\""}, {"id": 744824320, "item_id": 46551520, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551520", "by": "w4der", "date": "2026-01-09", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "It is a pretty sad story, and one that has been rather well told: https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-inside-story-pre-postmortem https://www.philmckinney.com/i-convinced-hps-board-to-buy-palm-for-1-2b-then-i-watched-them-kill-it-in-49-days/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them"}, {"id": 740668368, "item_id": 46291773, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46291773", "by": "okanat", "date": "2025-12-16", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "They have a custom OS called WebOS.", "excerpt": "LG and BENQ has quite some smart ones. They have a custom OS called WebOS. Actually you can only get non-smart ones only if you buy commercial projectors. https://www.lg.com/us/projectors", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Copilot AI Comes to LG TVs, and Can't Be Deleted"}]}