How to turn off ACR on an LG TV
LG calls its content recognition Live Plus; it runs on technology from Alphonso, an LG company. Switching it off takes two steps: the Live Plus switch in the system settings, and the Viewing Information agreement in Privacy & Terms. The paths below come from LG’s official user guides for webOS 23 to 26.
Updated
Step by step
webOS 23, 24 and 25 (2022 to 2025 models)
From LG’s user guides. Press the Settings button on the remote, then choose All Settings. Available items vary by model.
- Set Live Plus to Off. Live Promotion, right next to it, only removes the ads inside Live Plus: it does not stop the recognition.
- Turn off Home Promotion and Content Recommendation.
- Withdraw the Viewing Information, Voice Information and Interest-Based & Cross-Device Advertising agreements.
- Turn on Limit AD Tracking and reset the AD ID. On webOS 23 the Advertisement entry sits under General, System, Additional Settings instead.
- On webOS 24 and 25, delete what was already collected with Delete Viewing Information and Delete Voice Information.
- If you do not use them, turn off AI Recommendation, Who.Where.What? and Smart Tips.
- Turn off Screen Saver Promotion in the screen saver settings.
webOS 26 (2026 models)
- The labels are the same, without the General step.
- Privacy & Terms is unchanged: withdraw the agreements and turn on Limit AD Tracking there.
Menus change with TV updates: if a label does not match, look for the closest entry in the same section.
What Live Plus does, according to the research
A study presented at ACM IMC 2024 measured LG and Samsung TVs in the UK and the US. With Live Plus on, the LG TV contacted Alphonso’s servers about every 15 seconds, most of all on antenna TV and with an HDMI source, when the TV is only a screen for a console or a laptop. In the US it also stayed active on LG Channels.
After the researchers withdrew every agreement, the traffic to the content-recognition servers stopped completely. The study only looked at those servers, and did not read what the TV sent.
What stays on
Consumer Reports notes that you cannot stop all collection: LG keeps the data it needs for its own services. Since September 2022 LG’s own recognition technology runs in 27 countries, Europe included.
In September 2026, after a video by independent testers, LG confirmed that its TVs scan the home network, and called it a standard feature. LG’s user guides describe no setting to turn that scan off.
The Texas agreement
In December 2025 the Texas attorney general sued LG, alleging that opting out took about 40 clicks across six agreements and that recognition worked on HDMI inputs. In May 2026 LG accepted an agreed judgment: express consent for viewing data and updated first-setup screens, without admitting wrongdoing.
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Questions
Is Live Promotion the same as Live Plus?
No. Live Promotion only removes the ads shown inside Live Plus. Live Plus is the recognition itself, and it has its own switch.
Does ACR work on HDMI inputs on an LG TV?
Yes. In the ACM IMC 2024 study the LG TV sent the most recognition traffic with antenna TV and with an HDMI source.
Do I have to do this again after a reset?
Yes. A factory reset brings back the first-setup agreements: check Live Plus and User Agreements again.
Sources
- LG webOS 25 user guide, LG Electronics · checked on October 21, 2026
- LG webOS 24 user guide, LG Electronics · checked on October 21, 2026
- LG webOS 26 user guide, LG Electronics · checked on October 21, 2026
- Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs (ACM IMC 2024), arXiv 2409.06203 · checked on October 21, 2026
- How to Turn Off Smart TV Snooping Features, Consumer Reports · checked on October 21, 2026
- LG Smart TVs get a new ACR solution, legacy technology replaced by LG Ads Solutions, LG Newsroom, September 2022 · checked on October 21, 2026
- LG defends smart TV features amid audio surveillance allegations, Al Jazeera, 10 September 2026 · checked on October 21, 2026
- Attorney General Paxton sues five major TV companies, Texas Attorney General, 15 December 2025 · checked on October 21, 2026
- Agreed final judgment, State of Texas v. LG, Texas Attorney General, 11 May 2026 · checked on October 21, 2026
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