There’s a hierarchy in the TV industry that’s been blurred in recent years, but exists nevertheless. At the base are budget-only brands like Onn, Vizio, Insignia, and Westinghouse. TCL and Hisense are often labeled budget brands, but in reality span the gamut, sometimes offering high-end models that cost as much as a new car. LG is similar, but leans towards mid-tier and high-end products. If you want to impress your friends with a new OLED or RGB mini-LED set, LG is an obvious choice, assuming you can afford the premium.

All this is to say that if you own a recent LG set, speed might not be much of a concern. Yet slowdowns are possible, and the older your TV is, the more likely they are. Here are some tactics you can try if things aren’t snappy enough for you.

Running Memory Optimizer

A fancy name for standard tricks

Like many TV makers, LG is prone to rebranding common functions, presumably to persuade you it’s offering some special advantage. The Memory Optimizer tool is an example of this — all it really does, normally, is clear temporary cache files and close background apps and processes, like you would on a smartphone or laptop. This frees up RAM and swap space, so you should actually run this on a frequent basis. I’d suggest once a month if not every week.

On most LG models, you should be able to trigger the Optimizer by going to Settings -> Support -> Memory Optimizer. Be warned that in the name of swap space, it may delete unused apps outright. That’s often a good thing — but you’ll have to redownload those apps if you end up needing them later.

Scrubbing unwanted apps on my own

Don’t wait for problems to manifest

When it comes to deleting apps, you shouldn’t wait to use Memory Organizer. LG tends to equip its TVs with 4GB of internal storage or less, which doesn’t leave a lot of room once you factor in webOS. If you download apps on a whim and let them accumulate, there’s a real risk of encroaching on swap space. If that happens, your TV will be forced to shuttle data in and out more often to compensate, bringing it to a crawl.

To delete an app, just click and hold on it with your remote’s OK button, then select the Trash icon in the onscreen menu that appears. There’s no great penalty to this — as I mentioned, you can always download an app again from the LG Content Store. And since we’re talking about streaming, all you have to do is log back into an associated online account to restore your media.

Add a USB thumb drive

Check what’s on it first

If you legitimately use every app on your TV and you’re still running into trouble, you can pay your way out of the situation by buying a USB thumb drive. Actually, just about any form of USB storage will work, but it would be ridiculous to connect a 128GB SSD when even a 16GB stick offers four times your TV’s internal memory.

Any drive you pick should match your TV’s connector type — most likely USB-A instead of USB-C — and preferably, its speed. Whereas USB 2.0 is an ancient technology capped at 480Mbps, even USB 3.0 can bump things up to 5Gbps. If your TV has a 3.x port, apps can install and load faster.

You don’t have to do much here except format your drive for NTFS or FAT32. webOS will take care of the rest. Be sure to leave the drive plugged in 24/7, though, and migrate any important files before you format. The drive needs to be empty, and indeed formatting it will wipe things automatically.