Over the past long weekend, LG found itself the subject of controversy as an investigative video published by Gamers Nexus published evidence that TVs manufactured by the company can record, store, transcribe, and upload users’ private conversations to LG-owned servers for purposes of advertising due to the company’s ACR system, even when the TV is seemingly off.
The two-hour video, which has already racked up over two million views on YouTube has quickly gone viral, and one of the key points of the video is that while users might think that pressing the on/off button on their LG TV would actually power the device down, the reality is that the TV is actually almost always on, thanks to an insidious setting that almost no one knows exists.
LG’s insidious Always Ready mode
It’s easy to turn off, but not enough users know it exists.
It’s easy to get lost in LG’s labyrinthine settings menus, and amongst all the picture, advertising, and content settings, there is something called Always Ready mode which is enabled by default. This mode ensures that the TV is never fully turned off, with the consumer use case being that users can still use the voice recognition function to wake the TV when it is in standby mode.
However, the dark side of this technology is that your TV is never fully off, and as Gamers Nexus found out, that means that your TV is continues to record your conversations in service of its ACR platform, even when it is seemingly off.
And while we always recommend turning off your LG TV’s ACR completely, if you would also like the TV to fully power down when you aren’t using it, disabling this mode is fairly easy.
How to turn off your LG TV completely
Disabling Always Ready takes only a few button presses
If you want to disable Always Ready on your TV, simply follow a few steps.
When Always Ready is disabled, you will no longer be able to use voice commands or the home button to wake your TV.
Press the Settings button on your LG TV remote control and select All Settings to open the main menu. Navigate to General and then scroll down to find Always Ready mode. You should see a toggle switch with a green indicator. Select it to turn the setting off. The indicator should now be gray.
Now when you power off the TV, it will actually turn off instead of entering standby mode.
