How to stop your smart TV from tracking what you watch (ACR)

Most smart TVs sold today can recognise what’s on the screen, whether it’s a streaming app, a game console or an antenna channel, and report it. The technology is called ACR, automatic content recognition. Every manufacturer gives it a friendlier name, and it’s usually switched on during setup when you press “Agree to all”.

The good news: you can turn it off from the TV menus in a few minutes, and nothing you watch stops working.

What ACR is, in one paragraph

The TV takes small samples of the picture or sound, turns them into a fingerprint and matches it against a database. The result (what you watched, when, for how long) is used for recommendations and, above all, for advertising. Because it reads the screen itself, it also sees what comes in through HDMI.

Samsung: Viewing Information Services

1. Settings › All Settings › General & Privacy › Terms & Privacy.
2. Turn off Viewing Information Services.
3. On the same screen, untick Interest-Based Advertisements, Customization Service and Improve personalized ads, and turn on Do not track if you see it.
4. If your model has it, press Reset PSID to get a new ad ID.

On 2019–2021 TVs the path is Settings › Support › Terms & Privacy › Privacy Choices.

LG: Live Plus

1. All Settings › General › System › Additional Settings and turn off Live Plus.
2. All Settings › Support › Privacy & Terms › User Agreements: only the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy are required. Turn off Viewing information, Interest-based & Cross-device advertising and Marketing Communications.
3. Privacy & Terms › Advertisement: turn on Limit AD Tracking and press Reset AD ID.
4. Bonus: Additional Settings › Home Settings, turn off Home Promotion and Content Recommendation.

Roku TV (including TCL and Hisense Roku TVs)

1. Settings › Privacy › Smart TV Experience and turn off Use info from TV inputs (newer software calls it Automatic Content Recognition).
2. Settings › Privacy › Advertising: turn off Personalize ads (older software: turn Limit ad tracking on).
3. Settings › Privacy › Microphone: take microphone access away from channels.

Roku sticks and boxes don’t do ACR; Roku TVs do.

Vizio: Viewing Data

All Settings › Admin & Privacy and turn off Viewing Data (newer TVs call the menu Privacy & Legal). Then, under Advertising, turn on Limited Ad Tracking and reset the advertiser ID.

Hisense VIDAA: Enhanced Viewing

Settings › Advanced Settings › Enhanced Viewing Settings and turn off Enable Automatic Content Recognition. On the pop-ups, choose “No, thank you” and “Yes, Decline”.

Android TV and Google TV

Google TV and Android TV models from Sony, TCL, Philips, Xiaomi, Hisense and others ship with telemetry and, on many models, the maker’s own content-recognition and ad services on top of Google’s.

• Settings › Privacy › Usage & diagnostics: off.
• Settings › Privacy › Ads: turn off ads personalisation and reset the advertising ID.

The rest lives in background services you can’t switch off from the menus. TV Cleaner AI finds them for your exact model, disables them in one tap from your iPhone, and shows a privacy report of what was tracking you and what you stopped. Nothing is deleted, and you can undo it all.

One more trick: the guest network

Put the TV on your router’s guest network. It can’t see your computer and phones anymore. The trade-off: casting from a phone on the main Wi-Fi stops working, so join the guest network to cast.

After every update, check again

Menu names move between software versions, and some TVs switch ad settings back on after a firmware update. It takes two minutes to look again.