A replacement home screen for rooted LG webOS TVs that also puts 100+ of the TV's own settings - the ones LG buries, and a few it never draws at all - into one place you can reach with the remote.
OpenHome is a fork of OpenLauncher by Shantil-K, not a different project by the same people - see CHANGES.md for what was added. Developed on an LG 65UR78003LK, webOS 10.3.2 (SDK 10.3, Chromium 120). Every screenshot below is a real 3840x2160 capture off that TV, in the Editorial look it ships with.
It has its own package id,
io.github.devic021.openhome, so it installs beside OpenLauncher rather than over it - you can keep both and switch between them. Coming from OpenLauncher, carry your configuration across with its Settings → Backup → Export, then paste it into OpenHome's Backup → Import.
Every screenshot is clickable and opens the full 3840×2160 capture.
- Why
- The home screen
- TV settings
- Launcher settings
- Requirements
- Install - 1. Root · 2. Homebrew Channel · 3. SSH · 4. The app · 5. Launch
- Make it the home screen
- Wallpapers on a USB disk
- Keeping settings across a reboot
- Language
- How it reads the TV
- Troubleshooting
- Uninstall
- Credits and licence · LICENSING.md for the file-by-file detail
LG's own settings menu shows 36 of the 838 settings the TV actually keeps. Some of the missing ones matter:
| Missing | What it is |
|---|---|
| Screen Saver | No on/off switch exists in LG's menu at all - only a standby timer you cannot disable |
| Live Plus | Recognises what is on screen and sends viewing data to LG. Not in the EU menu, but the setting is there and on |
| HDMI Deep Colour | Filed under a category you would never guess (other, dimension gameInput) |
| 4:4:4 Pass Through | Per HDMI port. The difference between crisp and fuzzy text from a PC |
| Home Promotion | The "Sponsored" tiles on LG's own home screen |
This reads them straight out of com.webos.settingsservice, using LG's own names and LG's own
descriptions, and lets you change them.
Clock, date, weather with an hourly strip, and sunrise/sunset. The wallpaper rotates from a pool of photographs; an air-quality chip appears only when the air is worth mentioning.
The status strip along the top is live: Wi-Fi band and signal, network throughput up and down, CPU load with panel temperature, RAM, storage and uptime.
Input shortcuts (the small row above the dock) show only the inputs that have something plugged into them - an empty HDMI port is not listed, and appears by itself the moment you connect something. A lit chip means the device is awake right now, read over HDMI-CEC, so it is correct even while the TV is showing another input.
Editorial is what you get out of the box. There is no bar under the app icons: they sit on the wallpaper behind a gradient that keeps them readable. The clock is large and thin, the date spaced small capitals. The TV's inputs stand in a column down the left edge and the settings and info buttons in a matching one on the right, all of them the same size and resting on the same line as the app icons.
Classic is the appearance the launcher had before, panels and all. Switch between them in Settings -> Clock -> Look; nothing else changes.
Neither costs more than the other any more. Measured twice each on the set this was built on, an idle home screen reads 1.9% and 1.2% of one CPU core in Editorial against 1.5% and 1.1% in Classic, which is inside the spread between runs. Editorial used to cost about 0.8 of a percentage point more, 5.0% against 4.2%; the work in 1.4.0 and 1.4.2 took the idle cost of both down far enough that the difference no longer shows.
Folders you make yourself, plus the TV's own groups (Inputs, TV, Settings, Sharing, Help) picked up automatically. Apps can be pinned to the dock, hidden, renamed and reordered.
Press OK on the weather block for seven days, today's range, and the hour-by-hour strip. Data is Open-Meteo - no key and no account.
The location sets itself. On a first run the launcher reads the TV's own time zone, which
carries a city and a country code - Europe/Belgrade gives Belgrade, RS - and looks that up. No
geolocation service, no IP lookup, and nothing you did not already tell the television. Change it
in Settings → Weather → Location; once you do, it is never touched again.
Press OK on the status strip. Network link with latency and traffic since boot, CPU with panel temperature, RAM and swap, storage across internal/system/USB, and the TV's model, firmware and kernel.
The bottom row is the one worth watching: root active · LG updates blocked · Homebrew Channel · SSH running · startup scripts · screen saver off. Those are exactly the things a firmware boot can quietly undo.
Settings → Screen → Status strip decides how much of it shows:
| Everything | the whole strip, the default |
| Icon only | a single glyph, which still opens the system panel |
| Off | nothing in the corner, and the reading behind it, every two seconds, stops as well |
With the strip off the panel has a button of its own in the same place, since pressing OK on the strip is otherwise the only way in.
Thirteen tabs, reached from Settings → TV → Open.
Controls are not hard-coded. For every key the TV is asked whether it is a range or a list, and which values are valid right now - so Aspect Ratio drops the options this panel does not support, and nothing goes stale after a firmware update.
Advertisement tracking, Live Plus, Live Promotion, Home Promotion ("Sponsored" tiles), Limit AD Tracking, Do Not Sell My Personal Information, Smart Tips and Content Recommendation - nine switches, most of which the EU menu does not show.
Screen Saver - the one LG's menu has no item for. Also the no-signal screen saver, Energy Saving (backlight dimming), home animation, the standby light on the front of the set, LG's own wallpaper, and the power-on sound volume.
Picture Mode, Backlight, Contrast, Brightness, Colour, Sharpness, Colour Temperature and Gamma.
The header says what you are editing - "Changing for: Cinema · current input". Picture settings are stored per picture mode and per input, so the same slider has nine or more separate values on one TV. The pane tells you which one it is writing.
LED Local Dimming, Colour Adjustment, Colour Gamut, Smooth Gradation, Dynamic Tone Mapping and the rest of the advanced panel controls.
Audio Guidance with its volume, speed and pitch, high-contrast text, and greyscale.
Automatic Volume Adjustment, Dolby Atmos, eARC support, equalizer, AI Acoustic Tuning, the digital audio format (MPEG / Dolby Digital / Dolby Digital+ / HE-AAC / Automatic), and installation type - stand or wall, which changes how the TV processes sound.
SIMPLINK (HDMI-CEC) - this is why the TV jumps to the console by itself when you switch it on. 4:4:4 Pass Through per port, so you can turn full chroma on only for the port the PC is on. HDMI Deep Colour and Variable Refresh Rate.
Auto Power Off, no-operation auto off, no-signal auto off, Screen Off (picture off while the sound keeps playing) and the screen-saver standby time.
The live link with its address and whether the internet actually works, Wake on LAN, IPv6, and Phone Access.
Scans and lists networks with their security type and signal strength, connects with a password, and forgets saved networks.
Starts a search, lists what is nearby with its type and address, pairs, connects and forgets. Paired devices are listed separately from the ones merely in range.
What is on each HDMI port, whether it speaks CEC, and whether it is connected, off or awake. A device that announces itself gets its real name - a PlayStation 5 is listed as one.
Quick Start+, Home / Store Mode (leave it on Home - Store turns on the shop demo), Low Power Mode, the remote pointer with its speed and size, and Simple Mode.
Nine tabs of the launcher's own options - Clock, Date, Weather, Apps, Wallpaper, Screen, Backup, TV and About. Every setting has a hint behind the info icon next to it.
Backup exports the whole configuration as text you can paste back, and writes it to a file when root is available.
| A rooted LG TV | webOS 4 and up. Developed on webOS 10.3 (badged 25) |
| Homebrew Channel | 0.7.x, with the root service enabled |
| SSH access | For the home replacement and the startup scripts |
| A USB disk | Optional, for the wallpaper pool |
Without root the launcher still runs as an ordinary app, but TV settings, the system panel and
the home replacement all need the root service - they go through
org.webosbrew.hbchannel.service/exec.
At your own risk. Rooting can void your warranty, and a firmware update can remove root and undo the home replacement.
Which method depends on your webOS version. Start at webosbrew.org/root, which asks for your model and firmware and sends you to the right one.
This project was developed on a TV rooted with slopbro (webOS 23-25, including 10.x). Another current route is e.nya.je/getroot.
Check it worked - the Homebrew Channel should show root: true on its own home page.
If the root method did not already install it, get the .ipk from
webosbrew/webos-homebrew-channel/releases
and install it. Then open it and turn on:
- Root service - everything here depends on it
- SSH server - needed for steps 3 and onward
- Block OTA updates - optional, but a firmware update removes root
The Homebrew Channel generates its own SSH key. On the TV open Homebrew Channel → Settings → Key Server, start it, then on your computer:
# the TV shows the command and a one-time code on screen
curl -s http://<tv-ip>:9991/webos_rsa > ~/.ssh/lgtv
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/lgtv
ssh -i ~/.ssh/lgtv root@<tv-ip>Stop the key server afterwards. Find <tv-ip> in Settings → Network, or in this launcher's own
Network tab once it is running.
Three ways, easiest first.
Download io.github.devic021.openhome_*.ipk from
Releases, put it on a USB stick, and on the
TV use Homebrew Channel → App Manager → Install from file.
No Node, no webOS CLI, no SSH. Every release is built and attached automatically.
git clone https://github.com/devic021/openhome-webos.git
cd openhome-webos
npm install -g @webos-tools/cli
ares-setup-device --add tv --info "host=<tv-ip>" --info "port=9922" --info "username=prisoner"
ares-package src -o /tmp --no-minify
ares-install --device tv /tmp/io.github.devic021.openhome_*.ipkNeeds Developer Mode on the TV.
The launcher is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no build step, so files can be copied straight into place. This only works once the app is installed by (a) or (b), because copying files does not register an app with the TV.
TV=<tv-ip> ./deploy.sh alldeploy.sh checks every JavaScript file with node --check before sending anything - a file that
does not parse leaves a blank home screen, recoverable only over SSH - then reloads the page.
Coming: OpenHome has been submitted to the Homebrew Channel's app repository. Once it is merged, it installs from the Homebrew Channel on the TV itself, with no computer involved at all.
ssh -i ~/.ssh/lgtv root@<tv-ip> \
"luna-send -n 1 -f luna://com.webos.service.applicationManager/launch \
'{\"id\":\"io.github.devic021.openhome\"}' < /dev/null"Or just find it in the TV's app list.
< /dev/nullis not decoration.luna-sendperforms the call but prints nothing at all when its stdin is a pipe or a heredoc instead of a terminal. Every example here and every script inscripts/includes it for that reason.
./scripts/install-home.sh <tv-ip> # and --undo puts the stock home backThat copies two startup scripts to the TV and runs them, so the Home button works straight away
and power-on works from the next cold boot. Scripts in /var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/ are run by the
Homebrew Channel at every boot, in alphabetical order.
Two scripts are needed, and only together.
The Home button and switching the TV on take completely different paths:
HOME KEY -> sam -> launchDefaultApp -> reads the home-app setting
POWER ON -> bootd -> com.webos.app.home -> compiled in, ignores the setting
replace.sh sets the home-app setting, which covers the button. But bootd has
com.webos.app.home built into it - confirmed with strings /usr/sbin/bootd - so no setting can
ever redirect a power-on.
homestub.sh solves that differently: it bind-mounts a tiny, invisible web app over
/usr/palm/applications/com.webos.app.home. That app does one thing - launch this launcher and
close itself. Anything that asks for the stock home, bootd included, now gets this one.
webOS sometimes brings the launcher up as a window with no renderer behind it: the app is
reported as the foreground app, getForegroundAppInfo names it, and the screen stays black. It
does not resolve itself - a set left alone sat black for three minutes with one WebAppMgr
process and no renderer.
When it happens matters. Every observation of it was after a software reboot. A real cold
start, with the mains pulled and restored, came up drawing on its own: a renderer existed by the
first moment the set answered at all, 36.9 s, and the launcher was the foreground app at 39.4 s,
with the recovery below never needing to fire. So this is a recovery for a state that does
happen, not a step every power-on goes through.
The script used to restart sam here, which hid the problem by accident: that took every app
down and the set started the launcher again, and the second instance drew. It cost about ten
seconds and took every other app with it.
Relaunching this one app does the same job for less. A background loop checks whether WebAppMgr
has a renderer as well as its main process and, if the launcher is the foreground app and nothing
is being drawn, launches it again. Measured across reboots: black at 43.2 s, picture at 47.0 s,
against 48.2 s for the sam restart. If six relaunches still leave it black, sam is restarted
after all, because by then the ten seconds are worth less than a black screen.
pgrep -f cannot be used for that check. BusyBox pgrep matches its own command line, so
pgrep -f "WebAppMgr --type=renderer" answers yes even when there is no renderer, and the first
version of this check silently never fired. Verified on the set: pgrep -f "zzzz --type=zzzz"
returns a pid of its own. The count goes by process name instead.
Measured on a 65UR78003LK, from power-on:
| 2.4 s | bootd |
| 3.4 s | surface-manager |
| 7.6 s | sam |
| 30.3 s | WebAppMgr, the web engine any of this needs |
| ~38 s | the launcher is the foreground app, screen still black |
| ~43-47 s | the relaunch above, and the picture |
Most of that is the television's own firmware, before anything this project installs has run. The launcher itself paints 1.5 s after its page begins loading. Quick Start+, in LG's own settings, is the only thing that avoids the cold boot at all: it keeps standby active so switching on is a wake rather than a boot, at the cost of standby power.
What this does not cost, despite appearances. Turning Home Auto Launch off was assumed to
take webOS's boot animation with it. Tested on a 65UR78003LK by setting it back to on and
pulling the mains: no logo and no animation appeared, only LG's own home screen, at 39.40 s. A
cold start with it off had the launcher drawing at 36.90 s and in the foreground at 39.40 s. The
same wait, the same black screen, a different thing at the end of it.
There is nothing to lose because this model has no boot animation at all: com.webos.app.bootlogo
is not installed, there is no animation media anywhere on the filesystem, and general.homeAnimation
answers "There is no matched result from DB". bootd carries the code for one, and strings shows
it reading homeAutoLaunch and calling showAnimation from launchHomeFromCold, but on this set
that path has nothing to play.
What it does cost: with Home Auto Launch on, bootd launches com.webos.app.home from cold,
and at that moment the stub is not mounted yet, so that is LG's real home. It then stays: the
launcher never takes over by itself, measured still on LG's home 18 seconds later.
The three settings it changes are saved to /var/lib/webosbrew/openlauncher-boot.orig the first
time it runs, so they can be put back. install-home.sh --undo stops the watcher before it
restores them, which is the only order that works.
The launcher can keep a pool of photographs on a USB disk and rotate through them. A 4K photograph is about 1.5 MB against 2.7 GB an hour for streamed video, and it works with the internet down.
-
Format a stick and label it
OPENHOME- that is how the script finds it, so nothing has to be edited:sudo mkfs.ext4 -L OPENHOME /dev/sdX1 # ext4 keeps permissions; exfat: mkfs.exfat -n OPENHOME -
Install the mount script:
scp -i ~/.ssh/lgtv scripts/wallpapers.sh root@<tv-ip>:/var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/ ssh -i ~/.ssh/lgtv root@<tv-ip> 'chmod +x /var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/wallpapers.sh'
To pin it to one specific disk instead of any disk with that label, set
UUIDat the top of the script and it wins over the label. -
In the launcher: Settings → Wallpaper → Source → Photos, then Refresh the pool. It downloads from Wikimedia Commons at 3840 px in the background.
Copy them onto the same disk, in the top folder, as .jpg, .png or .webp. They are mounted at
/media/developer/wallpapers on the TV, so with the disk in a computer it is just the root of the
stick, and without one scp to that folder does as well.
Settings → Wallpaper → Which photos then says what the rotation uses:
| Mine and Commons | your pictures and the downloaded pool together, the default |
| Only mine | nothing but your own files, and no downloading at all |
| Only Commons | the downloaded pool, as before |
Pictures copied on while the launcher is running are picked up by Rescan in the same place, or at the next start. Nothing of yours is ever deleted: the pool only ever removes files it downloaded itself, which is why it goes by the manifest it writes rather than by what is on the disk.
A 4K photograph should be at least 3840 px wide. The screen is painted at devicePixelRatio 2, so a 1920 px picture is upscaled twice over and looks soft.
The pool keeps a manifest of what it has fetched, and only what the manifest names was ever shown or tidied up. Anything that fell out of it stayed on the disk, unusable and unnoticed: the set this was written on held 606 pictures against 200 in the manifest, 0.68 GB of 4K photographs that nothing referred to any more.
They are taken back rather than deleted. At startup every file in the folder shaped like one of our downloads but missing from the manifest is added back to it, labelled with the day it was downloaded, which its own file name carries. Settings → Wallpaper → Pictures to keep is raised to make room for them, because otherwise the next download would delete the ones just recovered.
From then on they are pruned and refreshed like any other, so the folder holds a steady number instead of gaining a generation every time the manifest is reset.
Mounted by UUID on purpose. webOS re-enumerates USB disks across a reboot, so a stick that was
/dev/sda3 one day is /dev/sdb3 the next. Anything that names the device fails with
Input/output error, which looks exactly like a corrupt disk and is not.
Settings → Wallpaper → Source → Offline plays src/access/wallpaper/loop.mp4, a 4K video
built from the photographs bundled beside it. The TV decodes it in hardware, so it costs far less
than painting 4K stills from the CPU.
That file is generated, not committed. Build it before packaging if you want it:
SECS=20 bash scripts/make-wallpaper-video.sh # one still per photo, 20s eachWithout it the offline source still works - the launcher falls back to showing the same photographs as stills. The video is an optimisation, not a requirement.
If the disk is absent the folder stays empty and the launcher falls back to its online list by itself, so a missing stick is not an error.
On some sets a changed system setting does not survive a power cycle. tweaks.sh re-applies the
ones you chose at every boot:
scp -i ~/.ssh/lgtv scripts/tweaks.sh root@<tv-ip>:/var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/
ssh -i ~/.ssh/lgtv root@<tv-ip> 'chmod +x /var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/tweaks.sh'It reads /var/lib/webosbrew/openlauncher-tvsettings.json, which the TV settings pane writes -
one JSON object per line:
{"c":"general","k":"adCookie","v":"off"}Delete a line to forget one setting; delete the file to let LG's defaults come back.
Two optional scripts, both re-applied at every boot, both removed by deleting the file.
scp -i ~/.ssh/lgtv scripts/no-preload.sh scripts/vmtune.sh root@<tv-ip>:/var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/
ssh -i ~/.ssh/lgtv root@<tv-ip> 'chmod +x /var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/no-preload.sh /var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/vmtune.sh'no-preload.sh stops webOS holding Netflix, YouTube and Amazon in memory from switch-on. On one
LM21 set that took the running apps down to the launcher and AirPlay, and available memory from
336 MB to 399 MB. AirPlay is unaffected - it starts through its own service.
vmtune.sh puts vm.swappiness back to the kernel's default of 60, which LG raises to 100.
What these do not fix. Measured on the same set afterwards, available memory was 384 MB and
the renderer still reported 92 MB. That figure is misleading: Rss counts shared pages in full,
and the breakdown is 43 MB of Chromium shared memory for 4K compositor surfaces, 26.5 MB of
libcbe.so engine code mapped into all three WebAppMgr processes, and 18 MB of actual JS heap.
Pss - the honest number, with shared pages divided - is 60 MB, of which about 31 MB is private.
There is little left to reclaim on a set like this, and most of what looks reclaimable is shared.
Load average is not a symptom here. These sets idle at 30 and above because the SoC's own
kernel threads - vdec_task*, PQ_Monitor, hdcp22_hdmi_rx_*, DMS_SetMVOP_* - sit permanently
in uninterruptible sleep waiting on hardware. It counts towards load and means nothing.
English and Serbian, switched in Settings → Clock → Language. Automatic follows the TV's own interface language, so a Serbian TV gets Serbian without anyone choosing anything.
Adding a language is one table in src/js/i18n.js and one line in I18N_LANGUAGES. Strings are
keyed by their English text, so a missing translation falls back to readable English rather
than a blank or a key name.
Two things are easy to miss when translating:
index.htmlis written in English and marked up withdata-i18n,data-i18n-titleanddata-i18n-placeholder, whichi18n.jstranslates after the document loads.- One string is drawn by CSS generated content (
#folderbar::before), wheret()cannot reach. It comes from a custom property thati18n.jssets instead.
The TV-settings half of the Serbian table is not a translation at all - both halves are LG's own wording, lifted from the settings app and its locale files, so the labels match what LG's own menu says.
Everything goes through the TV's own public Luna services. Nothing patches firmware.
| Settings | com.webos.settingsservice - getSystemSettings, getSystemSettingDesc, setSystemSettings |
| Apps | com.webos.applicationManager |
| Inputs | com.webos.service.eim |
| Wi-Fi | com.webos.service.wifi |
| Bluetooth | com.webos.service.bluetooth2 |
| Shell commands | org.webosbrew.hbchannel.service/exec |
Dimensions. Picture and sound settings are stored per picture mode × input. Pass no
dimension and the service resolves the current context itself and tells you which one it used.
Pass a field it does not expect and it answers "no result from DB" - which is why the panes send
nothing and read the answer instead.
Descriptions. getSystemSettingDesc returns each key's type, its valid values and its current
validity. That is what makes the controls adapt to the model instead of being hard-coded.
The full key list - all 838 of them, with what each accepts and LG's own name for it - is in docs/tv-settings.md, along with how it was extracted. Useful if you want to expose a setting this launcher does not.
The home screen is blank after an update.
A JavaScript file that does not parse leaves an empty page, and the only way back is SSH. The
deploy.sh in this repo runs node --check on every file before it sends anything, for exactly
this reason.
The Home button works but switching the TV on shows LG's home.
homestub.sh is missing or did not run. Check it:
ssh -i ~/.ssh/lgtv root@<tv-ip> 'mount | grep com.webos.app.home'Wallpapers stopped and the built-in loop is playing. The launcher falls back after six failed image loads. Check the disk is mounted:
ssh -i ~/.ssh/lgtv root@<tv-ip> 'mount | grep wallpapers; ls /media/developer/wallpapers | wc -l'The TV settings tab is empty. The root service is not reachable. Open the Homebrew Channel and confirm the root service is running.
A setting goes back after a reboot. That is the set, not the launcher - see Keeping settings across a reboot.
Put the stock home back first - uninstalling on its own leaves Home pointing at an app that is no longer there:
./scripts/install-home.sh <tv-ip> --undoBy hand instead:
ssh -i ~/.ssh/lgtv root@<tv-ip> '
umount /usr/palm/applications/com.webos.app.home
rm -f /var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/homestub.sh /var/lib/webosbrew/init.d/replace.sh
luna-send -n 1 -f luna://com.webos.service.applicationmanager/setDefaultApp \
"{\"category\":\"home\",\"appId\":\"com.webos.app.home\"}" < /dev/null
'install-home.sh --undo also puts back the three boot settings that homestub.sh changed, from
the copy it saved in /var/lib/webosbrew/openlauncher-boot.orig the first time it ran. Then remove
the app from the TV's own app manager or from the Homebrew Channel's App Manager.
The launcher's own Settings → About → Uninstall does all of this for you.
Built on OpenLauncher by Shantil-K, which is itself based on QwQHome by exkc. All credit for the original design and implementation goes to exkc.
The project as a whole is distributed under GPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE), following upstream. The parts do not all share one licence: code written for this project is GPL-3.0-or-later, code inherited from QwQHome keeps its original WTFNMFPL headers, and the icons, fonts and bundled photographs are Apache-2.0, OFL-1.1 and CC-BY-SA respectively.
LICENSING.md lists exactly what applies to which file. CHANGES.md records what was changed, as the GPL asks.
- Root: Homebrew Channel · slopbro · webosbrew.org
- Weather: Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0)
- Wallpaper pool: Wikimedia Commons
- Icons: Material Symbols by Google (Apache-2.0)
- Type: Plus Jakarta Sans and Manrope, both OFL-1.1
Not affiliated with LG. Everything here talks to the TV's own public services and does not patch firmware. A firmware update can remove root and undo the home replacement.