I Made a Smart TV Dumber to Escape Being Tracked. Here’s How

Your smart TV is watching you. Well, not “watching” exactly, but it is keeping track of what you watch and selling that data to other companies. They also do that in reverse, showing you ads based on what you’ve viewed elsewhere. This is partly why you might search for something on Amazon, then suddenly see ads for it on your TV, phone and on other websites. 

While this tracking is an unfortunate part of the modern internet, there are ways you can minimize it when it comes to your TV. There are no good dumb consumer TVs anymore; all the best TVs are “smart” TVs, but you can make any smart TV dumber. 

Before I dive in, it’s important to understand that no manufacturer wants you to do this. Many manufacturers make a significant amount of money selling ad placement and your data, sometimes more than the profit on the TV itself. They don’t want you to disconnect their products for that reason, as well as the simple fact that most people want a connected TV. As far as the manufacturers and most people are concerned, the TV is “not working” if it’s not connected to the internet. Fortunately, you do have some options.

Unplug or disconnect (easier said than done)

The easiest way to make your TV dumber is just to disconnect it from the internet. There’s more to it than just pulling the Ethernet cable or revoking Wi-Fi privileges, though. If your TV has been connected to the internet up to this point, it will likely start giving you notifications and warnings that it can’t connect. This might be an easily dismissible pop-up, it might be every time you turn on the TV or it might get annoyingly insistent that you reconnect to the Wi-Fi — it’ll depend on the model and brand. 

You might need to fully lobotomize your TV by giving it a factory reset. This option will be buried deep in the settings. Before you do this, write down or take pictures of your picture settings, as these will also disappear. If you have a TV that uses the Google or Android interface, check out the Basic TV section below. Once the TV reboots in its factory-fresh mode and you progress through the initial setup, just tell it you don’t have internet, skipping that section entirely.

It’s worth considering that you’ll be losing more than just annoying ads and access to built-in streaming apps. You likely won’t be able to cast from your phone to the TV, get firmware updates and you definitely won’t be able to use any voice/AI assistants. You’ll have, essentially, just a monitor for whatever you connect to via HDMI. More on that in a moment, but any features beyond that likely won’t work. If you’re reading this article, you’re likely thinking, “Good!” but I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.

Also see: Why I’m Telling People to Stop Hunting for Dumb TVs 

The lack of firmware updates might not be a big issue. Most of these updates are either security patches (which won’t matter if you’re not connected to the internet anyway) or to improve the performance or stability of the various apps (which, again, you’re not using). You can also check if your TV’s manufacturer lets you download the firmware to a USB drive, which, when connected to the TV, can be used to update itself.

If you’re particularly tech savvy, there are also options you can do to block things at your internet router, like Pi-hole, or even before that, like NextDNS. While neither option is expensive, they do require some setup and technical know-how, so they’re beyond the scope of what I can get into here. However, if you want more granular control over what’s going on in your home network, including your TV, these options are worth looking into.

Going basic

Along the same lines as nuking your TV back to its fresh, out-of-the-box state is switching it to a basic TV mode. Many new models use Google or Android as their operating system, including those from TCL, Sony, Hisense and others. If you’ve already set the TV up, you can’t switch it to “dumb” mode without a factory reset. As I mentioned above, during the setup process, just choose basic TV instead of logging into your Google account. It will bring you to a simplified version of the standard Google TV interface, where you’ll have access to settings, inputs and so on. It shouldn’t have asked you to connect to the internet at all, nor, hopefully, will it ever. 

You can read a little more information on Google’s page on the topic. You can switch back to it being a smart TV at any time.

Disable certain features (dumbed down but not nuked)

If the above is too extreme, dive into your TV’s settings and disable any and all tracking features. What your TV maker calls these features varies, and they’re often creatively named to hide their actual purpose. “Personalized recommendations” sounds harmless enough, but ask yourself, how do they gather the info to make anything personalized? “Automated Content Recognition” might seem like a picture quality feature, but it’s keeping track of what you’re watching and selling that data. “Use info from TV inputs” might seem like it’s just activating the HDMI inputs, but no, it’s keeping track of what you’re watching from external sources.

While some companies are better than others about this, they all do it to some extent. Search for your TV brand and “disable tracking” to get a list of what to disable. Note this isn’t as effective as disconnecting your TV from the internet completely, but it will keep most of the TV’s smart functionality intact. A future firmware update could re-enable any of these settings or add more; it’s impossible to say.

Now what?

You’ve made your TV as dumb as possible. Now what do you do with it? Skipping streaming entirely is a reasonable, if expensive, option. The sad irony is that cable and satellite are becoming the cheaper option compared to subscribing to several streaming services, especially if you watch sports. 

Alternatively, you can still buy 4K Blu-ray players, and they’re inexpensive. Also, certain versions of the major gaming consoles have 4K Blu-ray players included. Ostensibly for copy protection reasons, all of these options will likely need to be connected to the internet as well, at least occasionally. Yep, there’s always something. 

You can also switch to free, over-the-air broadcasts. That certainly won’t reduce the number of ads you see, but at least they’ll be generic, random noise. Most likely they’ll be an ad for some prescription drug you’ve never heard of and can’t figure out what it does (if you live in the US, anyway). 

It’s worth noting that many projectors can be used without any connection to the internet, though that would likely require a rearranging of the room where your TV sits. At the very least, you’ll want heavier curtains. 

What about getting a streaming box or dongle? Well…

The problem with streaming devices

If you, like most people, still want to stream shows and movies despite having a dumb TV, you’ve got a bit of a dilemma. Most devices that offer streaming apps also track everything, some even more than TVs do. The services themselves track, too, naturally, but you probably expected that. 

There are a few options to minimize the tracking. The first is that — and as an Android guy, this pains me to say — Apple TV typically tracks way less than other options, especially Roku. There’s no perfect streaming device option when it comes to data privacy, but Apple TV is the closest while still retaining user-friendliness for the whole family. 

If you don’t want to go the Apple TV route, check your preferred streaming device to see what tracking features you can turn off. Search for the device you’re using and “privacy settings” or “disable tracking.” Like your TV, there are probably multiple settings to disable, and they might be creatively named.

In addition to covering audio and display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations around the world, including nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, medieval castles, epic 10,000-mile road trips and more.

Also, check out his books Budget Travel for Dummies and the bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines. You can follow him on Instagram and YouTube.