LG Buddy

Inspired by LGTV Companion for Windows, LG Buddy makes an LG WebOS TV behave more like a monitor for a Linux PC.

It can:

• turn the TV on at boot and wake
• turn the TV off at shutdown and before system sleep
• blank and restore the panel on desktop idle and activity
• adjust OLED pixel brightness with a small desktop dialog

LG Buddy supports GNOME and swayidle-based sessions. Official release bundles include a prebuilt lg-buddy binary, so normal installation does not require a Rust toolchain.

Before You Install

Install prerequisites:

• python3-venv
• python3-pip
• zenity

Backend-specific:

• gdbus for the GNOME monitor backend
• swayidle for the swayidle backend

Typical package installs:

Debian/Ubuntu/Pop!_OS

sudo apt install python3-venv python3-pip zenity libglib2.0-bin

Fedora

sudo dnf install python3 python3-pip python3-virtualenv zenity glib2

Arch

sudo pacman -S python python-pip python-virtualenv zenity glib2

Install

1. Download the release archive for your platform.
2. Extract it.
3. Run:

chmod +x ./install.sh
./install.sh

The installer will prompt for your TV IP, MAC address, HDMI input, idle-monitor backend, and screen restore policy, then install the required services.

On first use, you may need to accept a pairing prompt on the TV:

https://github.com/chros73/bscpylgtv/blob/master/docs/guides/first_use.md

Day to Day

LG Buddy is mostly automatic after installation.

• To change settings later, run ./configure.sh
• To check the screen monitor, run systemctl --user status LG_Buddy_screen.service
• To remove LG Buddy, run ./uninstall.sh

Advanced session restore behavior can be tuned in config.env:

screen_restore_policy=marker_only

Set screen_restore_policy=aggressive to let user-session wake/activity events restore the TV even when LG Buddy did not create the session marker. This is intentionally more aggressive and can turn the TV on in cases where another device or a manual action powered it off.

More Help

• User guide
• Development
• Release process

Credits

• https://github.com/chros73 for bscpylgtv
• https://github.com/JPersson77 for the original inspiration