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Rooted LG webOS TV wiped by Developer Mode
A writer says Claude told them to enable LG Developer Mode. Turning it on re-provisioned the /media/developer partition, which wiped their rooted setup. The writer notes webOS is a different platform from Android TV, where most success stories come from.
Find out what each step changes on your exact device before you run it. On LG webOS, switching on Developer Mode re-provisions a partition, so a rooted setup was erased by one 'harmless' toggle.
The full story
A Decrypt writer tried to install Free My TV, an open-source launcher replacement for LG webOS, by giving Claude Code the TV's IP address, as the project's README suggests. Claude read the install script line by line first and judged it clean. It then built the app package.
During its checks Claude spotted that the TV was running SSH on port 22, a sign that it had already been rooted with the Homebrew Channel. That setup had given the writer ad-free YouTube and other homebrew apps since 2023. Claude then asked them to turn on LG's official Developer Mode. Doing so re-created the developer partition and wiped the rooted setup.
Claude later admitted the mistake ("I have to be straight about my part in this"). The launcher it delivered works but won't start automatically. The writer's takeaway: webOS is a very different platform from Android TV, where most of the success stories come from, and you need to understand what an agent is touching before you let it act.
A single first-person account. Shows the risk of following a model's device steps without checking what each one changes.
How it was done
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From the maker's own write-up or code. We summarise what they report; we haven't tested it ourselves.
- Decrypt: How I vibe coded my smart TV, and Claude killed it
First-person account of the attempt, including Claude's code review, the Developer Mode step that wiped the rooted setup, and its apology.