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, including gamepad activity on GNOME
• 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.

If you build lg-buddy from source instead of using a release bundle, cargo now also needs a working C toolchain because the vendored libdbus runtime is compiled as part of the build.

Before You Install

Install prerequisites:

• python3-venv
• python3-pip
• zenity

Backend-specific:

• swayidle for the swayidle backend

The GNOME backend requires a compatible GNOME session with:

• GNOME Shell
• org.gnome.ScreenSaver
• org.gnome.Mutter.IdleMonitor

At runtime, GNOME support now uses a persistent in-process session-bus client for shell detection, ScreenSaver signals, and Mutter idletime polling. The GNOME monitor also observes readable Linux gamepad input devices so controller activity can keep the TV output awake even when GNOME does not count that input as desktop activity. It refreshes the watched device set when Linux reports input-device add, remove, or change events, with a periodic reconciliation scan as a fallback.

Typical package installs:

Debian/Ubuntu/Pop!_OS

sudo apt install python3-venv python3-pip zenity

Fedora

sudo dnf install python3 python3-pip python3-virtualenv zenity

Arch

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

For source builds, also install a C toolchain:

• Debian/Ubuntu/Pop!_OS: build-essential
• Fedora: gcc
• Arch: base-devel

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, idle timeout, and screen restore policy, then install the required services. System sleep/wake handling uses the default lifecycle service plus NetworkManager pre-down gate unless you opt out in config.env.

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_idle_timeout=300
screen_restore_policy=conservative
system_sleep_wake_policy=enabled

screen_restore_policy=conservative is the default. LG Buddy only restores when a matching LG Buddy marker says it previously blanked or powered off the TV.

Set screen_restore_policy=aggressive to let session wake/activity and system wake restore the TV even when no LG Buddy marker exists. This is intentionally more aggressive and can turn the TV on in cases where another device or a manual action powered it off.

marker_only is still accepted as a legacy alias for conservative.

system_sleep_wake_policy=enabled is the default. Set system_sleep_wake_policy=disabled in config.env and rerun ./install.sh if you do not want LG Buddy to control the TV around system sleep and wake.

More Help

• User guide
• Development
• Defaults and configuration
• Runtime event handler map
• Gamepad subsystem
• Contributing
• Release process

Credits

• https://github.com/chros73 for bscpylgtv
• https://github.com/JPersson77 for the original inspiration
• https://github.com/Faceless3882 for the original shell script implementation