The Secret Menu Your LG Smart TV Is Hiding (And How To Access It)

You might spend hours watching TV each week — rarely going a day without turning it on at least once — and yet still not know everything it's capable of. For instance, did you know that most smart TVs have a secret menu that isn't readily available with the single push of a button or by selecting a customized icon? This secret menu goes by a few different names and isn't uniform across brands or models from the same brand, though for the most part offers many of the same tools and resources for each.

Common names for the secret menu on your TV is "service menu" or "engineer menu" and that's because most of what the menu offers is related to more advanced settings that aren't typically used by everyday viewers. Instead, they're meant for repairmen, manufacturers, and people who set TVs up for commercial or professional use. That includes the television sets you might find in hospital or hotel rooms, which often have certain limited (or enhanced) capabilities that you won't find on a standard TV. However, if you know what you're doing, you can exploit some of the functions in a secret menu for more control over your TV and its settings.

LG TVs, U.S. models of which are currently built in Mexico using components manufactured around the world, are just one of the many brands that have secret service menus. Depending on the model, there may be slight variations in how you can access these advanced settings. If you own an LG smart TV and want to see its secret menu for itself, here are some of the ways you can access it.

There are several models and different generations of LG TV that are available to buy. That means how you access the secret menu on an LG TV may differ depending. In nearly all cases, you need to use the remote control that comes with the television (third party universal remotes may not work). For example, to access the service menu of some LG TV models, you go through the standard menu: Settings > All Settings > General > About This TV. Then, you press the TV name five times. If that doesn't work, you might need to use a special code by following these steps:

Open the menu.

Go to Settings.

Type in a special four-digit code. Immediately press Select/Enter/OK. It may take you a few tries, as different TVs use different four-digit codes (more than one may work). Try one of these: 1105, 8743, 0000, 0413, 1105, 1111, 3195, 7777, 8741, 8743, 8878.

Once you immediately press Select after the correct code, the service menu will open.

If none of the codes (or tapping About This TV five times) doesn't work, a third option is to simultaneously press the Power and Select (or On/Off and Enter/OK) buttons on the menu. In a more professional setting, you may be using an LG service remote, in which case you can press the specialized IN START button and enter 0412 as the password/pin to open the service menu. Sometimes, there is no way to back out of the service menu once you're in it — you'll have to turn the TV off and then on again to do so.

Secret menus typically provide detailed usage data and/or diagnostic and back end developer tools that can test apps and hardware components, among other things. They can also provide more advanced picture settings beyond what's typically available, such as white balance, color space, gamma correction, motion interpolation and smoothing, and picture size/aspect ratio. Additionally, the menu may allow you to fine-tune audio balance, speaker configurations, equalizer levels, and other sound settings. Other possible functions include modifying channel lists and broadcast settings. You may also be able to access signal strength information and factory test patterns. 

The service menu might also be used for troubleshooting and restoring a TV to true factory settings. Alternatively, you might be able to just reset specific functions or features individually to avoid having to fully restore to default settings and lose the bulk of your customization and preferences. You should always make sure you record how the settings were before fiddling with them, however, as incorrectly changing certain settings could potentially lower the performance of your TV.

LG tops SlashGear's list of the best major TV brands, but no appliance is perfect. Messing around with the secret menu when you don't know what you're doing could damage or brick your TV. Because of this, accessing secret menus might also void your warranty. There's really no reason to adjust these more advanced settings unless you understand what they do — especially if it's not your TV. One of the hidden features on your LG smart TV includes disabling "hotel mode" to access locked the HDMI inputs typically found in hotel rooms — however, doing so may violate hotel policies and result in additional fees (or worse).