One of the best parts of using a smart TV is also one of its biggest drawbacks: the apps. Brands like Samsung load their TVs up with popular entertainment platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+. Samsung smart TVs also come with a decent amount of bloatware, which includes apps and software that come pre-installed. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single smart TV manufacturer that doesn’t include some type of bloatware.
Out of the box, smart TVs already have a limited amount of storage to work with. Every installed app — whether you added it yourself or it was built in from the get-go — uses up your TV’s storage, as do the operating system and other system tools. The more storage used up, the slower a smart TV may operate. Samsung’s bloatware is mostly in the form of apps that many people don’t use, like Samsung Health or other Bixby apps. Luckily, you can delete a number of these apps. All you have to do is highlight the app, press and hold the select button, and choose Remove.
Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a caveat with pre-installed Samsung apps: they have a nasty habit of reinstalling themselves after they’ve been deleted. We’ve heard cases of apps reappearing after firmware updates; we’ve also heard that certain apps are baked into the OS, so the Remove option only temporarily removes the app shortcut.
Bloatware may not always be in the form of Samsung apps and software
While some deletable bloatware may be in the form of Samsung tools, sponsored apps are another big culprit. One Samsung TV owner ran into this with Spotify. Every time the app was deleted, it would return from the dead once the TV was restarted. Still, if your smart TV is running on the sluggish side, you probably want to do something to improve its performance, even if you can’t vanquish certain bloatware sources.
To that end, we have a few suggestions: For starters, if your smart TV is close enough to your router, use a wired Ethernet connection instead of Wi-Fi; this can also help to free up bandwidth for other wireless-only devices. We also recommend offloading any personally added apps that you no longer use or seldom fire up. For the most extreme cases of a laggy Samsung TV, we suggest doing a factory reset. This essentially returns your TV to its first-unboxed state, which also means you’ll need to sign into any apps that require a login.
To perform a factory reset, select Settings > All Settings > General & Privacy > Factory data reset. For older Samsung TVs, you may have to select Settings > Support > Self Diagnosis > Reset.
