webOS, also known as LG webOS, is a

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

-based multitasking

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

for

smart device A smart device is an electronic device, generally connected to other devices or networks via different wireless protocols (such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, near-field communication, Wi-Fi, NearLink, Li-Fi, or 5G) that can operate to some extent inte ...

s, such as

smart TV A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV or, rarely, CoTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features that allow users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart T ...

s, that has also been used as a

mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system used for smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on the ...

. Initially developed by Palm, Inc. (which was acquired by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

), HP made the platform

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

, at which point it became ''Open webOS.'' The

was later sold to

LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG, LG Corporation, the fourth ...

, and was made primarily a smart TV operating system for

LG televisions LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest ''chaebol'' in South ...

as a successor to

NetCast NetCast (later Smart TV, then Legacy Platform) is a discontinued Smart TV platform based on Linux, built by LG Electronics that was preinstalled on their smart TVs between 2009 and 2014. LG has signed partnerships with various companies to provide ...

. In January 2014,

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

announced that it had acquired technology patents from HP, which included all the webOS and Palm patents; LG licenses them to use in their devices. Various versions of webOS have been featured on several devices since launching in 2009, including Pre, Pixi, and

Veer The Veer is an option running play often associated with option offenses in American football, made famous at the College football, collegiate level by Bill Yeoman's Houston Cougars football, Houston Cougars. It is currently run primarily at Hi ...

smartphones A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as mult ...

TouchPad A touchpad or trackpad is a type of pointing device. Its largest component is a tactile sensor: an electronic device with a flat surface, that detects the motion and position of a user's fingers, and translates them to 2D motion, to control a Cu ...

tablet, LG's smart TVs since 2014, LG's smart refrigerators and smart projectors since 2017.

History

2009–2010: Launch by Palm

Palm launched webOS, then called Palm webOS, in January 2009 as the successor to

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...

. The first webOS device was the original

Palm Pre The Palm Pre , styled as palm prē, is a multitasking smartphone that was designed and marketed by Palm with a multi-touch screen and a sliding keyboard. The smartphone was the first to use Palm's Linux-based mobile operating system, webOS. T ...

, released by Sprint in June 2009. The Palm Pixi followed.

2010–2013: Acquisition by HP; the launch of Open webOS

In April 2010, HP acquired Palm. The acquisition of Palm was initiated while Mark Hurd was CEO, however he resigned shortly after the acquisition was completed. Later, webOS was described by new HP CEO Leo Apotheker as a key asset and motivation for the purchase. The $1.2 billion acquisition was finalized in June. HP indicated its intention to develop the webOS platform for use in multiple new products, including smartphones, tablets, and

printers Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * James Printer (1 ...

. In February 2011, HP announced that it would use webOS as the universal platform for all its devices. However, HP also made the decision that the Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, and the "Plus" revisions would not receive over-the-air updates to webOS 2.0, despite a previous commitment to an upgrade "in coming months." HP announced several webOS devices, including the

HP Veer HP Veer is a slider-style smartphone designed and developed by HP, announced on February 9, 2011. The device runs on HP webOS, is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and has a 2.6-inch screen. It was notable for its credit card-sized ...

and HP Pre 3 smartphones, running webOS 2.2, and the

HP TouchPad The HP TouchPad is a tablet computer that was developed and designed by Hewlett-Packard. The HP TouchPad was launched on July 1, 2011, in the United States; July 15 in Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany; and August 15 in Australia. On Aug ...

, a tablet computer released in July 2011 that runs webOS 3.0. In March 2011, HP announced plans for a version of webOS by the end of 2011 to run within

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, and to be installed on all HP desktop and notebook computers in 2012. Neither ever materialized, although work had begun on an x86 port around this time involving a team in

Fort Collins, Colorado Fort Collins is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality in Larimer County, Colorado, United States, and its county seat. The population was 169,810 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, an i ...

; work was scrapped later in the year. In August 2011, HP announced that it was interested in selling its Personal Systems Group, responsible for all of its consumer PC products, including webOS, and that webOS device development and production lines would be halted. It remained unclear whether HP would consider licensing webOS software to other manufacturers. When HP reduced the price of the Touchpad to $99, the existing inventory quickly sold out. The HP Pre 3 was launched in select areas of Europe, and US-based units were available only through unofficial channels (both AT&T and Verizon canceled their orders just prior to delivery after Apotheker's (HP's CEO at the time) announcement. Notably, these US Pre 3 units, having been released through unofficial channels, lacked both warranties and carried no support obligation from HP; as a result parts are nearly impossible to come by. HP announced that it would continue to issue updates for the HP Veer and

, but these updates have failed to materialize for the former, and the latter saw a final, unofficial release called "webOS CE" that contained only open-sourced components of webOS meant for what remained of the developer community rather than a conventional, user-centric update to the operating system. The last HP webOS version, 3.0.5, was released on January 12, 2012. In December 2011, after abandoning the TouchPad and the proposed sale of the HP Personal Systems Group, HP announced it would release webOS

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

in the near future under an

open-source license Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative ...

. In August 2012, code specific to the existing devices was released as ''webOS Community Edition'' (CE), with support for the existing HP hardware. Open webOS includes open source libraries designed to target a wider range of hardware. HP renamed its webOS unit as "Gram". In February 2012, HP released Isis, a new web browser for Open webOS.

Growth and decline of HP App Catalog

The HP App Catalog was an

app store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

for apps for the mobile devices running webOS. On June 6, 2009, webOS launched on the

with 18 available apps. The number of apps grew to 30 by June 17, 2009, with 1 million cumulative downloads by June 27, 2009; 30 official and 31 unofficial apps by July 13, 2009; 1,000 official apps by January 1, 2010; 4,000 official apps September 29, 2010; and 10,002 official apps on December 9, 2011. Subsequently, the number of available apps decreased because many apps were withdrawn from the App Catalog by their owners. Examples include the apps for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' and

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by the broadcasting corporation Sirius XM that is based in Oakland, California in the United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Proje ...

. After a Catalog splash screen on November 11, 2014, announcing its deprecation, the HP App Catalog servers were permanently shut down on March 15, 2015. The number of functional apps remaining at that time is unknown but was probably much lower due to the imminent abandonment of the project.

2013–2018: Acquisition by LG; open-source edition launch

On February 25, 2013, HP announced that it was selling webOS to

for use on its web-enabled

s, replacing its previous NetCast platform. Under the agreement LG Electronics owns the documentation, source code, developers and all related websites. However, HP would still hold on to patents from Palm as well as cloud-based services such as the App Catalog. In 2014, HP sold its webOS patents to Qualcomm. As well as its use as an OS for smart TVs, LG has expanded its use to various

Internet of things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

devices. As a starting point, LG showcased a LG Wearable Platform OS (webOS) smartwatch in early 2015. At CES 2017, LG announced a smart refrigerator with webOS. On March 19, 2018, LG announced an open-source edition of webOS. This edition would allow developers to download the source code for free as well as take advantage of related tools, guides, and forums on its new open source website to become more familiar with webOS and its inherent benefits as a smart device's platform. LG hopes that this will help its goal of advancing its philosophy of open platform, open partnership and open connectivity.

2019-present: webOS Auto, expansion of software

In April of 2020, LG announced that they would be expanding the webOS software to cars, known as webOS Auto. It first saw use in Kia and Hyundai SUV models, and has been used ever since, more recently in the Kia EV3. On February 24th, 2021, LG announced that they would expand the webOS software to other TV manufacturers. Among the list of TV manufacturers were RCA, Konka, and Ayonz. In addition, webOS was also backed by technology partners such as

Realtek Realtek Semiconductor Corp. () is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company situated in the Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Realtek was founded in October 1987 and subsequently listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1998. Realtek has manu ...

, Nuance, and Universal Electronics.

Features

The webOS mobile platform introduced some innovative features, such as the cards interface and the gesture navigation, that are now standard in mobile operating systems such as

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...

, and Android.

HP/Palm webOS

Multitasking interface

Navigation uses

multi-touch In computing, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a touchpad or touchscreen) to recognize the presence of more than one somatosensory system, point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CE ...

gestures A gesture is a form of nonverbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or othe ...

on the

touchscreen A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of electronic visual display, display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically l ...

. The interface uses "cards" to manage multitasking and represent apps. The user switches between running apps with a flick from left and right on the screen. Apps are closed by flicking a "card" up—and "off"—the screen. The app "cards" can be rearranged for organization. webOS 2.0 introduced 'stacks', where related cards could be "stacked" together.

Synergy

Palm referred to integration of information from many sources as "Synergy." Users can sign into multiple email accounts from different providers and integrate all of these sources into a single list. Similar capabilities pull together calendars and also

instant messages Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

and

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

text messages from multiple sources.

Over-the-air updates

The OS can be updated without docking to a PC, instead receiving OS updates over the carrier connection.

Notifications

The notification area is located on the bottom portion of the screen on phones, and on the top status bar area on tablets. On phones, when a notification comes in, it slides in from the bottom of the screen. Due to the resizable nature of the Mojo and Enyo application frameworks, the app usually resizes itself to allow unhindered use while the notification is displayed. After the notification slides away, it usually remains as an icon. The user can then tap on the icons to expand them. Notifications can then be dismissed (sliding off the screen), acted upon (tapping), or left alone.

Sync

By default, data sync uses a

cloud-based Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

approach rather than using a desktop sync client. The first version of webOS shipped with the ability to sync with Apple's iTunes software by masquerading as an Apple device, but this feature was disabled by subsequent iTunes software updates.

Third-party applications

On HP webOS, officially vetted third-party apps are accessible to be installed on the device from the HP App Catalog. As HP webOS replaced

, Palm commissioned MotionApps to code and develop an

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

called Classic, to enable backward compatibility to Palm OS apps. This operates with webOS version 1.0. Palm OS emulation was discontinued in WebOS version 2.0. MotionApps disengaged from Classic in 2010, citing HP Palm as "disruptive." Another source of

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

homebrew software Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to software produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and th ...

.Precentral (precentral.net)
Homebrew Apps
Homebrew apps are not directly supported by HP. Programs used to distribute homebrew webOS apps include webOS Quick Install (Java-based sideloader for desktop computers) and Preware (a homebrew webOS app catalog, which must be sideloaded). If software problems do occur after installing homebrew programs, "webOS Doctor" (provided by HP) can restore a phone back to factory settings and remove changes made by homebrew apps and patches.

Developer Mode

Developer mode allows for developer access of the device and is also used for digital forensic investigations. It can be accessed by typing ''webos20090606'' on the device’s keyboard, or on some devices typing ''upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart'' (a reference to the

Konami code The Konami Code (, ''Konami Komando'', "Konami command"), also commonly referred to as the Contra Code and sometimes the 30 Lives Code, is a cheat code that appears in many Konami video games, as well as some non-Konami games. The code has al ...

) on the cards view. Once in developer mode, data on the system partition can be accessed freely, even if the device was locked.

LG webOS

Smart TV features

LG has redesigned the UI of webOS, maintaining the card UI as a feature called "Simple switching" between open TV apps. The other two features promoted by the company are a simple connection (using an animated Clippy-like character called Beanbird to aid the user through setup), and simple discovery.

Platform

Underneath the

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

, webOS has much in common with mainstream

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s. Versions 1.0 to 2.1 use a patched Linux 2.6.24 kernel. The list of open-source components used by the different releases of webOS, as well as the source code of and patches applied to each component, is available at the Palm Open Source webpage. This page also serves as a reference listing of the versions of webOS that have been publicly released. In 2011, Enyo replaced Mojo, released in June 2009, as the

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...

(SDK).

Hardware

References

External links

webOS Open Source Edition (LG)webOS Developer Center

LG webOS TV Developer Center

LG webOS TV IsraelwebOS Auto Developer Center
{{Television and Home theater operating systems 2009 software ARM operating systems HP software LG Electronics Mobile Linux Mobile operating systems Palm, Inc. Smart TV Smartphone operating systems Software based on WebKit Tablet operating systems Television operating systems