How to control a Samsung TV with your iPhone

What do you need before you start?

Three things, and one of them is a model-year question worth settling before anything else. Samsung's current remote interface arrived with Tizen, so a set from roughly 2016 onwards has what a phone app needs; earlier models used older and largely undocumented interfaces that most apps no longer speak.

• A Samsung smart TV running Tizen — broadly the 2016 model year and later. If the TV's menus look like the modern Samsung interface with a horizontal launcher bar along the bottom, it is a Tizen set.
• The TV connected to your home network, by Wi-Fi or Ethernet, on the same network as the iPhone. Not a guest network, and not a second SSID the TV was never given.
• The TV switched fully on. A Samsung in standby drops off the network, and a set that is not on the network cannot be found or woken by an app.

What you explicitly do not need: a Samsung account, a SmartThings login, an HDMI cable, an infrared blaster, or an internet connection. Samsung's remote service is local, it does not check who you are, and it does not care whether the router can reach the outside world.

Connecting for the first time

Samsung televisions are among the easiest devices on a home network to find. A Tizen set advertises itself over Bonjour as _samsung-remote._tcp., which is the discovery mechanism iOS handles best, so a Samsung typically appears in a remote app's list within a second or two of the app opening — noticeably faster than brands that have to be searched for.

1. 01

   Put the iPhone on the TV's network

   If the house has separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks, or a guest SSID, pick the one the TV is on. The TV's own address is under Settings › Support › About This TV, or Network › Network Status on older menus.

2. 02

   Allow Local Network access when iOS asks

   This appears the first time the app scans. Declining it leaves the app permanently unable to see the TV, with no error to explain why — what the permission gates covers how to switch it back on if you have already said no.

3. 03

   Wait for the Samsung to appear and tap it

   The set is normally near the top of the list, because Bonjour discovery resolves it almost immediately. It shows up under the name the TV was given during setup — often something like "[TV] Samsung Q60B" rather than the room you keep it in.

4. 04

   Look at the television, not the phone

   This is the step people miss. Tizen puts an authorisation box on the TV screen and waits. Until somebody picks up the plastic remote and chooses Allow, nothing the phone sends will land.

5. 05

   Test with volume up

   Volume gives unambiguous feedback on screen. Power is a poor first test, because switching the set off takes the connection down with it and leaves you unsure what actually worked.

Underneath, that connection is two steps rather than one. The app first checks a small information endpoint the TV publishes on port 8001, which is how it confirms the set is a Tizen device and reads its model name. It then opens a WebSocket on port 8002 for the remote channel itself, and it is opening that socket that makes the prompt appear.

What is the prompt that appears on your TV?

Tizen shows an allow-or-deny box the moment an app opens a remote connection, naming the device asking for access. It is Samsung's permission model for the remote service: the television will not accept a single button press from anything that has not been approved from the TV itself, using a remote that is physically in the room.

There is no code to type. Samsung differs from LG and Android TV in that respect — a Samsung prompt is a straight yes or no, answered with the TV's own remote or the buttons on the set.

If the prompt never appears at all, the usual cause is that the television has already been told to deny this device. Tizen keeps a list of devices it has allowed and denied, and a previous refusal is remembered and applied silently — the app sees a connection that goes nowhere and has nothing to display.

Which buttons work on a Samsung TV from a phone?

Samsung's remote channel carries named key presses, and the set a general-purpose remote app exposes covers navigation, volume, playback transport and power. Tivi sends fifteen commands in total, and all fifteen work on a connected Samsung.

Playback deserves a note. Play, pause, previous and next are transport keys sent to the television, and what they do depends on what the TV is showing. Inside a streaming app they generally behave as expected; on a live broadcast or a source with no transport controls they may do nothing at all, which is the app on the TV declining them rather than the command failing to arrive.

Power is off only. A Samsung that has been switched off is no longer on the network, so there is no connection left to send a wake command down — this is a property of network remotes generally rather than something specific to Samsung.

What won't Samsung's protocol let an app do?

The absent features are worth stating plainly, because they are the ones people install a remote app specifically to get. Samsung's remote channel does not expose them to third-party software, so no app can offer them however its listing is worded.

Input switching is the one worth checking before you install anything. It is the most commonly assumed feature in this category and the most commonly absent, and if it is the reason you want a phone remote then a phone remote will not solve it.

There is one more limitation that is subtler and explains a whole class of confusion. Samsung's remote channel does not send back an acknowledgement that a key press was acted on, so an app cannot tell the difference between a command that arrived and did nothing and a command that never arrived. When a button appears to do nothing, the app genuinely does not know which of those happened — which is why "connected, but nothing happens" is a distinct problem from "cannot connect".

What if the TV doesn't appear in the list?

A Samsung that never appears has almost always failed at one of two places, and they are quick to tell apart. Because Bonjour discovery resolves Samsung sets in a second or two, a Samsung that has not appeared within about five seconds is unlikely to appear at all — unlike an LG, where waiting genuinely helps.

• Local Network access is off. The most common cause by a wide margin, and it fails silently: iOS returns no devices and no error, so the list simply stays empty every time.
• The phone and the TV are on different networks. Compare the first three numbers of each IP address. 192.168.1.x and 192.168.4.x cannot reach each other regardless of what the Wi-Fi is called.
• The TV is in standby. The light on the front means power at the socket, not a live network connection. Switch it fully on and scan again.
• The remote service is off on the TV. Look under General › External Device Manager › Device Connect Manager. Menu names have moved between model years, so search the settings rather than following an exact path.

The full ordered version, with the check for each cause and the causes that are not Samsung-specific, is in the diagnostic checklist for a TV that will not appear.

Common questions

The short version

A Samsung Tizen TV on the same Wi-Fi as an iPhone is found almost instantly, asks once on screen whether to allow the connection, and then accepts navigation, volume, playback and power off. It does not accept input switching, channel numbers or text, and it cannot be switched on.

Tivi, a universal TV remote app for iPhone from Nefarius Apps, drives Samsung Tizen and LG webOS sets end to end over the local network with no account and no cloud service in the middle. You can see how discovery and pairing work on the home page, what Tivi Pro adds if you run several televisions, and the rest of the Samsung guides here. For the groundwork that applies to every brand, start with how to use your iPhone as a TV remote.