Setup and pairing guides

Getting a phone to drive a TV comes down to four things, and every guide in this category covers one of them: the TV has to be a smart TV with a network remote service, both devices have to be on the same local network, the phone has to be allowed to talk to that network, and most TVs want a one-time pairing handshake before they accept a single button press.

Almost every setup failure is one of those four, in that order. The permission is the most common cause and the only one iOS gives no error message for — an app denied Local Network access does not fail, it just never sees anything. The network is the second, and it is subtler than it sounds, because two devices can be on what looks like the same Wi-Fi and still be on different subnets that cannot reach each other.

Start with how to use your iPhone as a TV remote, which sets out what has to be true before anything else matters and links down to the brand-specific pages from there.