How to use your iPhone as a TV remote

Can any iPhone control any TV?

Any iPhone can control a TV, but not every TV can be controlled by an iPhone. The limitation is on the television, not the phone. Every iPhone since the first one has the Wi-Fi hardware needed; what varies is whether the set on the other side of the room is listening.

The reason people expect otherwise is that plastic remotes work by infrared — a line-of-sight light pulse that any TV made since the 1980s understands. No iPhone has ever shipped with an infrared emitter. Apple has never put one in, in any model, and there is no software setting that adds one. An app on the App Store cannot send an infrared pulse, so it cannot drive a TV that only speaks infrared. Wi-Fi, infrared and Bluetooth compared goes through the three transports and what to buy if your set is one of the older ones.

What an iPhone can do instead is talk to the TV over the network both devices are already on. Smart TVs run a small remote-control service that listens for connections from the same Wi-Fi — it is how the manufacturer's own phone app works, and it is the same door a third-party app knocks on.

What your TV needs to support

A TV needs three things before a phone can control it: a network connection, a remote-control service the TV exposes on that network, and that service switched on. Most smart TVs sold since roughly 2015 have all three by default.

• A live network connection. Wi-Fi or Ethernet, either is fine, as long as it lands on the same network the phone is on. A TV that has never been through network setup will not appear to anything.
• A remote-control service. This is the part manufacturers implement differently. Samsung runs a WebSocket service, LG runs its own SSAP protocol, Roku publishes a plain HTTP interface, and Android TV uses Google's Android TV Remote protocol.
• The service enabled. Some sets ship with it off, or turn it off after a factory reset. It usually lives in the network or external-device area of the TV's settings rather than anywhere labelled "remote".

A television with no network features has none of these, and no app can add them. That includes almost every plasma and early LCD set, and it includes recent budget models sold specifically as non-smart displays. For those, the answer is a physical replacement remote or an infrared dongle that plugs into the phone — not an app on its own.

Why both devices have to be on the same Wi-Fi

A phone controls a TV by opening a direct connection to the TV's IP address, which only works if the two devices are on the same local network. There is no server in the middle relaying the command, which is what makes the whole thing fast and private — and also what makes it fail the moment the two devices end up in different places.

The catch is that "the same Wi-Fi" is not the same thing as "the same network". A guest SSID, a mesh node handing out addresses from a different range, a 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz pair configured as separate networks, or a TV plugged into Ethernet on a different segment will all produce two devices that appear to be on the same Wi-Fi and cannot reach each other. So will a VPN on the phone that captures local traffic.

This also means a phone remote is a home-network tool and nothing more. It cannot control a TV from the office, from a car, or from anywhere outside the building. Anything that offered that would need a cloud account and a server holding a permanent connection to the TV, which is a different product with a different privacy story.

Which TV brands can be controlled from an iPhone?

Each brand exposes a different remote service, announces itself on the network differently, and asks for a different kind of permission on first connection. The table below is the canonical version for this site — other articles link here rather than repeating it.

Two rows in that table need a caveat, because they are the two people get wrong most often.

Chromecast is not a remote. Casting hands a stream to the TV and lets the phone control that one playback session — play, pause, skip, volume. It cannot open the TV's menus, change the input, or drive an app the phone did not launch. A Cast device showing up in a remote app's list is a discovery result, not a promise of navigation.

Apple TV is closed on purpose. An Apple TV announces itself over Bonjour like everything else, so it turns up in scans and appears in device lists. Apple's privacy policy prevents third-party apps from driving AirPlay devices, which is a platform decision rather than an app failing. Apple's own Remote app and the remote in Control Centre are the supported route, and any third-party app claiming otherwise is describing something iOS does not permit.

What Tivi controls today

Tivi, a universal TV remote app for iPhone from Nefarius Apps, currently drives two of those platforms end to end: Samsung Tizen and LG webOS. Both support the full command set, and both are covered in detail — controlling a Samsung TV from an iPhone walks through the Samsung flow including the prompt that appears on screen.

Roku, Chromecast and Android TV devices are found and listed by the discovery scan, but no command reaches them yet — those platforms are implemented as far as discovery and no further. Apple TV and other AirPlay devices are listed and cannot be controlled by Tivi or by any other third-party app, for the reason above. DLNA renderers are not produced by the scan at all.

What a phone remote can and cannot do

A network remote covers navigation, volume and playback, and stops short of anything that needs text or a hardware path. The exact list depends on the platform, but the shape is consistent enough to state plainly.

The right-hand column is worth taking seriously before installing anything. Input switching in particular is not available — the remote protocols Samsung and LG expose to third-party software do not include a source-select command, so no app can offer it however the listing is worded. If the reason you want a phone remote is to get from HDMI 1 to HDMI 2, a phone will not solve it.

Power is the other asymmetry, and it is a network problem rather than a software one. A TV that is off has dropped off the network, so there is nothing listening for a command telling it to switch on. A Wi-Fi remote can turn a TV off and cannot turn it back on. Tivi sends power off only; getting the set going again means the button on the TV or the plastic remote, which is worth knowing before a phone app becomes the only remote in the house.

Setting up your first TV, step by step

Before starting, switch the TV on properly rather than leaving it in standby, and check the iPhone is on the home Wi-Fi rather than cellular. Both matter more than they sound: a sleeping TV drops off the network, and an iPhone that has quietly fallen back to 5G is on no local network at all.

1. 01

   Join the same network as the TV

   If the house has separate SSIDs for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, or a guest network, pick the one the TV is on. When in doubt, check the TV's network status screen for its IP address and match the first three numbers.

2. 02

   Allow local network access when iOS asks

   The first time a remote app runs, iOS shows a permission dialog. Tapping Don't Allow leaves the app permanently unable to see anything, with no error message to explain it — why remote apps need Local Network access covers what the permission does and how to turn it back on.

3. 03

   Wait for the scan to finish

   Discovery is not instant. Different brands announce themselves at different speeds, and a full pass over a home network takes several seconds. A list that is empty after two seconds is not necessarily an empty list.

4. 04

   Pick your TV and answer the prompt on screen

   What appears next depends on the brand: Samsung shows an allow-or-deny box, LG shows a PIN to type back into the phone, Android TV shows a code. Roku and Chromecast ask for nothing at all.

5. 05

   Test with volume, not power

   Volume up gives immediate, unambiguous feedback on screen. Power is a poor first test, because a TV that switches off takes the connection with it and leaves you unsure whether anything else worked.

What to do when the TV does not appear

A TV that never shows up in the list fails for one of four reasons, and they are worth checking in order of likelihood rather than in the order they occur to you. In rough order: the app was denied Local Network access, the phone and TV are on networks that only look identical, the TV is asleep rather than on, or the TV's remote service is switched off in its own settings.

The permission is first because it is both the most common and the least visible — iOS returns nothing and generates no error, so the app has nothing to display and the device list simply stays empty. The full ordered version, with the checks for each cause, is in the diagnostic checklist for a TV that will not appear.

One thing that genuinely is the fix more often than it should be: waiting. Brands announce themselves on the network at different speeds, and some are found by scanning rather than by listening, which takes longer. Giving the scan a full fifteen seconds before concluding anything is broken saves a lot of unnecessary router restarts.

Common questions

The short version

A phone remote is a network tool with a narrow, well-defined job: it navigates, adjusts volume, controls playback and switches the TV off, on a set that is powered on and on the same local network as the phone. It is not an infrared remote, it does not switch inputs, and it does not reach the house from outside it.

Within those limits it is genuinely better than the plastic remote it replaces — it does not get lost down the sofa, it does not need batteries, and it can hold every TV in the house on one screen. More guides on the parts that are the same on every brand are in the setup and pairing category, and you can see how Tivi handles discovery and pairing on the home page.