Today we are going to show you how to use a smartphone as a remote control for a TV. If you have a TV with a broken remote control, this method might work out perfectly for you.
How to use a smartphone as a remote control for a TV?
The first method is to use the infrared sensor
The first option we have is to use the infrared port of the phone (if it has one). To do this we need to check that if our phone has an infrared sensor. Not all phones on the market have it, for example, the iPhone is one of them, but later we will see the possibilities we have with iPhones.
In case we do not know if our phone has an infrared sensor or not, we have two options. One is to look for the model on the manufacturer’s website and check the specifications. The other method is to directly download the application we will mention below, it will recognize directly if our phone has this feature or not.
The application we are talking about is IR Universal TV Remote, which is available on Google Play for free. As we said, if our phone does not have the infrared option the application itself will inform us and it would be impossible to start the process.
If we have an infrared port on our phone, the application will ask us what type of device we want to control remotely. Among the available options, we can find DVD, Blu-Ray or soundbars among others and of course, TVs. Once the device is selected, we will be asked for its brand, we will select a name to register it and the application itself will make the connection.
From this moment on, we will see the buttons of a TV remote control on the screen. That’s it!
What if you don’t have an infrared sensor?
It is true that the infrared sensor is a feature that has been gradually disappearing from smartphones in recent years. Nevertheless, we can turn our phone into a remote control whether we have one or not.
There are applications on the market that allow devices to be connected via Wi-Fi. In order to use them, two requirements must be met: both the phone and the TV must be able to connect to the Internet and both must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
To do this we can use specific applications such as SURE Universal Remote, available for Android phones on Google Play, or you can use the applications directly brought to you by TV manufacturers. This second option will always be the best choice because the compatibility with the TV model will be perfect.
The same happens if our TV has Android TV because here we can use the Android TV Remote Control application that Google makes available to all users.
How to use an iPhone as a remote control?
To use an iPhone as remote control of our TV we will have to use the applications of manufacturers, such as LG, or third-party applications compatible with certain brands such as myTifi.
