Use a Smartphone as a Remote for Your TV, Set-Top Box or Console

If there’s one thing I hate using nowadays, it’s the ancient remote control. You’d think it would be obsolete by now, but it still lives on and won’t go away anytime soon. Thankfully, if you have a device that is fairly new (a couple of years old), then you can use your smartphone to control it. I’m talking about controlling HDTVs, streaming set-top boxes, cable boxes, game consoles and the likes. I’m simply too lazy and cheap to configure and purchase a universal remote. It works for some people, but I’ve never been able to get any universal remote to control everything, meaning I still need several remotes.
I also tried purchasing an adapter that plugs into my phone, which can control multiple IR devices, but all of them were flaky and couldn’t control all my devices. Finally, I just decided that I’m going to download an app for every device I have and control things that way. Surprisingly, this has worked out well.
In this article, I’m going to talk about the different apps you can use to control all of your different devices. Some apps are definitely better than others, but all pretty much have the same basic remote functionality.

Control HDTVs via Smartphone

If you have a cable TV box, you probably don’t use your HDTV remote other than to switch the input. If you have a smart technician come out to your house when getting cable installed, they might even be able to configure that on the cable TV remote.
Luckily, most major TV manufacturers have remote control apps for their HDTVs, which makes it easy to control the volume, change the channel and switch inputs. One major exception is Vizio. They have a SmartCast app, but it only works with a SmartCast HDTV, which they are starting to sell in 2016. It’s ridiculous they don’t have an app for controlling all of their other TVs.
Still, there are many third-party developers who have written apps to control TVs that don’t have official apps from the OEMs. I’m going to list out the different apps for some of the major brands. If you have a different TV, just search the app store for the manufacturer of your TV.