Wi-Fi TV remote
Universal Remote
A private remote for your TV, with no account and no ads.
Most TV remote apps want an account, show ads or send usage data somewhere. Universal Remote just talks to the TV on your own Wi-Fi.
Remote support- Ownership
- A WianTribe product
- Year
- 2026
- Platform
- iPhone · Android
- Status
- In development
Overview
- Our role
- Product strategy
- UI/UX design
- Mobile engineering
- Device protocols
- Disciplines
- Application Development
- Product Engineering
- UI/UX
Universal Remote finds the TVs on the home network and gives you a D-pad, volume, power, channels and inputs on your phone. You can type with the phone's keyboard, search by voice, wake the TV and listen to its audio through your headphones.
It is a WianTribe product in active development. We designed the app and built the discovery, the TV protocols and the audio playback underneath it.
The problem
A remote that works in tests can still fail on the sofa.
Roku's documented web interface only works when a TV setting is switched to a permissive mode. In the default mode the TV refuses key presses while still answering discovery, so a remote built that way can look connected and do nothing.
Phones also have hard limits. No iPhone has an infrared blaster, so a TV that only accepts infrared cannot be controlled by any iPhone app.
How we handled it
Use the channel the TV actually honours.
Commands go over Roku's ECP-2 session, an authenticated WebSocket the TV accepts in its default mode, while discovery stays on the simpler web interface that remains readable.
Nothing leaves your network
No account, no cloud, no ads and no analytics. The app talks directly to your TVs on your own Wi-Fi.
Show what the app found
TVs whose brand is not supported yet appear in the list marked as not yet supported, instead of being hidden.
Be honest about support
Roku is the supported platform today. Samsung and LG support is experimental and labelled that way.
Universal Remote in pictures
Key capabilities
What the remote can do.
- 01
Everyday controls
D-pad, OK, back, home, volume and power for a Roku TV or player.
- 02
Channels and inputs
Open channels and switch HDMI inputs from the phone.
- 03
Type and search by voice
Use the phone's keyboard instead of the on-screen one, or hold the microphone button and say what you are looking for.
- 04
Private listening
Send the TV's audio to your headphones through the phone, and keep it playing with the screen off.
- 05
Wake your TV
Turn on a TV that supports Wi-Fi wake-up without getting up.
- 06
Add a TV by address
Type in a TV's IP address when automatic discovery cannot see it, and rename TVs to something easy to recognise.
Engineering
The details that make a remote dependable.
Most of the work is in speaking each TV's protocol exactly the way the hardware expects.
- 01
Pinned to a real handshake
The ECP-2 authentication is tested against a challenge and response captured from a real TV, so a mistake fails in automated tests rather than on someone's sofa.
- 02
Inputs need their own path
A Roku TV refuses to launch HDMI inputs over ECP-2 even though it lists them with the channels, so inputs are switched with key presses instead. This was verified on a real TV.
- 03
Two ways to find a TV
SSDP discovery finds most TVs automatically, with a subnet scan and manual IP entry for networks where discovery is blocked.
- 04
One vocabulary for every brand
The interface speaks a brand-neutral set of keys, and each TV brand has its own adapter underneath, so adding a brand does not change the screens.
Technology
Built with
- Flutter
- Dart
- Roku ECP-2
- WebSocket
- SSDP discovery
- Wake-on-LAN
- Opus audio
Need help with something similar?
These are the WianTribe services most closely connected to the work shown in Universal Remote.
- Mobile App Development
Mobile apps built around how people actually use a phone: quickly, one-handed and often while doing something else.
- Product Design
Working out how the product should behave before development turns every change into an expensive one.
Let’s talk
Got something you're trying to build?
You do not need a finished brief. Tell us what you are working on, what is not working yet and what you would like the product to do. We can take it from there.