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1. Sony has no single button location
Every other brand has an answer you can memorise. On an LG the control is always behind the logo; on a Samsung there are three known positions. Sony has neither. Sony's own support pages say the button may be on the side, the back, the front or the bottom depending on the model, and publish a list organised by model year. So the honest answer is not a map — it is a method.
| Model / era | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Most Bravia sets of the last several years | Underside towards the right, or on the side panel among the HDMI and USB sockets. Owners regularly describe it as a tiny square with a power icon that is very easy to miss. |
| Some W60D and W65D series | On the underside, to the right of the Sony logo. Sony documents this position explicitly for these series. |
| Some OLED and premium XR sets | On the rear left or rear right edge, very small. On slim OLED panels it can sit at the top of the side panel beside the USB sockets, which is the last place most people look. |
| Bravia sets from before 2015 (not Android TV) | A row of real buttons on the back or along the bottom edge: power, volume, channel and input. These are the only Sonys where the panel is a genuine substitute for a remote — and, as the next sections explain, also the only ones no phone can control. |
Do not trust a general answer for Sony, including this one. Find the model number on the white label on the back of the set, or in the on-screen Help section if you can still reach it, then look that exact model up on Sony's support site and read its diagram. Sony lists button positions per model year precisely because they move. Look for the small power icon; on many sets the button is a few millimetres across and unmarked except for that symbol.
2. What the button does, and what it does not
On a current Sony the button is a power switch and very little else. This is worth knowing before you spend twenty minutes pressing it in different rhythms hoping for a menu.
- One press when the set is off — the television wakes, and on a Sony this is the one action you can count on across the range.
- One press when it is on — on most current sets it goes off again, or shows a small power menu on screen. No settings menu appears.
- Settings, volume and inputs — generally not reachable on a modern Bravia, unlike the LG joystick that walks through the whole menu system.
- A long press — behaviour varies by model and on some sets forces a restart. It is not a hidden menu and not worth experimenting with.
- On a pre-2015 set with a button row — volume, channel and input all work from the panel, which makes those older televisions genuinely operable by hand.
So on a modern Sony the phone is the real route, as it is on a Roku. But unlike a Roku, you will need to see the screen once — the next section explains why, and it is the single most common reason people give up.
3. The phone path, and the code that is not six digits
Sony has shipped Android TV since 2015 and Google TV since 2021, which means the remote protocol is Google's rather than Sony's own. Google's app carries a remote, and third-party remote apps speak the same protocol. All of it runs over your own Wi-Fi, not infrared.
The first connection asks the television to show a pairing code, and there is a detail here that almost every guide gets wrong:
- The code is six characters, not six digits. It is hexadecimal, so it can contain the letters A to F. People read a letter as a number — O for zero, B for eight — type it, get refused, and conclude the app is broken. Read the characters exactly as drawn.
- The code appears on the television screen. This is the real constraint of the whole page: you can pair a Sony without a remote, but not without being able to turn it on and see its screen.
- Phone and television must be on the same Wi-Fi network. A guest network or a second access point fails silently — the app simply never finds the set.
- Once paired, the key is stored and you are not asked again. If an app keeps requesting a new code, it is failing to keep that key rather than anything being wrong with the television.
Sony televisions made before 2015 do not run Android TV and have no network remote interface at all, so no app on any phone can control them — and no phone can imitate infrared either, because no iPhone has an emitter. There is a trap here worth knowing: Sony sold “Internet TV” sets with a first-generation Google TV between 2011 and 2013. The box says Google TV but it is not the 2021 platform and has none of its remote protocol. Go by the year, not by the words on the box.
4. BRAVIA Sync and Remote start
Two settings decide whether anything other than the remote can wake the set. Turn them on while you still have a working remote; afterwards is much harder, and on a Sony you cannot reach the menus from the panel button.
- BRAVIA Sync is Sony's name for HDMI-CEC. On Google TV look under Settings → Channels & Inputs → External inputs → BRAVIA Sync settings.
- On older Android TV sets the same thing lives under Settings → Watching TV → External inputs. The path moved between versions, so check both before concluding your set lacks the feature.
- With it on, a console or a streaming stick can switch the television to itself — which turns any controller into a spare power button. Test it with the PS button on a PlayStation controller.
- For waking the set from a phone, look for the setting Sony calls Remote start in the network settings. Without it the television drops off the network in standby and the phone has nothing to reach.
Remote start costs a little more power in standby, which is the whole trade. In exchange the television stays reachable, and a phone can switch it on rather than only operate a set somebody else has already turned on.
5. On Sony the year matters more than the brand
With Samsung or LG, knowing the brand tells you the platform: Tizen and webOS respectively, each proprietary, each needing its own implementation. Sony is different. Sony runs Google's platform, and which Google platform depends entirely on when the set was made.
That splits every Sony question into three, and the answers do not resemble each other:
- Before 2015 — no network remote at all. No app can control these sets. The panel button row is the only way in, and fortunately those older models actually have one.
- 2015 to 2020 — Android TV. The phone route works, pairing is by code, and the menu paths are the older ones given above.
- 2021 onwards — Google TV. Same remote protocol, newer menus, and the settings have moved to Channels & Inputs. A remote app written for Google TV boxes works here unchanged, which is a side effect of Sony not writing its own platform.
6. Re-pairing, and the replacement trap
Sony's remotes split into infrared units and Bluetooth voice units, and the fix depends on which you have. A voice remote can lose its pairing and then look completely dead while the television is perfectly healthy.
- Re-pair through the menu, not a guessed key combination. Look under Settings → Remotes & Accessories → Remote control and use the pairing option there. Sony's button combinations differ between models, so a combination copied from a forum post for a different set will just waste five minutes.
- The model-code prefix does not tell you what you are buying. Sony remotes carry codes beginning RMF- and RMT-, and it is tempting to treat one as voice and the other as infrared. It is not reliable: the same RMF- series contains both voice units and infrared-only units, and marketplace listings for the same code contradict each other.
- So match two things, not one. The code printed on your old remote, and your television's exact model number from the label on the back. Check them against Sony's own support pages rather than a marketplace description, which is where the wrong-remote mistake usually comes from.
A universal infrared remote will cover power, volume, channel and input on a Sony, but it cannot reproduce the microphone or the assistant button, because those ride over Bluetooth rather than infrared. If those matter to you, the model number is the only safe way to buy.