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1. The buttons hidden on the television itself
Almost every television made in the last fifteen years has physical controls on the body of the set. Manufacturers hide them deliberately, so people assume they are not there. On most modern sets they are not a row of buttons any more but a single small joystick you can push in four directions and press in.
Run your fingers along the underside of the panel, directly below the logo. That is where the control sits on the majority of current televisions.
| Brand | Where the control is |
|---|---|
| Samsung | A single joystick under the centre of the panel, below the logo. Some models put it under the bottom-right corner, or on the rear right edge. |
| LG | A joystick directly beneath the centre of the panel, behind the logo. |
| Sony | A row of buttons on the rear right-hand side or the bottom-right underside. Newer Bravia sets often have only a power button there. |
| TCL, Hisense | Underside, bottom-right or bottom-centre. On Roku TV models it is usually a single button. |
| Philips | Rear of the set, bottom-centre or bottom-right; some models use a joystick. |
| Xiaomi | One button under the centre of the panel. |
| Vestel and the brands it builds | Underside, bottom-right. |
| Roku sticks and boxes | No power button at all. The small hole on the body is a reset pin, not a power switch. |
What the joystick does is consistent across most brands:
- Press once when the set is off — it turns on.
- Press once when the set is on — an on-screen menu appears with power, volume, channel and input.
- Push up, down, left or right — moves through that menu, or changes volume and channel directly.
- Press and hold — turns the television off.
If the joystick does nothing at all, check whether the set is in a shop or child lock mode, and whether the standby light is on. A dark standby light usually means the problem is the power supply or the wall socket, not the remote.
2. Turn the TV on with a device already plugged into it
This is the method most people never try, and it is often the fastest. HDMI carries a control channel called HDMI-CEC, which lets a connected device switch the television on and select its own input. If you own a games console or a streaming box, you may already have a working remote in your hand.
Press the button on any of these and the television should wake and switch to it:
- PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 — pressing the PS button on the controller turns the TV on, if HDMI device link is enabled.
- Xbox Series X, S and One — with HDMI-CEC switched on in the console's settings.
- Apple TV — any button on the Siri Remote.
- Chromecast with Google TV, Fire TV Stick, NVIDIA Shield — the power or home button on their own remotes.
- Most Blu-ray players and many soundbars — pressing play, or simply switching them on.
CEC has to be enabled on the television, and every manufacturer gives it a different name, which is why people fail to find it:
| Brand | What the setting is called |
|---|---|
| Samsung | Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC) |
| LG | SIMPLINK |
| Sony | BRAVIA Sync |
| Philips | EasyLink |
| Panasonic | VIERA Link |
| Sharp | Aquos Link |
| Toshiba | CE-Link / Regza Link |
| Vizio, Hisense, TCL | CEC / HDMI-CEC |
It is worth enabling it now, while you still have a way into the menus. Once it is on, a console controller is a permanent backup remote.
3. Use your phone — but know how it actually works
Phone remote apps work, but not the way most people expect, and the misunderstanding is why many of them get one-star reviews.
Your phone almost certainly cannot imitate an infrared remote. No iPhone has ever had an infrared emitter. Android phones that had one were largely discontinued around 2015 and 2016, with a handful of exceptions. So an app cannot send the same signal your old remote sent.
What a phone can do is send commands over your Wi-Fi network, directly to the television. This works properly, with no extra hardware, but it has one firm requirement: the television has to support a network remote protocol, and the phone and the TV must be on the same network.
Televisions that accept a network remote:
- Android TV and Google TV — all of them. This covers most Sony, Philips, TCL, Hisense and Xiaomi smart TVs, plus NVIDIA Shield and Chromecast with Google TV.
- Samsung — Tizen models, roughly 2016 onward.
- LG — webOS models, roughly 2014 onward.
- Roku — all Roku TVs and players, and they need no pairing at all.
Televisions that do not: any set with no network connection, and older models that predate these interfaces. For those, infrared is the only language they speak, and a replacement remote is the real answer.
A network remote needs Wi-Fi, not internet. If your broadband is down, the remote still works, because the command never leaves the house.
4. Waking a television that is completely switched off
A television in deep standby may have dropped off the network entirely, which is why a phone app sometimes finds it while it is on and loses it afterwards.
The fix is a feature called Wake-on-LAN: a small packet sent to the set's network address brings it out of standby. It has to be enabled on the television first, and again the name varies:
- LG — “Mobile TV On”, sometimes listed as “Turn on via Wi-Fi”.
- Samsung — “Power On with Mobile” or “Network Standby”.
- Android TV and Google TV — “Networked standby” or “Wake on LAN” under network settings.
- Sony — “Remote start”.
- Roku — “Fast TV start”, which keeps the set reachable.
Turn it on while you still have access to the menus. It costs a small amount of standby power and it is the difference between a phone remote that works from cold and one that only works once the TV is already on.
A smart plug is a tempting shortcut here, but it is a poor one: most televisions return to standby rather than switching on when power is restored, and cutting mains power repeatedly is not good for the set.
5. When nothing on the set responds at all
Work through these in order before assuming the television has failed:
- Look for the standby light. Lit or blinking means the set has power and the problem is input. Completely dark points at the socket, the cable or the internal power supply.
- Power-cycle it properly. Unplug the television at the wall, wait a full minute, then plug it back in. One minute matters: it lets the internal capacitors discharge and genuinely resets the board. Switching it off and on again at the socket does not do the same thing.
- Try a different socket and avoid extension leads and surge strips for the test.
- Check for a child lock or store mode. Both can disable the on-set controls completely, and a set bought second-hand or from a display floor is often still in one of them.
- Unplug every HDMI device. A faulty device holding the CEC line can stop a television responding, and this is far more common than it sounds.
If the standby light is on and the set still ignores both the joystick and every connected device, the fault is in the television, not in the remote.
6. Replacing the remote properly
If the original is gone for good, there are three real options, in order of how well they work:
- The manufacturer's own replacement. Search the model number printed on the back of the set, not the name of the television range. It will behave exactly like the original, including the buttons that open the smart platform.
- A branded universal remote. Reliable for power, volume, channel and input. The thing to know before buying: they often cannot reach the smart features or the app buttons, because those are not standard infrared commands.
- A replacement from the TV's own platform. On Android TV, Google TV and Roku, a phone can take over permanently, which is usually the cheapest answer and never gets lost down the side of the sofa.
Whichever you choose, write the model number down somewhere before you need it again. It is the single piece of information that makes every one of these options quicker.