A free Philips TV remote app for iPhone and Android

My Universal TV Remote Control works with Philips Roku TVs and Philips Android TV / Google TV models, on both iPhone and Android. A Roku TV is found by SSDP and needs no pairing; an Android TV model shows a code to type once. Volume and channel change are free with no time limit and no card; custom layouts, voice control, casting and removing ads are a subscription.

No account and no card, and the basic controls — volume and channel change — stay free. The app does have a paid subscription for custom layouts, voice control, favourites, casting and an ad-free experience; the free tier shows ads. Control is local: on a Philips Roku TV the phone talks to the set over your Wi-Fi on port 8060, with no cloud service in between.

No — honest answer: your phone has no IR blaster for Philips TVs, so every remote app (including ours) needs the TV and phone on the same Wi-Fi network. If your Wi-Fi is down, use the physical buttons on the TV (usually under the Philips logo or on the back-right edge) to open Settings and reconnect the network, then the app takes over.

None in the US — the official Roku app instead. There is no first-party Philips remote app for a US Philips TV, because a US Philips TV is a Roku TV; the official app for it is Roku’s. Apps in the store named "Philips TV Remote" or similar are third-party — several state in their own listings that they have no connection with Philips.

Philips has put the physical control on the rear left of some sets and the rear right of others, and the how-to sources contradict each other — so treat placement as something to check on your own unit rather than a rule. The behaviour is consistent: a single press powers on, and press-and-hold powers off. Because it is a Roku TV underneath, the panel button reaches power, volume and input but not the network menu — Roku expects a remote or a phone for that. Ethernet into first-time setup is the reliable way in without either.

Repair Q&A threads for Philips Roku TVs keep returning to the same culprit: SAP, the Secondary Audio Program setting. Left on, it produces audio-only or wrong-language-audio symptoms that read like a much more serious fault. This is a recurring pattern in expert Q&A rather than a Philips-published bulletin, so weigh it accordingly. Open the audio settings and switch SAP off. If the set is stuck earlier than that — on the "Let’s get started" setup screen, another reported Philips Roku failure — a full power cycle with the plug out for a minute is the documented first move.