Skip to content

Remote

The remote entity view is a purpose-built grid remote for media devices — TVs, streaming boxes, receivers, and anything else exposed as a remote.* entity in Home Assistant.

The remote opens as a full-screen D-pad overlay with a 3-column × 4-row button grid (12 slots). The default layout is: Back / Home / Power on the top row, Prev / Play-Pause / Next for transport, Menu / Seek / Source for navigation, and Volume arc / Select / Mute along the bottom.

Tap any button to fire its action — Back, Home, Play, and the rest each send their own command. Power asks for confirmation before turning a device off (see Power).

The grid doubles as a D-pad: swipe up, down, left, or right anywhere on it to send that direction. Swipe and hold to repeat the direction for fast scrolling through menus and lists — the repeat rate is tuned per platform.

Send Select with the Select button, a long-press on Select (held select), or a forward turn of the Digital Crown.

Every slot can be reassigned in the iPhone editor. Choose from a 21-button palette (Back, Home, Menu, Select, Power, Play, Stop, Prev, Next, −10s, +10s, Shuffle, Repeat, Seek, Source, Sound, Vol arc, Vol+, Vol−, Mute, Clear). Duplicates and empty slots are allowed.

A separate Quick Actions tab lets you fire Home Assistant scripts as one-tap buttons. Each quick action gets its own label, icon, and color, and can be set to tap-to-arm / tap-again-to-fire for safety. The watch arranges them dynamically — 1 fills the screen, 2 stack wide, 3–4 become 2×2, 5–6 become 3×2, 7+ use 3 columns with the last row centered. Configure in the editor.

A second More tab holds extra commands that depend on the device — channel up/down, captions, a 10-second replay, input / keyboard text entry, and TV settings. Which buttons appear adapts to the linked media player’s capabilities.

  • Select with Crown — Forward rotation sends Select (flash overlay on the grid confirms). Reverse rotation sends Back by default; flip Reverse = Back off in the editor to use “any direction = Select” instead.
  • Arc overlay — Tap the volume button to bring up a gesture-driven arc slider. Drag to adjust, slide to the X to cancel.
  • Edge slide — Slide along the side edge of the screen for quick volume changes. Toggle this on or off and pick left or right in the iPhone editor’s Watch Input settings.
  • Mute — Tap mute to silence. It remembers the previous volume and restores it when you unmute.

Turning a device off asks for confirmation: tap Power once to arm it (the button shows “Off?”), then tap again within 3 seconds to confirm. Turning a device on is a single tap — no confirmation, since turning on is harmless.