The iPhone and Element TV are a match made in heaven. The iPhone is a supercomputer in your pocket that can achieve monumental things, and the Element TV is a smart TV that can be controlled from anywhere. Native control for the TV is not included in the standard suite of iPhone tools.
There are a variety of apps to control your Element TV with your iPhone, but none of them are through the Element app. Element makes an app for Android, so you’ll have to download a universal app onto your iPhone. You can begin looking for one to know what you need to control your remote. Read on to decide which app is the best.
Controlling Your Element TV Outside the Element App
If you search for the Element remote app in the AppStore, you will actually find a few results labeled with the brand name Element, but none of them are made by Element! Don’t be fooled. These are just regular universal remote apps that use Element’s brand name as a marketing tactic, but they’re all poorly functioning apps.
If you have a handheld universal remote that isn’t on your smartphone, you control your TV with an infrared beam that shoots to the TV. The problem with this is that you have to be in the line of site to control your TV with the remote.
Your iPhone does not contain a way to control your TV via an infrared sensor. You can purchase a secondary device, such as the Apple AV adapter with an HDMI cable, and insert it into the lightning charging port on your iPhone and utilize the remote that way.
This is not the simplest method. Instead, it is recommended to control your TV via a WiFi connection.
Use WiFi, Not Infrared
When connecting your Element TV for the first time, you have to connect it to a WiFi network. This will enable you to control your TV over the WiFi network with a compatible device and app. The benefit of doing this is threefold.
First, you don’t have to purchase a secondary device and keep it connected to your phone. That would be an inconvenience you likely aren’t willing to undertake for an extended time.
Second, you will be able to control your TV from anywhere you have the WiFi network setup. If you are utilizing a mesh network, your entire home and even the surrounding yards will likely be an area where you can control your TV. Any room of the house… use that power wisely.
Finally, the number of apps available for Android and iPhone is not designed specifically for televisions. IR blasters can control a wide variety of devices, and the app must be able to accommodate all of them.
Finding The Right App For You
Once you have decided whether to use IR or WiFi, you now have to go on the hunt for the right app. To reiterate – do NOT download an Element app from the AppStore. They are not made by Element but instead 3rd party programmers, and all of them have poor reviews and functionality.
If you are looking to find the right IR blaster remote, only a few will work. The best-recommended app is the Smart IR Remote app. This app not only works with IR blasters but also works as a WiFi remote as well. So no matter how you would like to control your Element TV, you’ll find that the Smart IR Remote app works well.
This app can control everything from projectors to cameras and even heating and cooling systems. Smart IR Remote claims to have support for almost 1 million devices. It has specific interfaces for different TVs, so your Element TV will have its own interface customized just for it.
There are a few other apps that work well with the iPhone and other phones.
Assuming you do not need IR functionality because you’ve regarded the article’s advice, you have a much larger selection of devices available to you. The best way to sift through them is to sort by their rating, which will give you a long list of universal apps.
Pick The Sure Thing
If you have trouble choosing an app, the Sure Universal Remote App gets the highest recommendations for your Element TV. Not just because it is free (with some in-app purchases), but because it is a stellar performing app with support for many devices beyond your Element TV. It has years of good reviews and use in the AppStore, and you simply can’t go wrong.
Picking the right app is just the beginning of setting up your Element TV to work with your Sure Universal Remote, but the setup is very simple. If you run into trouble, the help files have great information you can use to help guide you.
