By Klaus Jakobsen, developer of A Decent Remote Before hunting for a button, spend one second on the standby light. It splits this problem into two completely different problems, and only one of them is about the remote.
| Standby light | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Lit (red, white, amber) | TV has mains power and is asleep | Keep reading, this is a remote problem |
| No light at all | TV is not getting power | Cable, socket, or power supply. No remote or app helps |
| Blinking a pattern | Usually an error code | Look up the pattern by model number, it is a fault |
Most people who land here have a lit standby light, which is good news: the television is fine and you just need a way to press its button.
Where is the power button?
Every television has one, even the sets that have no other buttons. Manufacturers hide it so it does not spoil the front, but each brand has habits:
| Brand | Typical button location |
|---|---|
| Samsung | One small jog button on the underside, dead center behind the logo |
| LG | A joystick under the center of the bottom bezel |
| Sony | Lower right rear edge: a power button with a volume rocker, or one combined button |
| Vizio | A column of buttons on the rear left edge (some models: rear right) |
| TCL and other Roku TVs | A single joystick behind the rear right corner, or center rear |
| Hisense | Underside right corner, or a joystick on the lower rear |
| Philips | A joystick on the lower rear, center or right |
| Panasonic | A button cluster on the lower left rear |
| Toshiba and Insignia (Fire TV) | Often a power-only button, which is exactly what you want here |
That last row is worth noticing. Fire TV Edition sets frequently have no volume hardware at all, but they still have power. Power is the one function manufacturers never leave off.
Run your fingers along the bottom edge first, then the rear corners. It is nearly always within the bottom-right quadrant of the set.
Tap, do not hold
The single most common mistake, and it wastes a lot of time.
On a joystick, a short press is power. Holding it often opens a menu or does nothing visible, and people conclude the button is broken when it is working fine.
On a single flat button, a short press is power and a long press usually opens a source or settings menu. If you hold it while the TV is on, many sets power off instead of doing what you wanted, which is how people end up toggling the TV repeatedly and getting frustrated.
Press briefly, then wait a full five seconds. Some sets take a moment to light the panel and you will press again too early, turning it straight back off.
The trick worth trying first: another remote
You may not need to touch the TV at all.
HDMI-CEC lets connected devices power the TV on. Turn on a games console, a Blu-ray player, a soundbar or a cable box, and the TV frequently wakes up and switches to that input by itself. Pressing the PlayStation or Xbox button on a controller does this on most setups, which makes a games controller a surprisingly good emergency TV remote.
Each manufacturer named CEC differently, which is why people switch it off without realising:
| Brand | What CEC is called |
|---|---|
| Samsung | Anynet+ |
| LG | SimpLink |
| Sony | BRAVIA Sync |
| Philips | EasyLink |
| Panasonic | VIERA Link |
| Toshiba | CE-Link or Regza Link |
| Sharp | Aquos Link |
| Vizio, Hisense, TCL | HDMI-CEC, plainly named |
The catch is that CEC has to already be enabled on both devices. If it is off, turning it on needs the TV menu you are trying to reach. So this is worth thirty seconds before you go crawling behind the set, not something to plan around.
Can my phone turn the TV on?
Sometimes, and the honest answer has a condition attached.
A phone wakes a TV by sending a signal over your network, which means the TV has to still be listening while it sleeps. That is a setting, it varies by brand, and on several brands it is off until someone turns it on. If the TV is asleep with networking disabled, no app can reach it, ours included.
So the order matters:
- Turn the TV on by hand, using the button or the CEC trick above
- Enable the networked-standby setting for your brand, which is the one-time step
- From then on your phone is the power button
The per-brand setting names, and what to do when wake still fails, are in TV will not turn on from the remote app. It is worth doing while the TV is on and you have the chance, because it is the difference between this being a one-off annoyance and a recurring one.
Once it is on
Pressing a hidden button behind the bezel works exactly once before it gets old. If you have no remote, the fix is to stop needing one.
Put your iPhone on the same network as the TV and open A Decent Remote. It scans and lists what it finds: Samsung, LG, Sony, Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Vizio, Hisense, Philips, Panasonic, Toshiba, Android TV, Google TV and Chromecast. Some brands show a one-time allow prompt or a PIN on screen.
Then enable the networked-standby setting while you are in there, and power stops being a crouching-behind-the-TV job.
If the standby light is dark
This is the group the first table separated out, and nothing above applies.
No standby light means the panel is not receiving mains power. Work outward from the TV: the power cable at both ends (they work loose, especially on wall-mounted sets), the socket tested with something else, then any extension lead or surge protector, which fail far more often than televisions do.
If the socket is live and the cable is seated and there is still no light, that is a power supply fault inside the set. No remote, no app and no button combination will change that, and it is worth knowing early rather than after an hour of trying.
