By Klaus Jakobsen, developer of A Decent Remote The volume is blasting, the remote is gone, and the neighbors are awake. Every TV made in the last decade can be rescued two ways: the physical buttons the manufacturer hid somewhere on the cabinet, or your iPhone. The buttons get you through tonight; the phone fixes it permanently, so here is both, fastest first.
Where are the physical volume buttons on my TV?
Manufacturers hide them so they don’t spoil the front view. Locations vary by model and year, 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: no volume hardware at all |
Run your fingers along the bottom edge and the rear corners; the button is nearly always within reach of the bottom-right quadrant. Streaming sticks and boxes (Fire TV stick, Chromecast, Apple TV) have no volume hardware anywhere: for those, jump straight to the phone section.
What does a single button or joystick actually do?
Modern sets collapse the whole control panel into one nub, and it follows two conventions. A joystick moves like a tiny gamepad: left and right is volume, up and down is channel or input, pressing in is power or select. A single flat button stacks functions on press patterns: short press opens a mini menu or cycles the options, long press confirms whichever option is highlighted. The classic trap is holding when you should tap: hold too long on some sets and you power the TV off instead of raising the volume.
How do I change the volume from my iPhone instead?
Crouching behind the TV works once. The permanent fix is a remote app:
- Put your iPhone on the same Wi-Fi network as the TV.
- Open A Decent Remote: it scans the network and lists every TV it finds.
- Tap your TV. Samsung, LG, Sony, Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Vizio, Hisense, Philips, Panasonic, Toshiba, Android TV, Google TV and Chromecast are all supported. Some brands show a one-time allow prompt or PIN on the TV screen.
- Use the volume slider, mute, and everything else a remote does: d-pad, apps, keyboard, power.
A slider beats a button for volume specifically: dragging from 40 to 12 is one gesture instead of twenty-eight presses. Official brand apps (SmartThings, LG ThinQ, the Roku app) carry volume too, but you need a different one for every TV you own, which is exactly the drawer-full-of-remotes problem in app form.
If the TV never appears in the scan, that has its own checklist: why your TV doesn’t show up.
Why don’t the TV buttons control my soundbar?
Because the TV isn’t making the sound. When audio leaves over HDMI ARC or optical, the TV’s own speakers are out of the loop, and volume must be forwarded to the soundbar over HDMI-CEC. Most brands forward phone volume commands the same way, so a remote app just works. The exception we’ve measured: LG webOS refuses absolute-volume commands the moment audio routes to an external output. A Decent Remote detects that state and drops to discrete volume-up and volume-down key presses, which LG forwards fine. If a volume slider ever does nothing on an LG with a soundbar while the up and down buttons work, that’s the protocol quirk you’re seeing, not a broken app.
What if the remote just has dead batteries?
Dead batteries and a lost remote have the same fix tonight, but check the cheap thing first: point the remote at your iPhone’s front camera and hold any button. IR light is invisible to eyes but most front cameras show it as a white-purple flicker. Flicker plus an ignoring TV means the problem is the TV side or pairing; no flicker means the remote or its batteries. Either way your phone controls the TV right now, and unlike AAA batteries, it is always charged enough for one more volume press.
