The Good Remote

A television for someone who should not have to set one up.

The Good Remote shows a few large channel tiles and nothing else. No menus, no settings to wander into, no way to end up on a screen nobody can get back from. Everything is reachable with the four arrows and OK on an ordinary remote.

Somebody else does the setting up. A helper — a relative, a carer, a friend — opens a page on their own phone, links the television once by scanning a code on the screen, and chooses which channels appear. Changes reach the set within about a minute. They never need to be in the room again.

Built for the person in front of it.

• Large, high-contrast tiles that stay readable at double text size
• Every control reachable with a D-pad, and visibly focused when it is
• Works with TalkBack: each channel is announced as one thing, not six
• Says what is wrong in words — "This television is not connected", not an error code
• A screensaver after fifteen quiet minutes, and any button brings it back
• Can read the channel and what is on it aloud, if you turn that on

For the helper.

• Add, remove and reorder channels from a phone
• Set hours for a channel, in the television’s own time — the news in the morning, films in the evening
• See whether the set is on, what it is showing, and which channel keeps failing
• Set a new setup PIN from the phone, if the old one is forgotten — the television has to be switched on within a day to collect it

You bring your own service. The Good Remote plays what your existing subscription provides. It is a player and a remote-setup tool; it does not sell, host or supply any television content, and it comes with none.

Recent changes:
New in this version:
• More TVs: the first television is free; a subscription adds more sets to a helper account.
• The app tells you when a newer version is in the Play Store, and one press opens it.
• Easier setup on a phone, plainer messages, and fixes from testing.