The sometimes-problematic Roku remote disappeared for most of a week. Not dead batteries, not wedged in the couch cushions where I’d already checked â actually gone, the kind of gone where you look in the same three spots four times each and it still isn’t there. Rather than dig through a junk drawer for AAA batteries and a remote I still couldn’t find, I pulled up the Roku app on my phone, mostly just to buy time until it turned up.
It turned up eventually, days later. By then, I’d stumbled into enough of what the app actually does that going back felt like a downgrade.
How to use your phone as a Roku remote
No pairing, no shortcut buttons missed, just the app I already had open
The ever-useful Roku app’s remote function isn’t complicated, which is probably why it works. Open the app, and as long as your…