Home Assistant

Android TV Remote

The Android TV Remote integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more] allows you to control an Android TV and launching apps. For this to work, the Android TV device needs to have Android TV Remote Service which is pre-installed on most devices (Fire TV devices are a notable exception).

For a quick introduction on how to get started with Android TV Remote, check out this video:

Configuration

To add the Android TV Remote integration to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

Android TV Remote can be auto-discovered by Home Assistant. If an instance was found, it will be shown as Discovered. You can then set it up right away.

Media player

This integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more] adds a media_player with basic playback and volume controls. The media player provides volume information and display name of current active app on the Android TV. Due to API limitations, the integration will not display the playback status. It is recommended to use this integration together with Google Cast integration. Two media players can be combined into one using the Universal Media Player integration. See Using with Google Cast section for more details.

Using the media_player.play_media service, you can launch applications via Deep Links and switch channels. Only url and channel media types are supported.

Launching apps

You can pass any URL to the device. Using Deep Links, you can launch some applications.

Examples of some Deep Links for popular applications:

App URL
YouTube https://www.youtube.com or vnd.youtube:// or vnd.youtube.launch://
Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title or netflix://
Prime Video https://app.primevideo.com
Disney+ https://www.disneyplus.com
Plex plex://

Examples:

# Launch the Netflix app
service: media_player.play_media
data:
  media_content_type: url
  media_content_id: https://www.netflix.com/title
target:
  entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv

# Open a specific YouTube video:
service: media_player.play_media
data:
  media_content_type: url
  media_content_id: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
target:
  entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv

Switch channels

You can pass the channel number to switch channels. The channel number must be an integer.

Example:

# Change channel to number 15:
service: media_player.play_media
data:
  media_content_type: channel
  media_content_id: 15
target:
  entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv

Using with Google Cast

Android TV Remote integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more] provides information about the power status of the device and gives you the ability to control playback. However, it does not provide information about the currently playing content (media title, duration, play/pause state, etc.). In turn, Google Cast integration does not provide reliable information about the power status of the device (e.g. on Android TV Home Screen) and does not allow to control playback in Android apps without MediaSession support. However, it can display full information about the content being played in supported apps. For convenience, you can combine two media players into one using Universal Media Player integration. Universal Media Player will automatically select the appropriate active media player entity.

Remote

The remote allows you to send key commands to your Android TV device with the remote.send_command service. The entity has the current_activity attribute that shows the current foreground app on the Android TV.

If activity is specified in remote.turn_on it will open the specified URL in the associated app. See Launching apps section.

Examples of service calls:

# Open the currently selected item on the Android TV
service: remote.send_command
data:
  command: DPAD_CENTER
target:
  entity_id: remote.living_room_tv

# Long press on the currently selected item on the Android TV
service: remote.send_command
data:
  command: DPAD_CENTER
  hold_secs: 0.5
target:
  entity_id: remote.living_room_tv

# Launch YouTube
service: remote.turn_on
data:
  activity: https://www.youtube.com
target:
  entity_id: remote.living_room_tv

# Open a specific YouTube video:
service: remote.turn_on
data:
  activity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
target:
  entity_id: remote.living_room_tv

Dashboard example

You have to manually create buttons in Lovelace to send commands to the Android TV device or launch apps on it.

Below is an example for you to start with. Many of the buttons support long press.

Screenshot Android TV Remote example

Limitations and known issues

  • The integration doesn’t work with Fire TV devices because they are missing the Android TV Remote Service. Attempts to sideload it haven’t been successful.
  • If you cannot use the Google TV mobile app or the Google Home mobile app to send commands to the device, you cannot send commands with this integration either.
  • Commands don’t work on Netflix. They don’t work from the Google TV mobile app or the Google Home mobile app either.
  • Some devices, like Xiaomi, become unavailable after they are turned off and can’t be turned on with this integration.
  • Some devices experience disconnects every 15 seconds. This is typically resolved by rebooting the Android TV device after the initial setup of the integration.
  • If you are not able to connect to the Android TV device, or are asked to pair it again and again, try force-stopping the Android TV Remote Service and clearing its storage. On the Android TV device, go to settings > Apps > Show system apps. Then, select Android TV Remote Service > Storage > Clear storage. You will have to pair again.
  • Some onscreen keyboards enabled by TV manufacturers do not support concurrent virtual and onscreen keyboard use. This presents whenever a text field is selected, such as “search” where a constant use the keyboard on your mobile device will show, preventing you from opening the onscreen keyboard to type. This can be overcome by either disabling your 3rd party keyboard and using the default Gboard keyboard or by unselecting Enable IME in the Configure page of the integration.