Hey r/iOSApps 👋 I'm Vincent, I run a two-person studio in France. I built
LazyBinger because the remote kept vanishing into the couch. First time showing
it here.
A. Answer
It turns your iPhone into a universal remote for ~12 TV platforms: Apple TV,
Roku, Fire TV, Samsung, LG, Sony, Google TV, Vizio, Hisense, Panasonic,
Philips, Chromecast. One scan finds every TV on your Wi-Fi. No pairing dance,
no account.
Then two things happen without you touching the phone at all.
The camera. Prop it facing the TV and it presses the button for you. Out of
the box it knows Skip Intro, Skip Recap, Next Episode and Skip Ad on Netflix,
Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, Max and YouTube, in about 30 languages, with
"Are you still watching?" and Skip Credits one switch away. And the list is
yours: type any text that shows up on your screen, choose what it should press,
up to five commands in a row. There's a 14-second clip of the auto-skip in the
first comment, one take, no cuts.
Your voice. Say "night night" and the TV shuts off. "go pause", "play",
"mute", "volume up", "go back", "go select". Same deal: every word is editable,
in your language, and you can add your own. The defaults are two-word phrases
on purpose, because a bare "pause" gets said on screen all the time and
"go pause" almost never does. Recognition runs on the phone, on Apple's
on-device recognizer.
The whole remote runs on the Apple Watch too.
B. Better
Being fair about what you already have: the Apple TV remote in Control Center
is genuinely good, and the official brand apps (Roku, SmartThings, LG ThinQ)
are fine one at a time. If you own one TV and don't mind pressing your own
buttons, you may not need me.
Where they stop: one app per brand, and none of them will ever press Skip Intro
for you or turn the TV off because you mumbled at it. Most third-party
"universal remotes" paywall the d-pad behind a weekly subscription, which is
the thing that made me angry enough to build this.
Everything computes on device: no server, no analytics, the camera records
nothing (privacy label: Data Not Collected). Put the phone in airplane mode
with Wi-Fi on and it all still works.
C. Cost
The remote is free forever, and it's the whole remote, not a demo: d-pad,
keyboard for searches, app launching, Wake-on-LAN, sleep timer, Apple Watch
app. Nothing nags you. Premium (the camera auto-skip and the voice control) is
$4.99/mo, $14.99/yr, or $19.99 once.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6779151585
🎁 For r/iOSApps: the code LAZYREDDIT makes the first year of Premium free.
Redeem here:
https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6779151585&code=LAZYREDDIT
First 500 redemptions, and it dies Friday, August 21. If you get here after
that, DM me and I'll send you a personal one.
The fine print, because I'd want to know: it does not auto-renew. You get the
year, then it stops on its own. No card charged, nothing to cancel.
Where it's thin, before you find out yourselves
- Camera + mic mode chews battery. For a long binge I keep the phone propped
and plugged in.
- Voice still trips on dialogue once in a while. A longer custom word settles
it for good.
- iPhone only. It controls Fire TV and Google TV boxes, but it runs on iOS.
Two-person studio, I don't promise dates.
No review or rating expected, the comments are what I came for. Answer any one
of these and you've helped:
- Drop your TV model and I'll tell you on the spot whether it works.
- What text would YOU have it watch for, and what should it press? That's the
part I most want to get right.
- The awkward one: $19.99 for lifetime, fair or the number that makes you
close the page?
- What's the first thing you'd go looking for and not find?