RGRemote

A local-network-only Android remote for Roku TVs and Google TV devices. No account, no cloud, no analytics — control traffic goes straight from your phone to your TV over your home LAN.

RGRemote was built and tested against a TCL Roku TV and an Onn Google TV box, but it speaks standard protocols (Roku ECP and the Android TV Remote Protocol v2), so other Roku TVs and Android/Google TV devices should work.

Showcase — A phone remote for your home TV

Navigate a Roku TV from the phone, open apps and switch mapped inputs; an isolated experimental adapter also supports Google TV pairing and control. Roku is the stable lane; Google TV’s reverse-engineered protocol remains experimental.

Explore	What the app provides
Roku	SSDP discovery and local ECP control
Google TV	mDNS discovery, PIN pairing, and TLS control
Watch flow	Mapped HDMI handoff; visible panel input is only inferred

Demo status: runtime screenshots and video are pending. The README showcase pass on 2026-10-30 inspected source at d905c76d9bce; this cloud environment has no Android SDK, emulator, or attached Android device. The checked-in Halo images are design references, not runtime screenshots. No paired TV is available here, so end-to-end control is also hardware-blocked. See the capture checklist and evidence limits.

Try it locally

JDK 17, Android SDK platform 36, an Android 8.0+ phone, and a Roku/Google TV device on the same LAN with multicast allowed. Hardware testing also requires the TV’s local-control setting and explicit pairing.

From the repository root (Windows: gradlew.bat):

./gradlew :app:assembleDebug :app:testDebugUnitTest

Features

• Roku control (stable lane): SSDP discovery, ECP commands on port 8060 — D-pad, volume, power, HDMI input switching, channel browsing with search, and app launch.
• Google TV control (experimental lane): mDNS discovery, PIN pairing with an Android Keystore-backed client certificate, TLS-encrypted key injection, volume, power, and deep-link launch.
• Keyboard text entry: type on your phone and send it to the TV's focused text field (Enter/Backspace included) on either ecosystem.
• Watch Google TV: one tap switches the paired Roku TV to the HDMI input the Onn box sits on, then hands control to the Google TV lane.
• Light & dark themes that follow the system, an adaptive two-pane layout on tablets and landscape, saved devices with duplicate merging, and offline recovery actions.

Requirements

• Android 8.0+ (minSdk 26) phone.
• Phone and TV on the same subnet with multicast allowed.
• Roku TV: Settings > System > Advanced system settings > Control by mobile apps > Network access set to Enabled or Permissive.

Getting the app

A Google Play release is planned. Until then, build from source (below) with Android Studio or the command line.

Building from source

• JDK 17, Android SDK with platform 36 (AGP 9.2, Kotlin 2.3).

./gradlew :app:assembleDebug        # Windows: gradlew.bat
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest

The debug APK lands in app/build/outputs/apk/debug/.

First-run checklist

1. Set the Roku network-access setting above.
2. Scan with the app's scan button to discover the Roku via SSDP.
3. Keep Google TV discovery running and pair with the 6-character PIN shown on the TV.
4. Map the Google TV box to its Roku HDMI port before using Watch Google TV.

How it works

• Roku is the stable control plane: SSDP discovery, ECP HTTP commands on port 8060, app launch, active-app status, volume, power, and HDMI input switching.
• Google TV is isolated behind the experimental Android TV Remote Protocol v2 adapter: mDNS discovery, Android Keystore-backed client certificate, PIN pairing flow, TLS socket framing, navigation keys, volume, power, and deep-link launch. All of it lives in google/ so a protocol break cannot affect Roku control.
• Input visibility is not automatic. The app only infers the likely TV input from Roku query/active-app when it returns a tvinput.hdmiX app id.

Honest limitations

• Roku ECP is documented by Roku, but Roku OS upgrades can restrict local control.
• The Google TV Remote v2 protocol is reverse-engineered and undocumented by Google; pairing and key injection may break on firmware updates.
• Neither protocol can prove which HDMI source is visible on the physical panel — the app infers and labels, it does not assert.
• Text entry to Google TV devices has no shift support, so letters arrive lowercase and some shifted punctuation is skipped.
• The release APK in this repo's own testing is signed with debug credentials; see docs/release-testing.md before distributing builds.

Privacy

RGRemote collects no data: no analytics, no ads, no cloud backend. Everything it remembers (saved TVs, pairings, pins) stays on your device. See PRIVACY.md.

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome. Agent-authored contributions are fine too — AGENTS.md documents the repo's engineering rules (read order, high-risk zones, verification gate) that changes are expected to respect.

Docs Map

• PROJECT_CONTEXT.md — repo scope, architecture, file map, and invariants.
• AGENTS.md — cold-start routing, high-risk zones, and local commands for coding agents.
• STATUS.md — active project status and evidence-backed capability breakdown.
• docs/ui-target.md — Roku-side visual target and Google TV separation rules.
• docs/release-testing.md — debug-signed release testing workflow and production signing warning.
• QA_CHECKLIST.md — build, visual, pairing, install, and regression checklist.

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Copyright 2026 Jonathan Gomez Aguilar.