How to type on your TV from your phone instead of the on-screen keyboard

Searching for a film with a TV remote means moving a highlight across an on-screen letter grid, one press per letter. Signing in to a streaming app is worse: an email address, a password with mixed case and symbols, and one wrong press that sends the highlight to the other side of the grid.

Your phone keyboard is far faster, and many TVs accept text sent to them over the local network. This guide explains what has to be in place first, how to send text with Remotly step by step, and where the approach stops working, so you know when the on-screen grid is still the way to go.

What needs to be in place first

Phone typing is not a separate connection. The text travels over the same Wi-Fi link as every other remote command, so everything that applies to pairing applies here too.

• The TV is on, on your network and paired. The phone and the TV must be on the same local network. If the TV never shows up, the causes are almost always on the network side: guest networks, client isolation or a missing Local Network permission on iPhone.
• The TV supports text input. In Remotly, the Keyboard tool is available on compatible TVs that get the full toolset. Android TV and Google TV devices currently get the essential remote buttons only, and a TV added through Home Assistant gets the controls the server publishes, which do not include typing.
• A text field is selected on the TV. The phone does not decide where the text goes. Move to the search box or the sign-in field first and open it, so the TV is waiting for input.
• The app on screen accepts it. Text input depends on the TV and on the app in the foreground. Some apps draw their own keyboard and ignore text sent from a phone.

Typing on the TV with Remotly

1. Open the TV from My devices and wait until its status shows Remote ready.
2. On the TV, move to the search or text field you want to fill and select it. On compatible TVs you can switch the remote to Pointer and tap the field instead of stepping through the menu with arrows.
3. Tap Keyboard below the remote. Type or paste into the field labelled Text to be written on TV. It takes up to 1,000 characters, and autocorrect and automatic capitalization are switched off, so the text is sent exactly as you typed it.
4. Tap Send text. When the TV confirms, Remotly shows that the text was sent and clears the field. The text is added at the TV's cursor; it does not replace what is already in the TV field.
5. Use Delete a character on TV to remove one character at a time, and Send Enter to TV to run a search or submit a form.

Getting sign-ins right

Passwords are where phone typing saves the most time, and where small mistakes cost the most. A few habits help.

• Check the text on the phone before sending. The TV usually hides a password behind dots, but the field in Remotly is an ordinary text field, so you can read what you typed. That also means it is visible on your screen, so mind who is looking.
• Send each field separately. Remotly does not move the TV's focus from one field to the next. Select the email field on the TV and send the address, then select the password field and send the password.
• Fix small mistakes from the phone. Delete a character on TV removes one character per tap; for a longer mistake, tap it several times or clear the field with the TV's own controls, then send again.
• Unsent text does not linger. When Remotly goes to the background, the Keyboard sheet closes and anything you had not sent is discarded, so a half-typed password is not left waiting in the app.
• The text stays between you and the TV. It goes directly from the phone to the TV and is not shared with the developer or with RevenueCat, the service that verifies subscriptions.

When typing does not work

If Remotly reports that the TV does not allow the feature or that the open application does not support it, the TV received the request and refused it. That usually means the app on screen uses its own keyboard. Try the same search from the TV's home screen or another app, or fall back to the on-screen grid with the direction pad; on compatible TVs the pointer lets you move straight to a letter instead of stepping to it with arrows.

If the TV does not respond at all, the connection has usually dropped. The Keyboard sheet closes when the connection is lost; reconnect from the TV's card, select the field on the TV again and resend.

There is one situation a phone cannot help with: before the TV is on the network. The Wi-Fi password a TV needs to join your network has to be entered on the TV itself, or the TV connected with an Ethernet cable first, because until then the phone has nothing to talk to.

Finding and pairing a TV is free. The Keyboard tool, the pointer and the remote buttons come with Remotly Pro, and the app shows what your plan includes before purchase.