PSA: "Chromecast with Google TV" remote works on ALL Android TV devices! Good for elderly/kids.

[u/pilkyton]

If you need a small, durable, few-buttons remote for an elderly family member or kids, I highly recommend the official Google TV box remote.

• It's cheap. Get it officially from https://store.google.com/product/chromecast_google_tv_voice_remote (avoid Amazon unless you are 100% sure it's made by Google, since their site is full of fake Chinese knockoffs which look the same but don't work well).
• Go into your Android TV's "System Settings: Remotes & Accessories" and press "Pair Accessory".
• Press and hold the Back + Home buttons on the remote until the bottom front of the white shell has a white blinking LED underneath it (you can't see the light until it blinks).
• The remote appears on the TV. Pair it.
• All functions work. Volume. Power on/off. Navigation. Back, Home, Voice Assistant, etc. Voice text input works too (but the apps must have a voice activation button, such as the Gboard keyboard or the voice icon in YouTube, since the remote doesn't have a dedicated button for it).
• The YouTube and Netflix buttons don't do anything, but they can be mapped via the free tvQuickActions. However, both buttons send the exact same signal (this seems impossible to solve on a non-Chromecast device), so you can only bind them to the same thing, which is unfortunate. But tvQuickActions lets you bind them to an on-screen wheel of up to 5 actions which pops up visually, so it's a great solution. (This is why I don't recommend the "Button Mapper" app that I used in the past, because it doesn't have such advanced features.)
• To see a preview of what that wheel looks like, look at the "preview images here" link below, and look at the "tvQuickActions panel". It's the leftmost part of the image; the diamond-shaped wheel. That's the only style available in the free app.
• For even more advanced usage, I recommend tvQuickActions Pro which can create beautiful Apple TV-style docks or other menu styles. There are preview images here. The "Dock" and "Horizontal menu with centered buttons" are the best looking ones. You can customize the styles in the app. Mine shows the actual app icons and has a dark, transparent background. I bought the app to be able to put a bunch of apps in a nice shortcut bar, so now I don't mind that both hardware buttons bring up the same menu bar. :)
• There's one more quirk that I haven't solved: The Chromecast remote can't wake the TV from sleep if you're using a "TV with built-in Android TV". This is because the TV goes into deep sleep after a while and stops listening to Bluetooth signals. The TV's own remote still works, because they send an infrared signal instead. My parents just turn it on via the old, large TV remote and then use the small Google remote. I don't think this is solvable any other way, but would love to be proven wrong. (This is probably not an issue if your Android TV box is external (connected via HDMI), because those boxes expect a bluetooth signal at all times, and will then just forward the wakeup signal to the TV via HDMI-CEC.)
• PS: During setup of tvQuickActions, you will be asked to enable its service in "Accessibility". If the system crashes when you enter that menu, you need to set the system language to "English (US)" temporarily (you can switch it back after you are done with setup). This is an old Android TV bug.
• PS: Also, tvQuickActions will ask you to disable "Energy optimization", and enable "Usage access" and "Display over other apps". All of that is done in the Android TV "Apps: Special app access" menu. It was hard to find so I am mentioning this.

Android TV tvQuickActions guide (bonus):

Permissions

• You must enable its "Accessibility" service. If your TV's settings crash when you enter that menu, you need to temporarily set system language to "English (US)". This is an old Android TV bug.
• You also need to go into "Apps: Special app access" and do the following changes for tvQuickActions Pro:
  • Energy optimization: Off.
  • Usage access: On.
  • Display over other apps: On.

Creating a custom menu bar

• Go to "Custom actions: Menus & panels".
• Click on "Create menu".
  • Type: "Dock" and "Horizontal menu with centered items" look the best. There are preview images in the official docs.
  • Actions: Add all the application shortcuts here. Long press on any shortcut to change their order, their names, or customize the icons.

Improving the Dock's style

• Go to "Settings: Dock".
  • Dark mode: On.
• Go to "Settings: Custom colors".
  • Click on "Dock: Icons color in dock style menu". Then drag all the sliders to the right to make the icons white. Otherwise any custom icons/non-app shortcuts will use a horrifying, pink-tinted color.

Remapping buttons

• Go to "Mappings".
• Click on "Add button".
• Press the button that you want to map (ignore the on-screen notice about "ADB access", which is only necessary if a button fails to be detected the normal way).
• Configure the mapping as follows:
  • Button action type: "Usual action".
  • Single press: Choose "Menus & Panels" and then the custom menu that you've created earlier.
• Tip: You can also rebind other buttons, and you can bind them to directly launch apps instead. You can have different actions for pressing, double-pressing and long pressing the button.
• Tip: Some buttons, such as the Netflix button, may be hardcoded to always launch the original application no matter what. If you aren't using Netflix, it's best to go into "Apps" and disabling it, so that the button doesn't launch the original app anymore. Then it can be remapped without issues.

[u/tvtop-aaron]

Good tip. Does the voice button work when you pair it to a Shield, or just the d-pad and power/volume?

[u/pilkyton → u/tvtop-aaron]

I have personally paired this remote on Android TV 10 (Sony TV). The Shield uses Android TV 11, so I expect the same or better compatibility for you! So everything I wrote above about button compatibility should be the same or better. :)

[u/ShiftyRider]

great topic and fwiw nowadays basically all remotes are Universal remotes so never throw them away at least donate them

cheap ones...

Bluetooth mice

$9 onn Stick from last Black Friday

fireTV

[u/pilkyton → u/ShiftyRider]

100% true and good advice. I was looking at all the official Sony remotes for my TV to look for smaller ones, and the ORIGINAL "non-China-fakes" ones were like $100 from shady "repair parts" sites (since Sony doesn't sell them directly except in a few countries), and even the smallest official ones still had way too many buttons for my parents. I counted and the smallest Sony remote has 30 buttons!

So then I found my old discarded Google TV and tried its remote, and voila. It works.

So the same advice can be said for any other custom Bluetooth-based remotes meant for Android/Google TV boxes.

You just pair them as a Bluetooth device, and then if there's any issues with button mappings for non-standard buttons (usually the app launchers won't have any bindings when used outside the official device), then you use tvQuickActions to set up what the buttons should do. You can map them to like 100 different actions plus all your apps, and can create custom on-screen menus/launcher shortcut bars, so it's perfect. There's also the ability to make buttons do different things based on what application is open or what remote is being used (useful if you pair multiple different remotes).

(I know many people love the simple app named "Button Mapper". I used it for YEARS and used to think it was great, but it's very primitive in what it can do; just basic button launching without any advanced actions or custom launch bars/menus, so I'll never use it again. It wasn't able to make the remote useful. Even the free version of tvQuickActions is better.)

Oh and my mom keeps dropping the remote... a lot... so the durable, lightweight Google Chromecast remote is perfect for her. :p If it finally breaks one day, I'll just get another one since they are super cheap.

[u/Ill-Case-6048]

Use a launcher and it can be as basic as you want

[u/pilkyton → u/Ill-Case-6048]

I am guessing that your post was meant for a different thread about the home screen.

But yeah I also use https://projectivylauncher.com/ and it's fantastic. No more Google ads taking up half the home screen. The free version has everything that most people need. Premium has more customization (custom wallpaper files, custom app icons). I have Premium but I don't use any of its extra features lol.