[APP][Pro] Android TV - Take control of your TV experience

John_William_Brekke · April 16, 2026, 3:03pm

That’s just to make your own device. (Not needed) go ahead straight in your flow, go to WHEN device capabilities, choose the availability card.

Rembo038 · April 16, 2026, 3:27pm

Just tested and it works, thank you!

John_William_Brekke · April 16, 2026, 3:32pm

No problem! Happy to help!

Bisch · April 24, 2026, 4:09pm

Every time I try to add Leap S3 Pro Android TV I get taken back to the device selection screen after entering the pairing code.

Additional observations:

Scanning takes long

To rescan I have to open the Android TV App again. Adding doesn’t work a second time

Sometimes it doesn’t find my Leap S3 Pro at all

Kaspar_1 · May 3, 2026, 12:20pm

I cannot add my tv. I install the app on Homey, add the TV, het the paring code on my tv screen, enter it in the Homey app, and i get taken back to the add device screen, nothing happened. When trying again i can’t add the specific TV no more and need to delete the Android TV app from Homey and install again to retrospect. But with the exact same results.

Seems to be the same issue as @Bisch …

Edit: the device suddenly appeared. But with an error. When repairing it works, until i switch the device off, than is immediately unreachable again until I turn it back on again (using the normal remote) and repairing again…

Glukalo2 · May 15, 2026, 5:47pm

I installed the Android TV app manually from GitHub. The app detects my TCL (Google TV), and as soon as I enter the code on the screen, the message “Unknown device successfully connected” appears on the TV screen. Then nothing happens, and the Homey app displays the message “Timeout after 30000ms.” Then it switches back to entering the PIN code, and so on. It’s impossible to add the device.

Nastybaloo · June 11, 2026, 3:33am

Hello.

Is it possible to add support for the new Formuler Z12 Ultra so it can be added in homey?

Rudi_Hendrix · June 11, 2026, 6:48am

I think that won’t work as it is not running Android TV but regular Android, right?

Nastybaloo · June 11, 2026, 1:07pm

Runs the same as Z11 Pro Max, which is no problem for your app to find, and im using my Z11 Pro MAX with your app without issues.

Rudi_Hendrix · June 11, 2026, 3:04pm

It’s not my app. I just searched what OS it is using.

Nastybaloo · June 22, 2026, 1:52pm

Hmm.

So okay, I did a little bit of research on this issue with the Z12 Ultra, and here’s the results..

Picture # 1. Shows the current search results when trying to add the Z12

It finds all the cast devices you can’t use with this app, but no Z12.

Picture #2 and #3. Shows what a free random app from Play Store finds instantly upon opening the first time, and then the connected remote.

Picture #4 and #5. Shows another random and free app from Play Store and what it found instantly upon first run.

It seems to me that its NOT to do with the Formuler Z12, but this app herr in Homey, and it would be tremendously appreciated if someone could figure out how to make Homey find and add the Z12 Ultra through this app.

Oh, by the way, I actually like this app and I use it every single day to aid me and its this precis reason why I’m looking for help.

Rudi_Hendrix · June 28, 2026, 8:52am

In this case I would download the app from Github (if available) and inspect the configuration files. There must be something that clarifies why one Formuler device can be added and another cannot be added.
I don’t own a Formuler Z12, but asked Gemini: Does a Formuler Z12 run Android TV or Google TV or regular Android tailored to run on TV?
And this is the response:
The Formuler Z12 runs regular Android (AOSP) that has been custom-tailored by Formuler to work on a TV.

It does not run official Android TV or Google TV.

Instead, Formuler uses a standard mobile/tablet baseline of Android 12 and overlays it with their own proprietary, ad-free custom launcher and their dedicated IPTV platform (MYTVOnline3).

Why this distinction matters:

App Store: While it includes the Google Play Store, the device is not officially certified as an Android TV device. Because of this, certain TV-optimized apps (like official Netflix or Prime Video in full 4K) may require using Formuler’s alternative market or sideloading, though it does support Widevine L1 for high-definition streaming.
Interface: You won’t see the standard Google TV or Android TV home screen interface with Google’s forced recommendations. Instead, you get a clean, highly customizable layout designed specifically for Formuler’s hardware and remote controls.

(Note: The only exception in Formuler’s lineup that officially runs the certified Android TV operating system is the Formuler GTV).

APospeev · July 21, 2026, 5:29pm

Hi everyone!

The device kept going unavailable on me, so I dug into it with the help of Claude Code and put together a fix:

github.com/Drenso/homey-android-tv

Device silently stops updating if the app starts while the TV is unreachable (#1)

main ← pospeev:fix/reconnect-lifecycle

opened 01:46PM - 19 Jul 26 UTC

pospeev

+433 -34

## What & why If the app starts while the TV is unreachable — an app update, …a Homey reboot, or a Flow that restarts the app, at a moment when the TV happens to be off — the device is left in a state where it **reports itself as available but never updates again**. It keeps whatever power state and current app it last held, commands sent to it time out, and it does not recover when the TV comes back. Restarting the app while the TV is reachable brings it back. Because the device still shows as available, nothing in the interface suggests a problem, and Flows keep running against stale values. In the reproduction below the device reported `onoff = false` and `current_application = "YouTube"` while the TV was switched on and playing Spotify — so a "TV is off" condition would have fired throughout. ## Steps to reproduce 1. Pair the device with the TV switched on, and confirm it works: switch apps on the TV and watch `current_application` follow. 2. Make the TV **genuinely unreachable**. Cutting mains power is the reliable way. This step is the one that matters. A TV in standby is not necessarily off the network — on the TV used here, port 6466 kept re-opening for 25–40s at a time for about 13 minutes after power-off. If the app restarts during one of those windows it connects normally and the bug does not appear. Confirm from another machine that the connect really fails: ``` nc -z <tv-ip> 6466 # must fail consistently for ~2 minutes ``` 3. With the TV still unreachable, restart the app. 4. Look at the device now. It reports **available**, holding whatever state it had before — nothing has marked it unavailable, because the `close` handler was never registered. 5. Switch the TV back on and use it: change apps, play something. 6. The device **never updates again**. It reports the stale power state and stale current app indefinitely, and any command sent to it times out after 10s without ever reaching the TV — measured here by setting `volume_set` through the API while the TV sat on its home screen: `Timeout after 10000ms`, no change on the device, no reaction on the TV. 7. Restart the app with the TV reachable and it recovers: state updates resume, and the same kind of command now succeeds in tens of milliseconds instead of timing out. Left in this state for longer, the device is also seen to end up reporting unavailable. I have not established after how long, or by what path, so the signature to look for is the one above: still reporting available, with values that never change. ## Root cause `RemoteManager.start()` resolved its promise **only** on the socket `secureConnect` event — no reject, no timeout — and `drivers/remote/device.ts` did `await this.client.start()` **before** registering the `ready`/`close` handlers and the capability listeners. If the TV is unreachable when the app initialises, the connect never succeeds, so the awaited `start()` never settles and nothing below it ever runs. Everything follows from that: - no `close` handler → nothing calls `setUnavailable()`, so the device keeps reporting available - no `ready` handler → nothing calls `setAvailable()` - no client listeners → capability values freeze at their last known value - no capability listeners → commands time out after 10s, having never reached the TV The internal reconnect loop keeps running the whole time, and it *does* reconnect when the TV returns — it emits `ready` — but by then there is nothing left listening for it. The pairing certificate is persisted to the device store (`driver.ts`, on pair and on repair) and reused on every reconnect attempt — with this change the device reconnects using that same stored certificate, without re-pairing. Re-pairing restored the device because `onRepair` calls `onUninit()` and then `onInit()`, which rebuilds the client and starts a fresh connection attempt — which is what the app should be doing on its own. ## The fix **`RemoteManager`** - `start()` now **always settles** — on `secureConnect`, on a terminal `close` (the pre-existing 10s idle timeout destroys a hung connect, which emits `close`), on a synchronous `tls.connect` throw, or when `stop()` interrupts an in-flight connect. - `stop()` is terminal, and `teardownSocket()` runs before every attempt: it clears timers, resets the receive buffer, removes the previous socket's listeners and destroys it. Each attempt's handlers are bound to the socket that created them. - Single-flight guard so overlapping attempts cannot open a second socket, cleared on every terminal path. - Reconnect with bounded exponential backoff (5s, doubling to the existing 60s cap) instead of a flat 60s, reset **only** on the application-level `ready` handshake and never on `secureConnect` — a TV that rejects the stored certificate still completes the TLS handshake, so `secureConnect` alone is not evidence of a usable connection. - The idle `timeout` handler destroys the socket it was bound to, rather than whatever `this.client` happens to point at. **`drivers/remote/device.ts`** - Register the `ready`/`close` availability handlers first, then fire `client.start()` without awaiting it. - Chromecast initialisation is likewise not awaited: its `connectAsync` never settles for an unreachable TV (it self-heals through its own close → retry), so awaiting it stranded `initializeClient()` in the same scenario. ## Testing - New zero-dependency `node:test` suite (**13 tests**) against a fake TLS socket, in `test/` and wired as `npm test`: `start()` always settles (close / throw / stop), single-flight, backoff reset on `ready` rather than `secureConnect`, stale-socket handling, teardown hygiene. The directory is excluded from the packaged app bundle. - `npm run lint`, `npm run prettier-check`, `npm run build` (tsc) and `npm run validate` (`--level=verified`) all pass. - **Verified on real hardware** (Homey Pro mini, firmware 13.3.0, Node v24.16.0) by running the reproduction above against both builds, on the same TV, with the outcome predicted in advance: | | before | after | |---|---|---| | app restarted, TV unplugged | `available: true`, state frozen, reported the TV as off while it was on | `available: false`, "This device is currently unavailable." | | TV powered back on | never updated again | went available on its own and resumed reporting the live `current_application`, with no user action and no re-pair | - Run on the two TVs available to me (a Xiaomi and an older Philips) for more than a week, across many TV power-off cycles and Homey reboots: the device reconnects reliably every time, with no user action and no re-pair. It also recovered on its own after each of them silently dropped off Wi-Fi and rejoined. ## Disclosure The investigation, the fix and the tests here were done with Claude Code (it is also listed as co-author on the commit). The behaviour above is not a model's assertion, though: I reproduced the fault and confirmed the fix by hand on real hardware, taking the measurements in the table above from the running Homey.

In my case the trigger was a Flow I have that restarts Homey every night, if the TV happened to be off at that moment, the device never came back. I’ve been running the fix for over two weeks now without having to re-pair once: the device becomes available on its own as soon as the TV is back on the local network, and the connection is a lot more stable overall.

It may well fix the reconnect / device-unavailable problems others have reported in this thread too, though I can’t confirm that, it would be good to hear from anyone who tries it.

Rudi_Hendrix · July 23, 2026, 6:30am

Recently I bought a Xiaomi TV with Google TV on it and I also see the TV being unavailable after swtiching it off. After restarting this app it is available again, but sometimes even without restarting the app it is available again. It seems that it is polling and just as it polls it doesn’t respond or something like that.

It seems to be hit or miss.

Nastybaloo · August 17, 2026, 9:06am

Hi.

The Z12 runs Android12, and the Z11 runs Android11. There´s no other difference and the Z11 is found by this app, and runs perfectly. I also have a GTV and you are correct, that runs Android TV, which is different from the newer ones. And all of them are using Android TV Rem,ote Service, and on the Z12 the Remote Service is running Version 6.9.9068221247, so there should be no reason at all for Android App in Homey for not to find it.

Familia_Cuesta_Garci · August 22, 2026, 1:08pm

Hi everyone,

I’m having some trouble getting the app selection feature to work and would appreciate some guidance.

My setup:

TV: TCL 75C9K
App: Android TV (latest version)

I’ve verified that all the basic functionality works perfectly (on/off, mute, volume control, play/pause, and other standard buttons).

However, I cannot get the app selection to work at all. I created a flow with the appropriate “Then” card, selected an app from the dropdown list (e.g., Netflix or Amazon Prime), but when I trigger the flow… nothing happens. The TV simply does not switch to the requested application.

Does anyone have any ideas on why this might be happening or what I might be missing?

Thanks in advance!

Rudi_Hendrix · August 23, 2026, 1:04pm

None of the apps work? Please try some other apps as well. Opening apps through this app is somewhat hit or miss.

I use navigation to open apps

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[APP][Pro] Android TV - Take control of your TV experience

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