How can I reprogram the TV remote’s mic and play/pause buttons to a different IR like with the volume buttons, or how can I get Siri to switch the Volume Control setting on command?
For reference I have the original/HD TV. The Sony Bravia TV (SBTV hereafter) my TV is plugged into (via HDMI ARC; but the HD TV doesn’t support ARC) is connected to the main soundbar via optical for higher quality audio, but the SBTV is unfortunately incapable of controlling the volume of sound systems through optical. Setting Volume Control to Auto will always set it to the SBTV Fixed Volume, making it so I can’t control the volume of the soundbar with the TV remote either.
There are 2 Volume Control settings I’m using, both of which are programmed from IR signals. The first of course is the volume buttons on my VIZIO soundbar’s remote, which allows me to adjust the volume from the TV remote even when I’m on the PS4 and the TV is asleep. I set up the system so that I could use the SBTV remote on TV and PS4 (not that I need it on PS4), and those devices could automatically turn on and switch the input of the SBTV …when they feel like working properly. Only the TV can turn off the SBTV though.
The problem with the SBTV remote is that its navigation buttons are clunky and uncomfortable, and it’s much larger than the TV remote. Out of the remotes I have I’d prefer to use the TV Remote as my 1 remote for the system, but I still need to change the input or disable picture (e.g. when playing music) on the SBTV sometimes. Thus I made a second Volume Control Setting for the Input and Pic Off buttons of the SBTV remote. The only downside is that I can no longer see the TV screen to change it back once I utilize it; although it is possible to still do so from memory.
As far as I can tell Siri can’t change settings with voice commands, but I can create Shortcuts on my iPad Pro and set them to voice commands on the TV. I’ve been looking into that, but the options seem to be too limited. There’s no prebuilt TV remote shortcut for Volume Control, and the others don’t help me.
I can get it to open the Settings app on the TV, open the remote app on the iPad Pro, and that’s about it. Opening the remote app doesn’t help me with a shortcut run on the TV from a voice command. There’s tons of scripting options for getting data and doing things with it, but only from the iPad Pro and not the TV.
Even if I build it for the iPad Pro and it automatically works based on the TV when run through Home, I see no option for something like Get Options, or Select [Option]. So the best I can figure is maybe making the TV take a screenshot, converting that screenshot into a dictionary, checking the information in the dictionary to determine which screen of Settings it’s in, and then having to keep the iPad Pro on so it can run a shortcut on it to bring up the virtual TV remote and have it run the appropriate gestures to control the TV through there. At that point just going from memory or activating VoiceOver is more ideal, but I was wondering if anyone in the community had any better ideas, or know of a way to make it do what I need that I don’t know about.