Hidden Sky remote ‘button combination’ gives you secret way to control TV that’s way better

YOUR Sky TV remote can not only control the Sky box – but your actual television too.

It’s a handy trick and worth setting up if you’ve got a spare minute.

And if you don’t like it, you can always change it back later.

Sky explains: “You can program your Sky remote to control both your Sky box and your TV.

“Use your Sky remote to turn your TV on and off, change the volume, switch input sources, and more.

“Programming your remote should take no longer than a few minutes. You’ll need to be in front of your TV and have your Sky remote at hand.”

First, you’ll need to disconnect any old remotes before your pair your current one.

You can just hold 7 and 9 down on your old remote until the light flashes four time.

Then grab your main Sky TV remote and hold 1 and 3 together on the keypad.

Then click Continue and enter the brand of TV – then choose Find it for me.

Hit Continue and find your TV brand by scrolling through the list of letters.

You’ll then be able to select the model of TV.

Once you’ve done that, press the volume buttons on the Sky Q remote to see if it changes the volume on your TV.

If that works then you’re all sorted.

But if that doesn’t work, choose No, try another until you find the right setting.

And if it’s not working properly, you can hold down 7 and 9 to reset the remote and try again from the beginning.

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FIVE OTHER SKY TRICKS YOU NEED TO KNOW

There are plenty of other genius Sky TV hacks that you might be missing out on.

First up, there’s a hidden folder filled with movies and shows you thought you’d lost.

It’s where anything deleted from your Recordings ends up.

So if you accidentally deleted a movie, regretted scrubbing it, or have a family member who wiped your favourite shows, you can restore them.

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Just go to Recordings on your Sky Planner, then choose Manage > Deleted, and select Undelete.

That’ll bring it right back into your Recordings for your viewing pleasure.

This Deleted folder also lets you permanently delete content – which is what actually frees up space.

So if you’re running low on storage space, you’ll want to head into the hidden folder and clear it out.

The second trick is a hidden TV menu that was recently revealed by an anonymous Sky employee.

“If you have Sky Q, you might not know about the hidden menu,” the Sky staffer explained.

“It has extra features, including the ability to change Wi-Fi bands.

“If you’re not able to launch one of your apps, like Netflix, and you’re getting the error message: ‘there is a problem refreshing apps’ – try this tip.”

Just press the Home button on your remote, go to Settings, but don’t press select.

Instead press “001” on the TV remote’s keypad and then hit select.

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You’ll find a hidden menu where you can refresh apps to fix bugs – or change your Wi-Fi bands.

For instance, the 5GHz band is great if you have a 5GHz Wi-Fi network on a router that’s very close to your Sky box.

And if your router is far away, you’d usually be much better off using the 2.4GHz band and network.

Third is a handy way to find your TV remote if you’ve lost it.

All you need to do is press the big Sky Q logo on the front of your TV box – yes, it’s a button.

That should cause your TV remote to beep for 30 seconds, allowing you to find it in an instant.

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Sky says it’s handy if you’re “sick of losing your remote down the back of your sofa”.

“That’s why our Sky Q touch remotes have a handy Find my remote feature to stop you turning your house upside down when you’ve lost it,” Sky explains.

Note that it won’t work if your TV remote is out of battery, lost outside your home, or isn’t paired to the box.

And the trick only works with the main Sky box – not Sky Q Mini boxes.

Fourth is an easy way to skip ads when you’re watching Sky TV.

It only works when watching recorded content, but it’s faster than manually skipping through ads.

HOW TO SEARCH WITH SKY VOICE REMOTE

Here are some easy commands to try out…

Search for specified movie – “[Movie title]”

Search for specified programme – “[Programme title]”

Search for content which stars specified actor – “[Actor name]”

Search for content directed by specified director – “[Director name]”

Search for movies within specified genre – “[Movie genre]”

Search for sport content within specified genre. Genres include football, F1, Rugby Union, Cricket, and Rugby League – “[Sport genre]”

Search specific channel – “[Channel name]”

Search for movies with a specific star rating – “[x] star movies” “movies rated [x] stars”

Search for content with specified picture format. Picture format includes SD, HD, and Ultra HD – “[Picture format]”

Search for sports, teams or competitions – “[Sport Name]”, “[Team Name]”, “[Competition Name]”

Just hit the microphone button on your Sky Q remote and say “fast-forward three minutes.”

You’ll go straight past the ads and can carry on watching your TV show.

Fifth (and finally), there’s a way to find movies that you’ve forgotten the name of.

You can just say a famous quote from a movie or TV show using voice search, and Sky will pull it right up.

Here’s a list of movies and shows that Sky says the feature works with:

• 42nd Street “Sawyer, you’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!”
• A Few Good Men “You can’t handle the truth!”
• A League Of Their Own “There’s no crying in baseball!”
• A Streetcar Named Desire “Stella! Hey, Stella!” “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
• Airplane! “Surely you can’t be serious!” “I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley.”
• All About Eve “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
• Animal Crackers “How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.”
• Annie Hall “La-dee-da, la-dee-da”
• Apocalypse Now “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
• Apollo 13 “Houston, we have a problem.” “Houston, we’ve had a problem” “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
• Auntie Mame “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!”
• Avengers: Endgame “I need three gaziliion heroes”, “I need four gazillion heroes”, “I need five gazillion heroes”, “Bring me Mjölnir”
• Beyond The Forest “What a dump.”
• Bonnie And Clyde “We rob banks.”
• Bumblebee “Show me four broken toys”
• Casablanca “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” “Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By.” “Round up the usual suspects.” “We’ll always have Paris.” “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
• Chinatown “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
• Citizen Kane “Rosebud.”
• Cool Hand Luke “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
• Dead Poets Society “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”
• Die Hard “Yippee-ki-yay”
• Die Hard “Now I have a machine gun, ho ho ho!”
• Dirty Dancing “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
• Dirty Harry “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
• Dog Day Afternoon “Attica! Attica!”
• Dr. Strangelove “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”
• Dracula “Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.”
• E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial “E.T. phone home.”
• Field Of Dreams “If you build it, he will come.” “If you build it, they
• Frankenstein “It’s alive! It’s alive!”
• Funny Girl “Hello, gorgeous.”
• Game of Thrones “winter is coming”
• Gone With The Wind “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
• Grand Hotel “I want to be alone.”
• Incredibles 2 “we need elastigirl”, “you have powers”
• Jaws “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
• Jerry Maguire “Show me the money!” “You had me at hello.”
• Jingle all the way “Jingle all the way”
• Knute Rockne All American “Tell ’em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper.”
• Lampoon’S Animal House “Toga! Toga!” “Bluto.”
• Little Caesa “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?”
• Love Actually “show me christmas favourites”
• Love Story “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
• Marathon Man “Is it safe?”
• Mary Poppins Returns “We need the world’s most famous nanny”
• Mary, Queen of Scots “Two quarrelling queens”
• Mean Girls “on Wednesday we wear pink”
• Midnight Cowboy “I’m walking here! I’m walking here!” “Ratso.”
• Mommie Dearest “No wire hangers, ever!”
• Moonstruck “Snap out of it!”
• Muppet Christmas Carol “Bah Humbug!”
• Network “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
• Now, Voyager “Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”
• On The Waterfront “You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”
• Poltergeist “They’re here!”
• Psycho “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
• Rocky “Yo, Adrian!”
• Scarface “Say ‘hello’ to my little friend!”
• Shane “Shane. Shane. Come back!”
• She Done Him Wrong “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” “Why don’t you come up and see me sometime.”
• Some Like It Hot “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
• Sons Of The Desert “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!”
• Soylent Green “Soylent Green is people!”
• Star Wars “May the Force be with you.”
• Sudden Impact “Go ahead, make my day.”
• Sunset Boulevard “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.” “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
• Taxi Driver “You talking to me?”
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day “Hasta la vista, baby.”
• The Godfather II “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
• The Graduate “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”
• The Grinch “You’re a mean one, Mr Grinch”
• The Grinch “Take me to Whoville!”
• The Jazz Singer “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”
• The Lego Movie 2 “Two worlds colliding”, “Three duplo aliens!”, “Three lego aliens!”
• The Lord Of The Rings: Two Towers “My precious.”
• The Maltese Falcon “The stuff that dreams are made of.”
• The Pride Of The Yankees “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
• The Sixth Sense “I see dead people.”
• The Terminator “I’ll be back.”
• The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre “Gold hat.”
• The Wizard Of Oz “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!”
• Titanic “I’m the king of the world!”
• Top Gun “I feel the need – the need for speed!” “Goose.”
• Wall Street “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”
• When Harry Met Sally “I’ll have what she’s having.”
• White Heat “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” “Cody.”
• Yankee Doodle Dandy “My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you.”

Keep in mind that if a movie isn’t currently available on Sky TV, it won’t appear.

CAN’T GET VOICE CONTROL TO WORK?

Here are Sky’s official tips for fixing Voice Control…

If Voice Control isn’t working, check your Sky Q remote for problems:

1. Remove the battery cover off the body of the Sky Q remote.
2. Take out the batteries and insert them again, matching the + and – signs.
3. Once the batteries are in place, replace the cover by aligning the catch with the remote body and sliding forward, so it clicks back into place.

Press help (?) on your remote to check it has battery power:

• If the LED light at the top of the remote flashes , then press and hold the Voice Control button. If you don’t see the search screen then replace the batteries, and press the Voice Control button once more.
• If the LED light at the top of the remote doesn’t flash , then check the batteries are in correctly. If they are, replace them with new batteries. Press and hold the Voice Control button, if you don’t see the search screen then pair the remote.