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I absolutely love the Skip 1S. Building a new hardware remote is hard. Making an interface to that remote that is easy to use is really hard. I know, I've tried. Please take my observations with nothing but respect for the work you've done. General: I love that you can export your remote configuration to a JSON file. This is hugely powerful, beyond troubleshooting. Everything is right there in plain text glory. With access to the configuration I could Clone an activity. I exported the remote configuration, opened it up in VSCode, copied the A activity entry, updated the Activity ID to B, reimported, and it just worked. Change the color of the devices in the activities to match between activities. Create a repo for my remote configuration in github. Now, when I (inevitably) screw up my configuration, it's safely versioned. The developers have been amazingly responsive to forum users. It feels very much like when I was part of the JP-1 community. The remote is (mostly) well-designed, with a good selection of buttons without being overwhelming Software: You can't program macros to activity keys (turn on X, Y, and Z, and then switch to Watch TV activity). I asked about this on another post, but this is my biggest issue. When I sit down to watch TV, I don't want to press one button and then have to press another. I want it to turn on with a single button press and just be ready. The Power button seems to maintain some sort of state, but it doesn't always seem correct. Ideally, I could program a macro to the power button as well, as the only time I'd use it would be to power off everything. I can kind of do that, but it is a pain. The colors between activities don't match the devices, so activity A with my Yamaha receiver is Red, but on activity B it is Blue. I couldn't find a way to adjust the color in the app, but I discovered I could in the JSON. Each Activity gets its own device list, which is strange to me. I have one set of devices and I would only use the remote in that one location. Being able to add devices to the app independent of an activity would be more usable for me, then I could mix and match devices without having to re-add them. Can't see what device is currently on any activity (e.g. the name of the selected IR codes). I could in the JSON, but not in the app. If you go into the wizard on an existing activity and click one of the already added devices, it takes you to the "Do you want to set up a new device" screen. Am I replacing the device, adding a new one? I'm not sure. The last page in the Activity Wizard is "Your Activity Summary", which asks "Does everything looks okay?"[sic]. What am I supposed to do on this page? It looks like I should be able to configure the power button options, but I can't change anything. There should be a way to search the button panel instead of having to scroll, hoping you find what you are looking for. If you are in the button panel and open a button on the remote, selecting another device in that activity will close the button. So if I'm setting up a multi-device macro on a button, I have to open the button each time I switch devices. A long press option would be nice, at least on the activity buttons. This would allow the remote to handle up to 6 devices. I wish there was a way to upload the JSON directly to the remote without having to import into the app first. I'd also like to be able to directly sync with git any changes I made. One can dream. Hardware: The activity buttons on the remote look like they have little stickers on them instead of printing The color button icon on the remote is off center. The remote is too damn slick in my hands. Some texture can make for a better user experience. The media buttons are spread apart. The STOP and RECORD buttons are at the bottom of the remote, but the FF, REW, PLAY are at the top. Like phones, thumb-ability is important in a remote. Being able to hold the remote comfortably in one hand is important. Being able to rest the remote in your hand in a braced position (bottom corner in the palm of the hand) makes it easier to use. The color wheel is just outside my (long) thumb rang. I can comfortably reach the bottom part of it, but the rest is outside my reach unless I shift the remote down. I can adjust my grip, but moving the wheel down would be the more usable solution for most people.

Sorry for being quiet. We've made progress, can reproduce the issue, and are working on trying some solutions. Big shout out to Michael (Misha) who was two steps ahead of us and did incredible finding nuggets of information scattered on the internet. Seems like a number of applications, virus programs, system apps, Steam (yes, fucking steam), changes a field in the system registry for every USB HID Device's "restricted" boolean from "false" to "true". Why? No idea. Uninstalling the application does not revert the registry change, which validates what some of you experienced. Steam can install advanced drivers to help support controllers like XBOX-360, and this is what changes the field for that specific app. We are trying to create a version of the app that detects this, and updates the field. But this is not so simple. UWP apps don't have permission, and we have to do a run-around. But this seems possible, and the path of least resistance. We have some other ideas, but this seems like the best approach. Un. Fucking. Believable.