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Just general cleanup and quality of life improvements with this one. We are a bit behind, I had to make a decision to pick back up the react native desktop upgrade again, and with that has brought us a lot of problems. But if we don't do that, one day, windows is going to push an update that breaks the app completely, we need to stay up to date. Good news is we have a light at the end of the tunnel. On the side of this we have, done/staged/ready/in-progress: Wizard Re-Write with a lot of improvements The Play/Record Toggle More performance fixes Smart Activity Switching Appreciate the help testing this and letting us know of any bugs. this should have been posted 2 weeks ago, but for some reason it didn't go through. Changelog New - Reset Timing to Default in Actions Editor Menu New - Icons in Actions Editor Menu Fixed - Duplicate Color Bug for Recorded Devices Fixed - General Bugs and Stability Fixed - Missing Highlight in Actions Manager Pop-up Fixed - Prevent Duplicate Remote Names Mac Download Windows Download Linux Download

Oh yeah, it pisses me off too. After the React Native upgrade, I have a whole slew of updates for the Wizard, which will be welcomed with a lot of love. Mostly helping you find and test the right device and fixing this obnoxious oversight. But I can’t stress enough how much heartache this React Native upgrade has caused. A lot of slowdown in progress, but it is absolutely critical. But I can say with a lot of confidence, progress will quickly become predictable and steady again once we move past this.

I am not sure if I am alone in this but the flaw of the app always bothered me. After using Wizard to add new devices --> next Page is Mapping which is logical but after mapping most of us would like to adjust some few button and there is no way to get into button panel except for pressing BACK and pressing ">". This is very unintuitive, I always trip on this after I have not used the app for a while. Is there a way to add a button at the end of the process to go into Button Panel? Many thanks

I would really love the option to map these to Channel Up/Down. Those buttons are completely unused for everything I use or will ever use Kodi for.

@jason what are the chances of getting this in an upcoming release? Should be fairly easy as it's just another pair of key presses?

I've had the remote for about a week, and for the most part, I love it. Build quality is great, as everyone else has been saying. I've read a ton of the feedback threads on this forum, and there seems to be general consensus around a few items, like the popular request for "smart" activity switching / being able to map functions to the activity switching keys, and complaints that the remote is IR-only and doesn't support RF/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/whatever other nonsense your Harmony remote does or did. That being said, in this thread, I want to focus more on stuff I haven't seen posted or posted very sparingly, that could feasibly be implemented on the remote with the hardware as it currently exists, and then later my wish list for a gen 2/3 remote. Context: My home is a mix of Home Assistant and Q-SYS. Home Assistant exposes my hodgepodge of "smart" home devices to the Apple Home app for consistency, and Q-SYS is a DSP / AV router for all of my AV equipment with some custom scripting for complicated stuff (Q-SYS can also be thought of as an enterprise-type control system similar to Crestron in a lot of ways). Current Remote: Flirc USB Profiles: I was very surprised that adding the Flirc USB as a device for the remote doesn't come with all of the pairing profiles the Flirc USB supports standard. Where is the full keyboard profile? Especially under the "PC" and "Misc" device categories in the Skip app which seem like they'd be a natural fit. As other users have mentioned, the workaround for using the keyboard profile is to add a bogus device to the activity you're creating, and then manually having the Flirc USB learn that device's IR commands and map it to whatever keyboard keys you want. This works, but it feels very hacky and really I don't understand why it's necessary. Color Button Usage: The color button/colored mode D-pad almost feels like an afterthought or just a reason to throw in some colors and make the product look "pretty." It doesn't feel very functional. Expand The Effectiveness of the Color Button: It is very strange to me that the color button only gives the remote 4 additional buttons in the form of the arrow keys on the D-pad. In my opinion the color button would be way more useful if it was a mode switch button, similar to the existing activity buttons, a "sub-activity" or "secret menu" if you will. It should allow you to remap all of the keys under that color. A-Red "volume up" should do something different from A-Green, B-Red, C-Red, and A-colorless "volume up", etc. This would also go a long way to address the complaint I keep seeing that the remote doesn't support enough activities. Further, the Skip app currently suggests that the D-pad's "enter" button can be mapped in color mode, but in practice, the app allows you to do this, but then the remote doesn't do anything with that key. This seems like a bug and should be fixed- either removed in software, or implemented on the remote. Caps Lock instead of Shift: Right now the color button changes the D-pad functionality for a few seconds, then reverts the D-pad back to normal. This is very annoying when you want to use the color mode D-pad for an extended time. We should at least have the option to make the color button function more like a caps lock key instead of an automatically timing out shift key. Press it once to change the color to red (with LED feedback around the enter button while in that color), twice to change to green, etc, until you eventually revert back to colorless/LED feedback turned off. Tips for People Unsatisfied with IR Only: Build a Simple Hub: More advanced wireless "smart" home devices come with a hub device because the processing power required for some of these advanced features necessitates it, not to mention how impractical it would be to implement Wi-Fi on a triple-A battery powered remote. To move beyond IR with this remote, you'll need to implement your own hub of sorts. In my case, I bought a $35 Raspberry Pi 4 (and Flirc case of course), paired it with a Flirc USB, and stuck it in my entertainment center. The Raspberry Pi is programmed to wait for keyboard input, and then execute commands based on the received input. It allows me to use the Skip 1s to control my Q-SYS equipment (volume, mute, speaker routing changes) which is controlled via Ethernet, as well as change lighting scenes in my home. With the current hardware, I think it's the only solution if you need to control more than just IR devices. Although I don't think this is difficult, it may be too much for the average consumer. Gen 2/3 Remote Wish List: Backlighting: My biggest gripe with this remote currently is that there is no backlighting. I read on this forum that that was an intentional choice to squeeze as much battery life out of the remote as possible, but I would argue it's the wrong choice. Multiple times I've watched a movie at night and couldn't see the buttons on the remote. Thankfully now I've mostly memorized the button positions, but in a future remote, I'd like... Rechargeable Batteries and a Charging Dock: Like in many other high-end remotes. The Crestron remote comes to mind. It would also be a beautiful way to display the remote on a coffee table. Bonus points if the dock is wireless. Bonus points if the entire backlight changes color to match the current "color mode" of the remote. A Flirc Hub for the Flirc Remote: Would go a long way to please the power users and Harmony people without requiring a huge time investment on their part. Maybe instead of bundling the remote with a Flirc USB, bundle with a Hub, which is essentially a SBC with integrated IR/RF receiver, and Ethernet.

Linux Improvements and New Tooltips Hello to all of you who subscribed to our Skip updates and features newsletter! The second update brings you only a single changelog, but there are a few nice little quality-of-life improvements. You can find the full changelog below. Here are the highlights: Linux support continues to improve. The highlight effect on buttons in compact mode has been fixed Mouseover Tooltip on Device Sometimes, it's the little things. Now, when you hover over a device on the Activity and Buttons Panel, you'll see both the manufacturer and model information. This change provides you with helpful data at a glance. What’s Next As always, we have multiple upcoming goals. In the near term, we expect to have Linux auto-updates to match Windows and Mac updates. In the longer term, we are fully delving into remote control learning that takes full advantage of the advances we have made in library database management. If you missed it, check out our library update blogpost! Changelogs [0.9.95] - August 25 2023 New - Mouseover Tooltip on Device New - Linux Improvements Fixed - Highlight effect on remote buttons in compact version Database - Denon - AVR-X6400H Database - Denon - DHT-S517 Database - Emotiva - XMC-2 Database - LG - OLED48C25LB Database - Roku 4 (Additional Channels) Database - Sony - STR-DA5500ES Database - Yamaha - RX-V4ABL