Sharp Roku TV Remote App for iPhone: Control It Without Pairing

Sharp Roku TVs have been around a while — many were sold from 2016 onward — so the most common reason people land here is a remote that’s finally gone missing or died, on a set that’s otherwise still perfectly good. The happy news: of every TV platform, Roku is the easiest to run from a phone. It takes commands from apps on the same WiFi with no pairing step at all — no PIN, no Allow prompt, no account. If your iPhone and the TV are on the same network, you’re back in control in under a minute.

One quick check first: a Sharp set is a Roku TV if it boots to the Roku home grid (purple background, rows of channel tiles). Some newer Sharp models ship with Google TV / Android TV instead — a different platform with a different setup, covered here. This guide is for the Roku ones.

The free options first

You don’t strictly need a third-party app to control a Sharp Roku TV:

The TV’s own buttons. Every Sharp Roku TV keeps a physical control on the cabinet — usually a single button or small cluster along the bottom edge, the back-right corner, or tucked under the center of the panel. On older Sharp sets it’s often one button that cycles input with a press and powers off with a long hold. It’s enough to get something on tonight.
The official Roku app (free, from Apple). It has a built-in remote plus private listening through your headphones. It’s a bigger, do-everything app that steers you toward a Roku account, but it’s an honest, capable choice.

Both genuinely work. Where a dedicated remote app earns its place is speed and focus — it opens straight onto the D-pad instead of a home screen full of channel promos.

Controlling your Sharp Roku TV from the iPhone

Put your iPhone on the same WiFi the Sharp uses — the real home network, not the guest one, with any VPN switched off.
Open Remote Pro and scan. Every Roku on the network shows up by name, so a Sharp Roku TV usually appears as something like “Sharp•Roku TV”.
Tap it. That’s the whole setup. You’re immediately controlling the TV: D-pad, home, back, playback — plus your iPhone keyboard for search boxes and sign-in fields, which beats hunting letters on the on-screen grid.
Volume, mute and power all work, because on a Sharp Roku TV the Roku is the television — the commands go to the set’s own hardware. (That’s the difference from a Roku stick plugged into some other TV, where volume has to be handled by that TV instead — here’s why.)

If the scan comes up empty

Almost always a network split — the phone landed on a different network than the TV: guest WiFi, a separately-named 2.4GHz/5GHz band, or a brand-new router. Older Sharp sets are frequently on 2.4GHz only, so if your phone favors a 5GHz band with a different name, that alone can hide the TV. Walk the checklist in order: Roku remote app can’t find your TV.

If the TV shows up but ignores the presses

The Sharp appears in the scan, yet button taps bounce off? That Roku has app control switched off by policy. One setting fixes it — on the TV: Settings → System → Advanced system settings → Control by mobile apps → Network access → Default. Full walkthrough: the control-by-mobile-apps fix. You’ll need some way to navigate there — the cabinet buttons, or a remote you can still find just this once.

Lost the Sharp’s remote entirely?

If the remote is simply gone, the phone-as-remote route above is your fastest fix — no pairing means there’s nothing to re-sync. The one genuinely hard case is a lost remote plus a WiFi change (new router, new house), where the TV isn’t on any network for an app to reach. The escape routes — a wired Ethernet connection, or recreating the old network’s name and password as a phone hotspot so the TV auto-joins — are laid out in the lost Roku remote guide.

Once you’re back in, Remote Pro also runs your Samsung, Fire TV and Android TV hardware from the same screen — handy if the Sharp Roku TV isn’t the only set in the house.