Lagu Remote

The music stays.
You move.

Leave Lagu playing on the computer, the Apple TV, or an Android TV. Pick up your phone and run the whole session — browse, queue, seek, volume — from the sofa, the kitchen, or anywhere your Wi-Fi reaches.

Phones and hosts mix freely across platforms. An Android phone can run an Apple TV; an iPhone can run a Windows PC. One protocol, every combination.

An iPhone running Lagu Remote next to a MacBook playing Lagu. The phone shows Smooth Criminal with transport controls and the Remote indicator lit; the Mac keeps the audio, with the same track in its player bar and the queue open down the right-hand side.
01Browse without going back

Search and open your full library on your phone, then start an album, playlist, station, or song on the host.

02The real queue, in your hand

See what’s playing, add what comes next, move songs around, or jump ahead. The queue stays in step on both screens.

03Local by design

Pair once with a QR code or six-digit PIN. Everything runs over your own Wi-Fi, phone to host — the connection never leaves the house.

How it works

Paired in seconds,
yours to revoke.

Remote is off until you switch it on at the host. From there it’s three steps, once per device.

Show the code

Enable Remote on your desktop, Apple TV, or Android TV and it shows a QR code, with a six-digit PIN as a fallback.

Scan and trust

Your phone verifies the host’s certificate fingerprint and mints its own random token. Codes expire, and wrong guesses are limited.

Control everything

Browse, search, queue, transport, volume, stations — and hand playback between devices. Unpair any device later and its session closes immediately.

More than play and pause

The whole player,
in your pocket.

Full library & search

Every album, artist, playlist, and track on the host — searchable and startable from the phone.

Queue editing

Up Next with drag-to-reorder, Play Next, and Add to Queue. Both screens follow along live.

Transport & volume

Play, pause, skip, seek, shuffle, repeat, and the host’s volume — with smooth phone-side position tracking.

Start stations

Fire off track, artist, album, genre, mood, or decade radio on the host without touching it.

Two-way handoff

Move playback from phone to host — or back — keeping the track and your place in it. Never two speakers at once. If the computer is already playing a queue of its own when you connect, Lagu asks which one to keep.

Artwork from your server

Covers load on the phone straight from your own Plex server — never squeezed through the Remote link.

Cross-platform

The Android and Apple apps speak one wire protocol, tested byte-for-byte against each other.

Security

Phone to host,
on your Wi-Fi,
and nowhere else.

Your phone talks directly to Lagu on your own network; no third-party service sits in the middle.

  • Encrypted, pinned TLS with the host’s certificate fingerprint locked in at pairing.
  • Per-device tokens Random, revocable, and stored hashed on the host.
  • Identity over address Network discovery only suggests addresses — trust always comes from the pinned certificate.

Who does what

Hosts and controllers,
in any combination.

Anything marked Controller pairs with anything marked Host — same pairing, same controls, whatever the combination. None of it needs a Plex Pass; a free Plex account covers all of it.

Host

Desktop

Hosts whenever it’s running — even closed to the tray. Keeps music and connected phones alive in the background.

Windows · macOS · Linux
Host

Apple TV

Hosts while the Lagu app is open — that part is a tvOS rule. Phones reconnect when you return to the app.

Foreground hosting
Host

Android TV

Hosts from Settings with a QR and a six-digit PIN, lists paired phones with last seen and Forget, and keeps running when you back out of the app, so a paired phone does not drop.

Background hosting
Controller

iPhone & iPad

The full controller: browse, queue, stations, handoff. A persistent banner always says which room you’re running.

SwiftUI
Controller

Android

The same controller, natively — with network rediscovery that survives router reboots and multi-adapter hosts.

Kotlin · Compose
System remote

Apple Watch

Controls iPhone playback through the watchOS Now Playing route — and never hijacks it just by opening the app.

watchOS system path

Questions

The ones
people ask.

Does Lagu Remote need a Plex Pass?

No. Remote runs entirely on your local network, on a free Plex account.

Can an Android phone control an Apple TV or a Mac?

Yes. Lagu Remote is one protocol implemented on each platform, so any controller pairs with any host. Android to Apple TV, iPhone to Windows, iPad to Linux: same QR code, same controls.

Does the music stream to my phone?

No. Audio stays on the computer or the TV; your phone sends commands and shows what’s playing. If you’d rather listen on the phone, hand the session off and playback follows you.

Which devices can be a host?

Desktop on Windows, macOS, and Linux, whenever it is running, tray included. Android TV, which keeps hosting when you back out of the app. Apple TV, while the Lagu app is open in the foreground, which is a tvOS rule rather than ours.

Can I use it away from home?

No. Lagu Remote is deliberately local-network only — your controls never leave the house.

What happens if my computer’s network changes?

The phone rediscovers the host — over Bonjour and a ranked set of address candidates — and only reconnects after the host proves its identity with the pinned certificate. A failed guess never breaks your pairing.

How do I remove a paired device?

Every paired phone appears in a list on the host. Revoke one and its token dies on the spot; resetting pairing rotates all trust material and starts fresh.

Run the room from the sofa.

Remote is in every current build — desktop hosting is free forever, and mobile is free while the beta runs.

Join the beta list