Find your lost Amazon Fire Stick remote in seconds with ‘beeper’ trick – all it takes is saying magic phrase out loud

DON'T let a lost remote ruin your movie night – there's a trick that can save you. You can simply speak a "magic phrase" to track down your Amazon Fire TV Stick remote in a matter of seconds. And if that doesn't work, there are some other ways of sorting it out instead. You may not have realised that someone Fire TV remote controls have built-in ringers. This is your first option, and it's easily the most effective.

For this to work, you'll need an Amazon Alexa Voice Remote Pro. And it needs to be already be paired with a Fire TV, otherwise you're out of luck. As well as that, you'll need to have registered it to the same account that your Alexa is linked to. Your remote will need to be within 30 feet of the paired Fire TV – and have enough battery life to boot. If all of those boxes are ticked, you'll be able to track down your TV remote.

The easiest way is to just ask Alexa by saying "Alexa, find my remote". You can do this in the Alexa app on your smartphone, with your Fire TV app, or any other Alexa-friendly device that you have. Alternatively, you can press the Remote Finder icon that's in the Remote tab of your Fire TV app on a smartphone. With either of these triggers, your Alexa Voice Remote Pro will start to ring for up to five minutes.

Don't panic if it doesn't start right away – it can take about 30 seconds for it to start. Once you track it down, press a button on the remote to stop the ringing. Here are the official specs from Amazon... If you want to make it easier to find next time, make sure that you've got Voice Commands When TV Screen Is Off turned on in your settings. And ensure that your Fire Stick is getting its juice from a power outlet.

That way, you can ask your TV to find the remote even if it's switched off. Of course many Fire Stick owners will have the regular remote – and not a fancy Pro version. The bad news is that there's no hi-tech way to track this remote control down. But there is an alternative that lets you still watch telly: the smartphone app. You can just download the Amazon Fire TV app and link it to your Fire TV or Fire Stick.

That way you'll be able to control your TV just as easily as you would've with a remote. In fact, it might even be easier – as you're probably less likely to lose your smartphone. The app also makes it significantly easier to enter text on the screen. And if you don't have voice search on your current remote, you can use it on the app instead. On top of that, it's very easy and fast to locate apps and games inside the app.

TV rival Sky has also come up with a very similar way of tracking down lost remotes. If you've lost your Sky Q remote, you can simply push the big Q logo on the front of your box. This is actually a button and will cause your TV remote to start beeping. It'll ring for about 30 seconds, which should be plenty of time to find it. There are just a few catches: the remote needs battery life and must be in range of the Sky box, for a start.