Do I need an RMA or an Exorcist? Remote 3 possessed

UKAdrianJ · October 11, 2025, 1:57pm

I guess I can’t post a video, but I’ll try to describe my symptoms to see if anyone has any idea what’s wrong.

The first problem I noticed was that while watching TV the remote seemed to be randomly stopping the stream - basically like hitting the “back” button. I’d have to hit play again to get started, and I always had to hit play twice. This is with a Sony Bravia TV.
Next I looked the display on the remote had gone nuts: the background was striped green, and the display was jumping about: random half scrolls left and right, swapping pages by itself
I wanted to do a reboot but I couldn’t control anything. Every now and then I could get the settings menu up but nothing further. It felt like I was getting very brief chances to insert a screen tap in a screen tap/swipe buffer that the inner demon was keeping full with randomness.
The remote went to sleep and when I woke it the screen was back to normal - black background, no random swiping. I could now swipe but not tap so I couldn’t operate anything.
I did a factory reset and restore from the web configurator and that seems to have calmed things down.

I have no idea the cause or whether it will happen again. Has anyone seen anything like this? I’m definitely torn between calling Support and a priest….

SunBeech · October 11, 2025, 4:11pm

If you mean this special effect , then that is a know issue. Multiple users have reported it on the Unfolded Circle Discord server:

Restarting the remote, by holding down the power button until you get the restart option, solves it temporarily. I have run into this issue also, but luckily incidentally.

There was also an issue report created for this and other screen behaviors on GitHub:

github.com/unfoldedcircle/feature-and-bug-tracker

[bug] UI artifacts along the bottom edge of the Remote 3's screen

opened 12:41AM - 08 Aug 25 UTC

MinMidMax

bug ui

### Is there an existing issue for this? - [x] I have searched the existing iss…ues ### Description I just updated my Remote 3 from 2.6.1 to 2.6.5 and noticed some UI artifacts at the bottom of the screen. It looks like a sliced duplication of the top bar. ### How to Reproduce This issue persists after having updated from 2.6.1 to 2.6.5. I rebooted the remote a couple of times after the update, but that didn't fix the issue. However, after shutting down the remote and powering it back on, the artifacts disappeared. Then the artifacts at the bottom of the screen came back again. It looks like they reappeared after the remote woke up from sleep. ### Expected behavior Bottom edge of the screen should not have UI artifacts. ### System version 2.6.5 ### What part of the system affected by the problem? UI ### Additional context ![Image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7523eb63-4d42-46cb-ab79-d1bae5f0b655)

kennymc.c · October 11, 2025, 4:26pm

I had this issue with my R2 / 2.7.0 a few days ago. The activity ui was always closing by itself when I opened it again. Also long pressing the power button closed the power off/restart menu. I could see in the user interface app log that the BACK command was triggered multiple times repeatedly although I didn’t press the button. The workaround to restart the remote was using the restart button in the web configurator under settings/development/preview features. After a restart the issue didn’t reappear.

UKAdrianJ · October 11, 2025, 7:40pm

Yes, that’s it. Thanks! I didn’t now about the power button hold down either so thanks for that. I’ve only had a couple of days with my R3 so still learning.