Okay we all have these super long TV Remotes with dozens of buttons that you probably never use. Most of them you might not even know exist on the remote. To top that there are some bloatware dedicated buttons like Netflix and Prime Video. You just wish you had a simpler remote with minimum buttons. 

And in the middle of all this chaos, we have been dismissing these media control buttons as something for controlling just DVD players or music system. We instead default to hitting centre button to pause & play video. The downside with using centre button is sometimes the UI on TV is hidden and we have to press the button twice to achieve desired action ( I know, sounds like a first world problem). 

I was today years old when I found out that the play and pause buttons on remote work with most media apps like YouTube, Prime Video, Hotstar on Android TV. And its not just pause and play, even the Fast Forward and Back too work flawlessly with every app. 

However the Next and Previous buttons work only on YouTube to play corresponding Next or Previous videos on Youtube playlist. Other apps just refuse to accept their existence. 

I don’t know if you can call this a life hack to first world problem. But with a little bit of muscle memory, I can save those precious seconds 😉