I Tried Samsung’s TV Gesture Controls, And Holy Tech Magic, It Actually Works

Summary: Samsung unveiled new Universal Gesture Controls for its 2025 lineup of TVs, which uses the Galaxy Watch. You can control your TV without using the remote control, and it actually works really well.

One of the more intriguing features that Samsung is showing off with its new TVs this year is Universal Gestures. We’ve seen some TV makers make an app, allowing you to control your TV with another smartphone or smartwatch, but what Samsung is doing here is now allowing you to make gestures to control your TV.

It’s a bit odd to get started because you need to do a quick gesture, while the other gestures need to be a bit slower. As Samsung told me in my demo, you do definitely need to be deliberate with your gestures. But with these gestures, you can get a pointer to click on different things on the TV. You can also choose something to watch, pause and play, as well as go back home. Check out the demo video below to see how it works.

You’ll use a pinching motion to select whatever element on the screen you want to select. Whether that’s a movie, TV show, app, or something else. To pause what’s playing, just bring your hand towards you in a very deliberate motion. To play the video, just push your hand back out, and it’ll unpause. To go back to the previous screen, make a fist and then open it. And finally, to go home, you do that twice.

This all comes with the usual buttons for controlling TVs, like a D-pad, volume, channel buttons, and more.

Universal Gestures could change how you use your TV

With these new Universal Gestures, you’re really going to change how you use your Samsung TV. Lost the remote? No worries. Just fire up your Galaxy Watch and control it with your arm. Samsung says that this will work on Galaxy Watch 4 and later (it was demoed on Galaxy Watch Ultra).

To be honest, I was quite impressed with how well this worked. Despite this being demoed in an area with loads of WiFi networks, it did still connect quite easily, and the gestures themselves were identified right away. If I’m honest, I was expecting to see some lag between doing the gesture, and it actually working on the TV. At home, in your living room, this could work very well. Samsung is making me want to use their ecosystem more and more each day. From their smartphone to wearable, to now their TVs.

It’s also worth noting that this is not launch software on the TV (in this case, the QN90F); this firmware is about a month old, so it’ll work better on the launch version of the TV that is currently available to purchase. This particular TV, the QN90F does start at $1,399 for the 43-inch model.