Remote for Klipsch

What's this?

The official Klipsch Connect application for iOS has a few issues. The ones that bothered me most were:

• Slow startup + connection time (~15 seconds with The Fives)
• Regularly fails to find and connect to the speaker
• The interface is relatively complex for something which should be a simple remote control

This is an iOS app that serves as a simple, fast remote control for the Klipsch The Fives, and should also work with The Sevens and The Nines (including McLaren editions), which share the same protocol.

Features

• Fast and reliable connection, ~4 seconds versus ~15 for the official app, with no device chooser: reuses the link iOS already has to the speaker (retrieveConnectedPeripherals) instead of scanning, and only scans as a fallback, matching any Klipsch speaker by name or by its Klipsch service IDs (so a renamed speaker is still found)
• Restores the connection when iOS relaunches the app, and reconnects on its own after an unexpected disconnect
• Volume: a bar pinned to the bottom of the screen, with a slider between speaker icons that step it down or up (like Apple Music); follows the speaker's knob and remote live
• Input: TV, Bluetooth, Optical, USB, Analog and Phono, as two rows in the bottom bar above volume; the active input is highlighted and follows the speaker's remote
• EQ: presets Flat, Vocal, Bass, Rock and Boom, plus bass, mid and treble sliders (−10 to +6); shows Custom when the bands don't match a preset
• Dynamic Bass and Night Mode switches
• Shows the speaker model (The Fives, Sevens, Nines or a McLaren edition) in the header, read from the speaker's Device Information service
• Until the speaker is ready, shows a connecting or Bluetooth-off placeholder instead of the controls

Install

The app is on its way to the App Store, where it'll be called Remote for Klipsch (KRemote on the home screen). Until then, build it with Xcode and run it on your own device.

1. Open KlipschControl.xcodeproj in Xcode 26.2 or later.
2. In the KlipschControl target → Signing & Capabilities, pick your Team and change the Bundle Identifier to something unique (e.g. com.yourname.KlipschControl).
3. Connect an iPhone or iPad running iOS / iPadOS 17 or later, turn on Settings → Privacy & Security → Developer Mode, select it as the run destination and press Run.
4. On first launch, trust the developer in Settings → General → VPN & Device Management.

With a free Apple ID the app stops opening after 7 days and has to be run from Xcode again; with a paid Apple Developer Program membership it lasts a year.

The app collects no data; see the privacy policy.

Comparison

	Remote for Klipsch (this app)	Klipsch Connect (official)	KlipschRemote
platforms	iOS only (SwiftUI + CoreBluetooth)	iOS, Android	Windows / Linux / macOS desktop, web app (Web Bluetooth), CLI, Python library
on iOS	iOS app (SwiftUI), installed from Xcode	App Store app	web app only, via a Web Bluetooth browser (e.g. Bluefy); didn't connect in my testing on iPhone or iPad
connect time	~4 s	~15 s, regularly fails to find the speaker	~6 s
volume	slider between speaker icons that step it, pinned to the bottom; follows the knob	yes, follows the knob	yes, follows the knob
volume shown as	slider position only, no number	dB, −80 to +8 (a label; the speaker has 36 steps)	step 0–36 while dragging
input	yes	yes	yes
EQ	3-band	yes	3-band
EQ presets	Flat, Vocal, Bass, Rock, Boom	yes, without Boom	Flat, Vocal, Bass, Rock, Boom
speaker placement	no	yes	yes: corner / wall / open (bass compensation)
Dynamic Bass + Night Mode	one at a time; switches follow what the speaker reports	one at a time	bug: both switches can be shown on, but the speaker actually ends with both off; its switches show what was tapped, not what the speaker reports
sub / transport	no	yes	sub level / mute / phase, play-pause / next / previous
device settings	no	rename, standby, firmware update, setup	rename, auto standby, about, factory reset; no firmware update
speakers	The Fives (tested), Sevens / Nines (same protocol, untested)	soundbars, One / Three Plus, T5 earbuds, The Fives, ...	The Fives / Sevens / Nines

In short: use the official app for firmware updates and first setup, KlipschRemote on desktop and Android for the full feature set, and this app as a simple daily remote on iPhone and iPad.

Limitations

• Only tested on The Fives. The Sevens and The Nines use the same protocol according to KlipschRemote, but haven't been tried.
• The app connects to the first Klipsch speaker it finds (by name, or by Klipsch's service IDs if it was renamed); there's no picker for choosing between several speakers.
• Only volume, input, EQ, Dynamic Bass and Night Mode are implemented; no speaker placement, subwoofer, playback controls or device settings.
• Switching from Bluetooth to another input and back drops the phone's audio connection: the speaker's Bluetooth light blinks and you have to reconnect it in iOS Settings → Bluetooth. This is the speaker's firmware: it happens with the official app and KlipschRemote too, while switching with the speaker's own knob reconnects audio by itself. iOS apps can't start an audio connection, so the app can't fix it. The app's own control connection is not affected.
• Dynamic Bass and Night Mode are linked on the speaker: turning Night Mode on turns Dynamic Bass off, and turning Night Mode off (or Dynamic Bass on) restores Dynamic Bass to what it was before Night Mode. The two switches show what the speaker does, so turning Dynamic Bass on from Night Mode may need a second tap.
• Changing the input with the speaker's knob doesn't notify the app (no Bluetooth characteristic reports it), so the highlighted input only updates when you reopen the app. Changes from the IR remote show up right away.

Ideas

Under consideration, not planned.

• Playback controls (prev / play-pause / next) via the AV transport service DA6D0FB1, as in KlipschRemote; play/pause is a stateless toggle, likely Bluetooth input only. Low value: when the phone is the one streaming, the lock screen and Control Center already control playback
• Follow input changes made with the speaker's knob: no characteristic notifies on them (checked all 30, including the undocumented DA6D0FD3–FD5), but reading the input returns the new value, so re-reading it every ~2 s while the app is open would catch them

Development

The quickest loop is pressing Run in Xcode. From the command line:

# Build for the simulator (it has no Bluetooth, so it only shows the "Turn on Bluetooth" screen)
xcodebuild -project KlipschControl.xcodeproj -scheme KlipschControl \
  -destination 'generic/platform=iOS Simulator' -derivedDataPath build build
xcrun simctl install booted build/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/KlipschControl.app
xcrun simctl launch booted <your bundle id>

# Build, install and launch on a connected device (see Install for signing)
xcrun devicectl list devices
xcodebuild -project KlipschControl.xcodeproj -scheme KlipschControl \
  -destination 'platform=iOS,name=<device name>' -derivedDataPath build -allowProvisioningUpdates build
xcrun devicectl device install app --device <identifier> build/Build/Products/Debug-iphoneos/KlipschControl.app
xcrun devicectl device process launch --device <identifier> --console <your bundle id>

• Logs: the app logs with subsystem KlipschControl. Watch them in Console.app (select the device, filter by subsystem:KlipschControl), or for the simulator with xcrun simctl spawn booted log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "KlipschControl"'. --console above also prints the volume as the speaker reports it.
• Formatting: the code follows swift-format's defaults (.swift-format). Check with xcrun swift-format lint -r KlipschControl, fix with xcrun swift-format format -i -r KlipschControl.
• Icon: drawn by scripts/icon.swift with Core Graphics. After editing it, regenerate with swift scripts/icon.swift KlipschControl/Assets.xcassets/AppIcon.appiconset/AppIcon.png.
• Protocol: to see what a characteristic does, ble-probe prints every notification from the speaker. Close the app first so the speaker isn't already connected to your phone.

Inspired by and ported from

• A fork of wleese/KlipschControl, which was built for the Klipsch The Three Plus after BlueZ (and so Home Assistant) couldn't talk to that speaker. It has since been almost completely rewritten: over 80% of the current Swift code is new, and what remains from the original is mostly the app's skeleton (the CoreBluetooth delegate methods, the app and view structure, a few status messages).
• The Bluetooth protocol for The Fives (input byte map, characteristics, EQ encoding, model numbers) is ported from Nixer1337/KlipschRemote.
• The protocol was checked against the speaker with ble-probe, a small Python script using bleak that subscribes to every characteristic and prints each change, to see which bytes the knob and remote update.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. The protocol details ported from Nixer1337/KlipschRemote are used under the Apache License 2.0.