Your garage is a key entry point to your home. Because of this, you want to keep it secure. You also want it easily accessible for yourself and your family. This is generally why a lot of homeowners have garage door remotes that they use. However, with the convenience of the remote comes the potential cost of security. If you find that you misplace your remote, you'll want to do a couple of things to ensure your home isn't at risk.
Steps To Take When You Misplace Your Garage Door Remote:
1. Look For It
First things first, you need to start a search party for the remote. After all, you don't want to cause even more inconvenience by going any further until you know that it's lost. Try to look everywhere it could potentially be. This includes your vehicles, in your garage, or your home. Retrace all of your steps and think about the last place you had the remote. A lot of times, you'll find the remote during your search.
Pro Tip:
If you are someone who misplaces your garage door remote often, you will want to invest in a product-finding device. There are plenty of NFC-based devices that you can attach directly to your garage door remote. You can get a Samsung Tile, a Tile tracker, or anything else. Getting one of these devices and attaching it to your garage door remote(s) will give you the ability to locate it if you ever lose it or misplace it. It will use Bluetooth and NFC to locate your tracker, and you can even have the tracker beep or make a loud and noticeable noise if you need to find it somewhere in your home or vehicle.
2. Disable Your Remote(s)
If you've gone ahead and looked for the remote and you've determined that it's gone, you will want to go ahead and take security precautions. It's time to disable your remotes. While this isn't the most convenient thing to have to do, considering you are likely using your garage door frequently, it's something you will want to do. Disable the garage door remote because there is a potential for it being stolen and someone having access to it. You can do this in a couple of ways. For one, you can simply reprogram the entire door opener itself, which will deregister the remotes that were originally programmed to it. You can also lock the control panel so it cannot be used with a remote. This is a good idea to do if you're positive it's not stolen. If you know it's somewhere in your home, you may not want to go through the hassle of reprogramming everything.
3. Getting a New Remote
If you've searched everywhere and you still haven't found it, it's time to get yourself a new remote. To get one that is going to work with your opener, you need to look at the manual it came with. You can also search online to figure out which remotes are compatible with your garage door opener. You will find there are a lot of remotes that work with many openers, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find something that works.
4. Get Yourself a Smart Opener
It seems everyday new technology is coming out to make our lives easier and easier. While having a garage door opener remote in the past was certainly a major advancement, it's no longer as convenient as it should be. Nowadays, there is a better option. By getting a smart garage door opener attachment, you can program your phone to be your new garage door remote. How many times do you find yourself losing your phone? Best of all, you can program it for multiple phones at a time. This means you don't need to invest in multiple remotes, nor do you have to worry about losing multiple remotes. Best of all, a lot of these smart garage door opener attachments can work with existing garage door setups. They use the IR functionality on garage doors, and they work just like a traditional remote. Therefore, you don't necessarily need to invest in a new garage door opener which can make it extremely convenient to get started with it.
As you can see, losing a remote can be a hassle. However, it doesn't have to be the end of the world. All you need to do is reprogram the opener or disable your remotes in the meantime. You can either get a new replacement or switch to a smart opener solution for even greater convenience. If you are going to continue using a traditional remote, be certain to get a tracker to strap on or attach to the remote.