Comparison

U Remote Control vs cairn

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

U Remote Control

Control your home automation devices and media players with this unofficial remote control app. It supports various remotes, allowing you to manage lights, switches, climate, and media with real-time updates and customizable widgets.

Highlights
  • Remote registration
  • Profile navigation
  • Entity toggling and navigation
  • Real-time media player updates
  • Full activity support
  • Configurable widgets
  • Live activity integration
Features
Read full description

Unofficial remote control application for Unfolded Circle remotes Remote 2 & 3 are advanced physical remotes that can take control of all your home devices (TV, receivers...) as well as your automation devices (Philips Hue, any Home Assistant device...) and more through community integrations. - Remotes registration : register one or several remotes - Navigation by profiles like in the remote. Another profile can be selected from the 3 dots upper right button - Swipe left/right between profile pages, click on entity icon for toggling (lights, switch, climates, covers) or navigating into (activities, remotes, media players) - Pull down in profile pages to refresh the data (in case of disconnection) - Sliders for lights, shutters and climate directly in the profile pages to set brightness / position / temperature, tap to open and access additional settings - Full activities support : UI pages & buttons including long press support, media players with artwork, position and titles. A touchpad is also available in a dedicated tab, as well as the access to the included entities. - Media players : updated in realtime (artwork, title, position...) and scrubbing - Wake the remote on LAN through pull to refresh - Configurable widgets : main commands for active activities with media info. A configurable page from the app settings will also show a list of selected entities to toggle (to toggle activities, lights, climates...) - Live activities : when entering into a running activity and minimizing the app, the current activity & media is accessible from the dynamic island or from the lock screen with the same commands as the widget

About

cairn

This app synchronizes your iPhone photo library with your Immich server. It automatically moves photos deleted from your phone to your Immich trash, ensuring consistency. The app prioritizes safety with features like a quarantine window and trash-to-restore functionality.

Highlights
  • Syncs iPhone deletions to Immich
  • Moves deleted photos to Immich Trash
  • Configurable quarantine window
  • Trash-to-restore functionality
  • Percent cap and floor for safety
  • Exclusion options for specific photos
  • Restrict indexing to specific albums
Features
Read full description

cairn reconciles your iPhone photo library against your own Immich server. When you delete a photo on your phone, cairn moves the matching photo on Immich to Trash. That's the whole job. cairn doesn't upload photos, show albums, edit metadata, or run AI — the Immich app already does those things. cairn closes the one loop the Immich app doesn't: photos that live on the server after you've deleted them from your phone. HOW IT WORKS — Content identity is SHA1 (the same identifier Immich uses server-side). — cairn subscribes to iOS's deletion log, so it sees soft-deletes as you make them. — A configurable quarantine window holds confirmed deletions before anything moves, so an accidental mass-offload has time to be caught. — Every run shows you the candidate list first. Nothing happens on the server until you confirm. SAFETY MODEL — Trash, not delete. cairn moves assets into your Immich Trash — Immich retains them for 30 days, and restore is one tap. — Percent cap + floor. If a single run would move more than a threshold of your matched photos to Trash, it aborts without touching the server. — Breadcrumbs. Every run is tagged on Immich (cairn/v1/run/[id]) so you can find it server-side. — Forensic journal. Local append-only log records every step — planned, tagged, trashed, restored, failed. — Exclusions. Protect specific photos from ever being flagged. — Indexing scope. Restrict cairn to a specific set of Photos albums. Photos outside the scope are silently ignored — never hashed, never proposed for trash. Useful if you want to manage just one album and leave synced family albums alone. PRIVACY — No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no ads. — No cairn backend. Your iPhone talks directly to your Immich server using your API key. — Credentials stay in the iOS Keychain. Nothing leaves your device besides requests you configured. REQUIREMENTS — An Immich server you run or control. — An Immich API key. cairn requests these scopes: asset.read, asset.view, asset.download, asset.delete, tag.create, tag.asset, tag.read. The Setup screen lists them when you paste your key. cairn is not affiliated with the Immich project. It talks to Immich over its public API; compatibility only. Source is MIT-licensed at github.com/glarue/cairn.

Screenshots

U Remote Control4 screens
cairn4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: cairn at 5.0 against U Remote Control's 4.7. U Remote Control's advantage is device support (4 vs 1) and ratings volume (3 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

cairn holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 1 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
U Remote Control versus cairn: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterU Remote Controlcairn
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (3 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings3 — better1
Update frequencyWeeklyWeekly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch — betteriPhone
Requires iOS18.617.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size20 MB8 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDamien Bain-ThouverezGraham Larue

Customer experience

U Remote Control

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

cairn

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

U Remote Control

No in-app purchases

None

cairn

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is U Remote Control free?
U Remote Control is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is cairn free?
cairn is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, U Remote Control or cairn?
cairn is rated higher. U Remote Control averages 4.7 out of 5 from 3 ratings, while cairn averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do U Remote Control or cairn have ads?
Neither U Remote Control nor cairn shows ads.
Which is updated more often, U Remote Control or cairn?
U Remote Control ships an update weekly, and cairn weekly. Most recently, U Remote Control was updated on October 25, 2026 and cairn on October 15, 2026.

Other comparisons