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How Does a Universal Garage Door Remote Work?

As you can guess from our name, we at HLM Garage Doors & More, LLC, specialize in all things garage doors. We can repair a garage door that’s malfunctioning, replace one that’s nearing the end of its life, and help you get the best performance from yours. One thing that makes a big difference to your garage door’s performance is the remote you use to open and close it. Each manufacturer offers its own proprietary remote, but universal ones are also available, and offer a more convenient solution to many. In this article, we’ll go over how a universal garage door remote works to help you decide if this option is right for you.

  • Proprietary Remotes- Before we explain how universal garage door remotes work, we’ll go over how manufacturer-specific ones work for the sake of contrast. If you purchase a remote for your specific brand of garage door, you can program the remote by simply pressing, holding, and releasing the buttons as the instructions tell you. The remote will automatically determine which radio frequencies your opener uses and configure itself to transmit in those frequencies.
  • Universal Garage Door Remotes- On the other hand, universal garage door remotes are slightly more complicated to set up. Each brand of garage door opener uses a different set of radio frequencies, so you must first tell the remote which brand it needs to pair with. Most universal remotes do this with a set of dip switches–first press the ones indicated for your brand, which will tell the remote which general part of the spectrum it needs to work in, and then narrow it further to the specific frequency. If this sounds complicated, don’t worry–you can turn to our team at any time for help with your universal garage door remote.