Tivo 30 Second Skip

Enable the 30 Second Skip on your Remote

The 30 Second Skip

Every TiVo can do a 30 second skip - you just have to enable it. Here's how you do it:

1 Start playing any recording.

2 During playback press:

Select - Play - Select - 3 - 0 - Select

3 You should hear three bongs (if you don't have the TiVo sounds disabled), and you're done.

Your "skip to beginning/end" button (the arrow pointing to a line) is now a 30 second skip button. During fast-forwarding or rewinding, the button will still "skip to tick."

The button looks like this:

To turn the feature off, repeat the three steps.

Important note: this feature is set to "off" at default on restarts. So if your TiVo restarts or loses power, the feature will be turned back off. Just enter the code again while watching a recording to re-enable it.


  1. You need a TiVo. You don't have to be in backdoor mode to make this work.
  2. The TiVo operating system should be 2.5.1 or above. Chances are your TiVo has already updated to the latest version. If not, force a phone call, wait for the mega download, then restart the system.
  3. You need a sheet with a list of Select-Play-Select codes. The 30 second skip is just one of many tweaks. We got our list from the Whole Hacking The TiVo FAQ. This is an amazing source of TiVo hacks.
  4. Ready to hack? Select-play-select codes are called that because you simply hit select, then play, then select, then something, then hit select again. Type in select-play-select-3-0-select to turn on the 30 second skip mode. You should hear a "ding-ding-ding" sound. That means you've made change.
  5. Don't like it? Type in select-play-select-3-0-select again, wait for your ding-ding-ding, and you're back skipping to the end of the program.
  6. We're pretty sure you won't violate the warranty doing this, but, hey, don't blame us if this sets you off on the merry road of advanced TiVo hacking and you kill your system. Don't tweak, modify, hack, or putter around with anything you aren't willing to pay to replace if you kill it.