Hi folks!
As a developer working on Android TV / Fire TV apps, I kept running into the same hassle, constantly switching between keyboard and the physical remote while testing. So I built a small Android Studio plugin to fix it: ADB TV Remote. It forwards D-Pad, Enter, and Esc and much more straight to the connected device.
On JetBrains Marketplace:
plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/32852-adb-tv-remote
It's open source too, repo's here if you want to check it out or contribute:
github.com/anshupatel25/tv-remote-plugin
Feedback welcome!