بعد ما غيرت البطارية، اشتغل الريموت.

Here بعد ما means after when it is followed by a whole clause.

So:

• بعد ما غيرت البطارية = after I/you changed the battery

And no, ما is not negation here. It is just part of the expression بعد ما in colloquial Arabic.

This is very common in Levantine speech.

In Levantine Arabic, subject pronouns are often left out because the verb already carries that information.

غيرت can mean:

• I changed
• you changed (masculine singular)

Context tells you which one is meant.

If you want to make it explicit, you can say:

• أنا غيرت البطارية = I changed the battery
• إنت غيرت البطارية = you changed the battery (to a man)

Because البطارية is the object, not the subject.

The person doing the action is hidden inside غيرت:

• I changed
• or you changed

So the verb agrees with the hidden subject, not with البطارية.

Also, البطارية is feminine because it ends in ـة, but that does not affect the verb here since it is not the thing doing the action.

البطارية means the battery, with الـ = the.

In this sentence, the speaker usually means a specific battery already understood from context, most likely the battery in the remote. That is why the battery sounds natural.

If you said بطارية without الـ, it would sound more like a battery, which is less likely in this context.

Here اشتغل means something like:

• worked
• started working
• began functioning

For devices in Levantine, اشتغل is very common when something was not working and then began to function.

A useful contrast:

• شغّل = to turn on / make something run
• اشتغل = to work / start working

So:

• شغّلت الريموت = I turned on the remote or I operated it
• اشتغل الريموت = the remote worked / started working

Both are possible.

• اشتغل الريموت = verb first
• الريموت اشتغل = subject first

In Arabic, verb-first order is very common, especially in narration:

• After I changed the battery, the remote worked

Subject-first can sound a bit more like you are highlighting the remote as the topic:

• As for the remote, it worked

So the version in your sentence is very natural.

It is a borrowed everyday word from English remote, and it is very common in Levantine speech.

That happens a lot with modern objects. In daily conversation, people often use loanwords like this.

You may also hear more formal or less common alternatives, but in normal spoken Levantine الريموت sounds very natural.

Usually no. Because ر is a sun letter, the l in الـ assimilates.

So الريموت is pronounced more like:

• ir-rimot
• or er-rimot

not al-rimot.

The spelling stays الريموت, but the pronunciation changes.

A rough Levantine-style pronunciation would be:

baʿd ma ghayyart il-baṭṭāriyye, ishtaghal ir-rimot

A few notes:

• بعد ما = baʿd ma
• غيرت = ghayyart
• البطارية = il-baṭṭāriyye
• اشتغل = ishtaghal
• الريموت = ir-rimot

Exact vowels vary a bit by region, but this is a good practical approximation.

Yes. A very common alternative in Levantine is بدّلت.

So you could also say:

• بعد ما بدّلت البطارية، اشتغل الريموت.

Both غيّر and بدّل can work for change/replace, but بدّل often sounds especially natural for replacing one thing with another, such as a battery.

Yes, you could, but the nuance is a little different.

• بعد ما غيرت البطارية = after I changed the battery
• لما غيرت البطارية = when I changed the battery

In many everyday contexts, both can lead to almost the same meaning. But بعد ما more clearly emphasizes that one action happened first and then the remote worked.