Roku is the best streaming device one can have because it has a wide range of features and is highly customizable. Although Roku cannot be jailbroken like many other devices, there are many hacks that you can perform and have additional interesting and engaging features.
So, here in this article, we have listed the best Roku hacks that will make your life easier.
Contents
- 1 Best Roku Hacks List
- 1.1 1. Find & Watch Free Movies & Shows
- 1.2 2. Find 4K Content
- 1.3 3. Search Across Multiple Apps At Once
- 1.4 4. Check Your WiFi Signal Strength
- 1.5 5. Watch Roku Secret & Hidden Channels
- 1.6 6. Use The Roku Mobile App
- 1.7 7. Mirror Your Smartphone
- 1.8 8. Talk To Your Roku
- 1.9 9. Automatic Volume Leveling
- 1.10 10. Customize Your Channel Order
- 1.11 11. Watch Local News
- 1.12 12. Use Roku Screensavers
- 1.13 13. Play Content From Other Devices
- 1.14 14. Play Games On Roku
- 1.15 15. Turn On Instant Replay
- 1.16 16. Listen Through Headphones
- 1.17 17. Personalize Your Roku Screen
- 1.18 18. Install Kodi On Roku
- 1.19 19. Travel With Roku
- 1.20 20. Eliminate Buffering
- 2 Conclusion
Best Roku Hacks List
Below are the best Roku hacks that will certainly bring a broad smile and make it a lot easier to use.
1. Find & Watch Free Movies & Shows
There are many Roku Hacks or tricks to have wholesome entertainment and here’s the best one. Who doesn’t like getting quality movies and shows for free? Roku has plenty of channels that offer free movies and shows.
Therefore if you know any channel that provides free content then you can search for it. Roku also has a Roku channel that includes all Roku originals and many free shows and movies and yeah you will have to bear a few ads.
Moreover, you can search for free channels from the Roku channel store. i.e by pressing the home button and scrolling up or down to choose the streaming channel. Now to view the most popular free channels, select top free, and then ok. Again, to install add the channels.
2. Find 4K Content
Another nice thing is you can watch 4K content. Any Roku streaming player that supports 4K such as premiere, premiere+, Roku 4, etc lets you watch all the 4K movies and shows.
You simply have to search for channels that offer 4K content. One can also search from the 4K spotlight channel through the Roku channel store that makes it easy to find channels that offer content in 4K Ultra HD Resolution.
3. Search Across Multiple Apps At Once
So, Roku has over 3000+ channels offering a whole lot of content in various genres. If you wanna search for any movie or show, you can simply search them in Roku search or voice search and that gives results from all those channels in a detailed way. One can browse by title, director, or actor and even know the price of streaming content put by the channels.
4. Check Your WiFi Signal Strength
How annoying it is whenever you see a loading screen of buffering video on a video streaming device or any other device. Now since it may be due to a poor network, you can check your WiFi signal strength on the Roku device.
For this, go to Settings on your Roku device and then choose Network. If your device is connected it shows either excellent, good, fair, or poor. If the strength is lower than expected and also persists you can contact the ISP.
You can hack into your Roku to see your WiFi signal strength in the percentage. To do that, press the home button 5 times along with up, down, up, down, up. And now a signal strength bar will appear if it is green it’s fine and if it’s red then move your router closer to the Roku device.
5. Watch Roku Secret & Hidden Channels
Roku provides over 3000+ channels however if aren’t satisfied or wanna explore, even more, you can. As Roku has many more hidden channels and there’s a channel for every interest of yours whether it’s the cartoon, horror, comedy, geography, etc.
For instance, Amateur Logic, Nowhere TV, The Internet Archive, etc are few hidden channels although there are 100s of them. One can access these hidden channels by putting certain secret codes and every channel has a code.
6. Use The Roku Mobile App
The Roku free mobile app is very convenient and easy to use if you don’t want to use its remote. The app has everything one needs to control their streaming in a simpler and sorted way.
Some of its features include fast and easy search via keyboard, voice control over all Roku devices. You can also listen privately by plugging your headphones and not disturbing others with the Roku mobile app and 3 friends can utilize this feature together. One can also cast photos, videos, etc on their TV.
7. Mirror Your Smartphone
Another nice Roku hack is that you can mirror your smartphone. In simple words, everything visible on your screen can be mirrored larger on the Roku TV or smart TV with Roku device whether it’s webpages, videos, photos, Kodi, or any other streaming service.
But once you start mirroring your screen you cannot use any other application on your smartphone if not the content on Roku stops playing.
However, you can also go for casting that lets you cast videos and movies or TV shows and once the content starts on your TV you can use your smartphone as usual and control the TV with a remote. Make sure you connect the mobile to the same WiFi as a Roku device.
8. Talk To Your Roku
Like other devices, you can also talk to your Roku and it is the best way to navigate if you don’t wanna type. For you to have this voice built-in search advantage your Roku device should run on OS 8.2 or higher version.
One can voice search through a remote or Roku app. You have to press and hold the microphone button on the Roku remote and speak and similar for the app also but when you finish speaking tap anywhere in the middle of the screen. Moreover, one can launch channels, control playback, switch devices, adjust volume, and a lot more.
You can also connect Google assistant and the Roku device. You can open the Google Assistant app on your smartphone to connect. Accordingly, choose the device tab and then click add. Now you will be directed to a new page, where you select ” link a smart home device” then search and sign in to your Roku device. Now tap on accept and continue to connect both.
9. Automatic Volume Leveling
Yet another cool one among Roku hacks is automatic volume leveling. You must have seen while changing channels or during ads volume spike up as movies and shows have a wide range of sounds, that’s quite irritating and you have to manually readjust the volume.
However, when you enable automatic volume leveling on Roku, you will not face this trouble. You can press the Star button and then select sound settings. Again volume mode, now you can enable leveling or night for soft sounds.
10. Customize Your Channel Order
To make usage more convenient, Roku allows you to customize your channel order. Once you add a new channel that is placed at the bottom. Hence, the channels you add are all placed at the bottom.
And if you want any of those channels then you have the hassle of scrolling all those channels in between. So you can bring all your favorite channels to the top. You can organize your channels by following the simple steps.
1. First press the home button and then access the channel list by pressing the right button next to the directional pad(+ shaped)
2. Now using the directional pad, highlight the channel you want to move.
3. Again open the options menu by pressing the Star button and then select the move channel.
Now move the channel to a new location using the directional pad.
11. Watch Local News
Typically the first thing people do when they wake up in the morning is turn on the local news. And cord-cutting doesn’t mean you cannot watch local news these days. You may not find exactly the local news channel though a close zip code can be found.
Roku has several news congregator channels like News on, Haystack TV, CBS News. More traditionally you can also connect over the air antenna with the Roku device.
12. Use Roku Screensavers
Another nice one among Roku hacks is its screensavers. There are times when we fall asleep or forget to turn off the device while Streaming any movie or TV shows.
And so, default screensavers or the ones you selected will fill the screen automatically when not being used or is idle. If you want to personalize your experience, you can set new screensavers from the screensavers category in the Roku channel store.
13. Play Content From Other Devices
Although Roku has plenty of streaming channels, you can play your local digital library from your PC or USB through the Roku Media Player app. You will need Roku ultra or Roku TV, as only these devices have USB ports.
The Roku media player app supports several media servers such as Twonky, Windows MediaPlayer, Plex, etc.
You can refer to the Roku media player support page to know in detail about the setup and use of the app.
14. Play Games On Roku
Roku doesn’t end at watching movies and shows, you can also play games here that can be controlled by Roku’s remote. Yeah, you don’t find PS 4 like or huge games but there are light and fun games that pass your time. One can find games in the Roku channel store and you install them just the way you do for channels.
15. Turn On Instant Replay
There are various Roku hacks and this one is yet another great one. It happens that sometimes we don’t understand what the character says in the movies or shows, maybe due to the background sounds, or disturbance, or if they were spoken way more fast or unclear.
During these times we can simply replay that scene instantly to understand it. Moreover, in some Roku devices, it not only replays the voice but also displays text.
For this, go to the home screen menu then settings, now choose captions. And for a few other Roku devices, you have to go to the accessibility option and then captions followed by instant replay.
16. Listen Through Headphones
Yes, Roku hacks are all real benefiting, and having personal space and plugging in headphones is everyone’s wish. Therefore Roku doesn’t disappoint us in this case also as Roku TVs and Roku Ultra include a built-in headphone jack. So simply open your mobile app and plug in your headphones and to activate or disable it, tap on the headphones icon.
17. Personalize Your Roku Screen
Personalizing or customizing is another nice one among Roku hacks. And here you can customize your Roku screen i.e you can apply any one among various themes that change the way your apps, background, etc appear.
One can do this by going to settings where you have to go for themes and then my themes. Here are some pre-installed themes that you can select or click on to get more themes to have some more options. Maybe a few are paid ones.
18. Install Kodi On Roku
Kodi is one of the best applications out there to have entertainment streaming movies and TV shows. Kodi is compatible with almost every OS or device and hence Roku too.
However, Kodi isn’t officially available on Roku but there are ways you can bring it in. i.e Roku and screen mirroring option that will let you watch Kodi on the big screen.
19. Travel With Roku
Going anywhere? And also want to continue binge-watching? Well, you can take and connect your Roku player to your next destination and also watch all your favorite movies and shows.
Yes, most of the locations only ask you for passwords or network names but dorms, hotels ask you to enter some additional info. And here helps Roku as it has a feature called Hotel and Dorm Connect that lets you connect your streaming device to a captive portal network.
The process may look a little complex however, you will be back in no time watching Ozark or any other stuff.
20. Eliminate Buffering
Looks like we are at the end of our list of best Roku hacks. And now we have the hack to eliminate buffering. And everyone must have encountered this some or other time on any device.
It all depends on bandwidth and hence some services adjust their feed according to the bandwidth and some don’t. You can avoid or reduce buffering by compromising a little with video quality by changing the Bit Rate Override Menu.
You can do that by pressing home 5 times then RW thrice and FF twice with your Roku remote and now choose the speed to default or automatic.
Conclusion
You now know the best Roku hacks that will make your life easier as even the simplest changes have a great impact on your viewing experience. Hope you liked the article, and feel free to suggest if you know any more best Roku hacks that are helpful and also your doubts in the comment section.