Like other streaming services, Roku has plenty of ways to adjust the settings and work on hidden menus through button combinations. You’ll want to learn these to keep your device running smoothly, troubleshoot issues, or customize your home screen. Luckily, it’s really easy to learn and use them, but make sure to keep the combinations nearby while you work.
Clear your cache with the home button
Even your streaming stick needs a cache deletion
When you use your Roku daily, it stores temporary data like thumbnails and login credentials to load your favorite channels faster. That is great in the short term, but this temporary memory eventually fills up. This leads to slow application launches, endless buffering, and menu navigation that stalls out completely.
It is easy to think the streaming stick is failing when you deal with these annoying slowdowns. Instead of rushing to buy a replacement device, there’s a good way to fix this performance drop right from your couch. I wish that I had known years ago that you can clear your cache from your remote. It doesn’t need complicated preferences, and you won’t lose your downloaded applications or account passwords.
To do this, grab your remote and make sure you’re on the main dashboard screen with the Home option highlighted on the left side. Next, you need to press the Home button five times quickly. Immediately after that, press the Up directional arrow one time. Follow that by pressing the Rewind button two times, and finish the sequence by pressing the Fast Forward button two times.
Once you type in this specific combination, your television screen will freeze for a moment. This is a good thing and proves the command worked. The device will then automatically reboot itself, which usually takes between fifteen and thirty seconds. Wait for the logo to appear and the home screen to reload.
Your signal matters a lot
If you’re dealing with a slow stream and want to check your wireless connection, Roku has a hidden screen that shows detailed diagnostic information without making you click through many menus. To open the wireless secret screen, grab your remote and press the Home button five times, then press Up, Down, Up, Down, Up quickly. This command pulls up a diagnostic panel that shows your Wi-Fi signal strength, antenna details, and network glitch rate.
You get to see the actual numbers for your connection instead of relying on a general network status indicator. Knowing your exact signal strength is a good idea when you’re trying to figure out playback issues or map out your Wi-Fi. Since digital signals work on an all-or-nothing basis, a weak connection will typically make the video freeze completely instead of just getting fuzzy.
You can see color-coded bars that show your signal strength. If these indicators turn yellow or red, you know right away that the device is struggling to maintain a connection. This way, you can figure out if you need to restart your router or move it closer to your device.
Toggling closed captions quickly
Sometimes you only need them for a moment
- Connective Technology
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HDMI
- Brand
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Roku
- Wi-Fi
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Yes
- Ethernet
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No
The Roku Streaming Stick HD is a super handy way to transform any HDMI-enabled TV into your next entertainment hub, providing near instant access to more than 500 free TV channels in Full HD (1080p). The package also includes a handy remote you can use to control the Roku Streaming Stick, along with voice remote functionality.
Missing a quiet line of dialogue in a movie happens often. You might be watching a film where the actors are mumbling or dealing with loud background noise in your house that makes it hard to hear what’s happening. Instead of going deep into the settings menu to turn on closed captions, you should use the shortcut.
Press the Home button on your remote and scroll down to the Settings menu. From there, you select Accessibility and then click on Captions Mode. You’ll see a few choices, like On Always or Off, and you need to select the option labeled On Replay. Once you activate this setting, pressing the instant replay button jumps back about ten seconds in your video and shows the closed captions for that segment.
Don’t Skip These Roku TV and Streaming Stick Settings
Boost the performance of your Roku device with these simple settings tweaks.
The text then automatically disappears as soon as playback catches up to where you originally were. This way, you don’t have to turn it on and then off just because you need help understanding one scene.
This is where the good stuff is
If you want to load custom applications or test channels that aren’t in the standard store, you need to use the Roku developer menu. Grab your remote and press the Home button three times, followed by the Up directional arrow two times, and then alternate by pressing Right, Left, Right, Left, and Right.
You have to do this pretty quickly while on the main dashboard to make the developer screen appear. From here, the system will bypass all the regular menus and jump right to the development application installer page. From this page, you can enable the installer, set a web server password, and find the IP address or username for your device.
This lets you load a third-party application package directly from a web browser on a computer connected to the same network. This shortcut is a great way to save time since the developer mode options aren’t actually visible anywhere in the standard Roku menus.
Moving channels with the directional pad
This makes watching so much better
When you add a new streaming channel to your Roku device, the system automatically drops it at the very bottom of your application grid. Since we all end up downloading a huge list of services like Netflix or Hulu over time, this default sorting method leads to a cluttered home screen.
You have to keep pressing the down button every time you turn on your television because you have to scroll through pages of tiles just to find the one application you actually want to watch. Instead, go to the app you want to move and press the asterisk or star button on your remote to open a quick options menu.
You’ll see an option called Move channel or Move app. Select that option, and you can use the directional pad arrows to slide the tile left, right, up, or down to a new location. When you find the perfect spot for it, just press the OK button in the middle of your directional pad to lock the tile into place.
Learn how to control your Roku
Roku doesn’t list these secret menus anywhere in its settings. You have to dig through the website or look at articles like this to find them. Luckily, you can just bookmark this and come back every time you need to adjust a setting, because it’s always a good idea to keep your best tips close by. This way, you’ll be able to make changes whenever you need them.
