Forum Discussion

tvfan126's avatar
tvfan126
Channel Surfer
4 years ago
Solved

Watch history not updating on Roku TV YouTube App

Hello, for this past week I've encountered an issue with my TCL Roku TV's YouTube app. Whenever I watch a video, the watch history does not update showing that I've watched the video. It is updating...
  • RokuKariza-D's avatar
    RokuKariza-D
    4 years ago

    Hi tvfan126

    Thanks for reaching out here in the Community!

    Did you restart your Roku TV before adding the channel back in? That step is crucial when performing the troubleshooting. If you haven't tried it yet, we would recommend giving it a shot once again. Here are the detailed steps you can follow:

    1. Remove the channel: Highlight the channel tile on your home screen and press the Star button to open the options menu. Select Remove channel and confirm.
    2. Restart your Roku device: Restart the device from the settings menu. Go to Settings > System > Power > System restart > Restart.
    3. Re-install the channel: After your Roku device restarts, visit the Roku Channel Store and add the channel again.

    If the issue persists after attempting the suggestions above, contact the channel provider's customer support team to report the issue and get help. Channels on Roku are maintained by the channel developer themselves. In this case, there's likely an issue within that specific channel that needs to be addressed with an update from the channel developer.

    All the best,
    Kariza

MrMark's avatar
MrMark
Streaming Star
4 years ago

One might imagine that this is the over-powerful Google demonstrating that they don't care about making it work right on any device where the the manufacturer of that device doesn't bow down to Google.  Or maybe Google knows that Apple will sue them again if they fail to make it work on Apple devices...kind of like an evaluation of threat level.  Apple's revenue for last quarter was $366 billion.  Roku's was $680 million (0.68 billion).  'Probably not scary enough to Google.  If a company doesn't either bow down or have have sufficient monetary and political might, then then Google does what bullies do.

Psilobite's avatar
Psilobite
Roku Guru
4 years ago

Here's the state of things:

Search history will work on a brand account in the YouTube Roku app, using these steps:

1) Reset the app (Settings -> Reset app)

2) Go to upper left "Sign In"

3) "Sign in with your phone" -> "Try another way"

4) Do not go to the URL shown, instead go to youtube.com/activate and enter the code

5) Select the brand account you want to sign in with on Roku, not your main Google account

6) Done!

Under "Accounts" (upper left), you will see your brand account... on the right part of the screen, you should see a "fake" e-mail address that ends in pages.plusgoogle.com.

Search history is working properly with a brand account signed in to the YouTube Roku app in this way. Unfortunately, starting today, you are no longer able to view age restricted videos when signed in this way to a brand account in the YouTube Roku app, even if your brand account is age-verified.

If you want, you can do an "Add account" and this time, on step 5, select your primary Google account. This will automatically add your Primary Google ID/email, and all associated brand accounts to the Roku app. They will appear under your primary main Google e-mail address. When you select one of these brand accounts, it will have **no** e-mail address on the right part of the screen. This will not affect the "brand only" sign-in that you did above... that appears separately, and again, has a "fake" e-mail address that ends in pages.plusgoogle.com. You can view age restricted videos when using brand accounts that appear under your main Google e-mail. However, when signed in this way, there is still the unsolved, ongoing issue of search history not appearing and watch history not updating. You will see "top" searches in the app's "search" section ("flame" icons) instead of your personal search history ("clock" icons).

 

 

 

 

I started a thread on Google support, but I don't have any confidence that it will do any good.

Hopes this helps some people...

 

  • MrMark's avatar
    MrMark
    Streaming Star
    4 years ago

    First of all, thank you!  Secondly, how the heck did you figure that out?

    I had to try it for myself, and it certainly does produce a different result.  I see both search and watch history, so that's nice.  But then within a few minutes, I needed to watch a live stream associated with a different brand channel, so the whole idea kind of fell apart at that moment.  The very reason for brand channels is to organize different interests, so not being able to switch between them may be worse than not being able to see history.

    But I appreciate your ability to discover this work-around...perhaps it will be enough for some people.

    Meanwhile, the Roku I was testing on seems to have lost it's ability to stay connected to the iPhone app, which killed the option to listen via AirPods.  I have no idea if this new problem is related to this particular way of signing in, but I intend to change it back and see what happens.  There are so many Roku issues that I'm ready to give up on it.

    • Psilobite's avatar
      Psilobite
      Roku Guru
      4 years ago

      I only have one brand account, so I can't test, but...

      If you follow the steps I listed (skip steps 1 and 2 and do an "Add account" instead), when you get to step 5, you should be able to select a different brand account, then add it to the app, and it should appear with the pages.plusgoogle.com e-mail.

      If it doesn't work, try resetting the app, and starting at step 1, add all of your brand accounts, before you add your primary Google account. ("Sign in" first time, "Add account" to add more brand accounts.)

      If you're like me and had a YouTube account before Google bought YouTube, your YouTube account got turned into a "brand" account. So for me, I have tons of favorites, playlists, watch history, search history, comments, etc. all on that "brand" account.

      It is possible to move the brand account to a new Google account, and just make it a primary Google account. But doing this will clear/reset watch and search history, and it will also "reset" comments to the new account, which now starts with zero comment history. All of your old comments posted to YouTube will still be there, but you will forever lose access to them, as well as getting updates when anyone replies to any of your old comments. I've been surprised to see someone reply to a comment I made in 2010 that I barely even remember making.

      • MrMark's avatar
        MrMark
        Streaming Star
        4 years ago

        How did you work this out?  I messed with it until I was sick of it and never saw it.

  • eighmii's avatar
    eighmii
    Newbie
    4 years ago

    ARE YOU REALLY TELLING ME THAT all I had to do was type youtube.com/activate instead of youtube.com/tv/activate?! (Yes - it actually works! I've been trying to solve this for months and thought it was a Youtube issue for some reason - hence why it took months.) I didn't think to grab screenshots unfortunately, but by typing the url without the "/tv", it will prompt Google to ask you for permissions to access certain parts of your Google account, which does not happen if you type the URL as displayed by the Roku Youtube app (presumably due to an update, the Apple one in particular).

    This issue has been driving me absolutely nuts for the last few months because I watch Youtube every day for hours and also fall asleep with the TV on, so I can never find where I left off! Or easily click on frequent searches in my history. Etc etc.. you all know the reasons why this is annoying. And I've been using the same branded account for roughly 15 years, I'm a mod on many channels, and I stream from my channel so switching/moving everything over to my regular Google account wasn't really an effective option as I go back and forth between TV and PC all the time. 

    Basically this was a really long-winded, tl;dr way of saying THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY SANITY and essentially changing my life... back to the way it was a few months ago. :smileytongue:

    • Psilobite's avatar
      Psilobite
      Roku Guru
      4 years ago

      Remember, if a video is age restricted, you won't be able to watch it. It will give a message, "Something went wrong - Sorry, something is wrong. This video may be inappropriate for some users. Sign into your primary account to confirm your age," with "Back" as the only option. Even if you sign into the YouTube Roku channel with your primary account, age restricted viewing will only work on the brand account appearing under your main Google sign in (the one that doesn't save watch history or show search history).

       

      • MrMark's avatar
        MrMark
        Streaming Star
        4 years ago

        Hey, it's q work-around, but as work-arounds go, it's a pretty good one!

  • Fretman's avatar
    Fretman
    Channel Surfer
    4 years ago

    Psilobite , thank you for your solution.  Now able to get my Watch History working again using my branded account.

  • RegalElevator's avatar
    RegalElevator
    Newbie
    4 years ago
    Psilobite wrote:

    [...]

     

    Hopes this helps some people...

    For any future readers of this thread - the solution worked for me as well - just going to youtube.com/activate. In my case there's a Google account and a kind-of-attached "YouTube only" account, and being able to select the latter on the /activate URL meant History worked again.

    And thank you Psilobite for taking the time to write this up - you've just made my life a little easier :)

    • proto57's avatar
      proto57
      Binge Watcher
      4 years ago

      I've been reading with interest all the related problems, and suggested solutions to this. It's really great that everyone is trying to solve it. Nothing has worked for me, however.

      The most valuable advice seems to be that one should activate through "youtube.com/activate" rather than "youtube.com/tv/activate". But I cannot do either, because the only choices given me are to:

      1) Sign in with your TV

      2) Sign in with your phone

      There is NO option for me to sign in on my laptop, which I think every other ROKU app allows. And signing in on the TV only brings me back to this broken ap, with no search history. But the fact that some of you were able to use this solution suggests to me that I may be either missing something/doing something wrong; or have a different device, software, or setup. What thinks you all?

      Meanwhile, an odd semi-solution: I don't sign in at all. Strangely, that allows my search history to stay! Of course I have none of my subscriptions, but with the search history, I can just as quickly get to my favorite channels. For instance, I search for "samcrac" once, and then when I want to go the channel again, it is either there on the list, or I just have to type "s" or "sa" and I've got it.

      And it seems there are WAY LESS commercials. When I am logged on, for even the shortest videos, I get double commercials every two or three minutes... and many are not "skippable". But when not logged on, there are far fewer commercials, usually just two at the beginning, and once more in the middle. Ahhhhh... and, they are usually allowed to be skipped.

      Of course since this barrage... curse... flood... of commercials that Youtube had unleashed on us... I find my self on my laptop watching far more often, because here I can control the ads... that is, use my old buddy which rhymes with "cad docker".

      Anyway, great input from others, and I'm glad it worked for many... maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong, so I can possibly get it to work for me.

      Proto57

      • proto57's avatar
        proto57
        Binge Watcher
        4 years ago

        UPDATE! I ended up answering my own question... that is, how to get the ROKU app to allow me to register on my laptop at all, since the app was only giving me the options to register the youtube app on my TV screen or phone.

        Since the log in screen was still open on the TV, I thought I would click "sign in on phone", to see what would happen, even though I didn't want to do it this way. This brought up another screen, which gives ANOTHER option at the bottom, called, "Try another way", or like that. It is when you click on THAT, that it gives the option sign in with a browser.

        I did that, using the suggested "youtube.com/activate" rather than "youtube.com/tv/actvate", and yes, all my search history is back, and all my subscriptions are intact.

        Well you all probably knew all this, but for anyone else with this problem, I lay it out here.

        Thanks for all the help and advice...

        Proto57

    • MrMark's avatar
      MrMark
      Streaming Star
      4 years ago

      I appreciate Psilobite 's work-around too - I'm using it myself!

      With that said, I just don't want anyone to mistake this for a proper solution.  For example, I have noticed that there are now multiples of my brand channels, and it's not clear how to distinguish one from the other, nor whether it affects the history on the given Roku device and/or all other devices that use the same(?) history.  There are some other strange behaviors too, that I can't quite put my finger on.  Maybe it's just because I spent so much time using the "wrong" channels, but it seems to me that some of the history (and recommendations) is propagating between channels.  I'll post again if it becomes clear that this is actually true.