Channels & viewing

[Psilobite]

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@J_Mo wrote:

I have this exact problem.   The search page is empty.  I have search history turned off, but youtube is useless to me without the search page.

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Are you using Adguard? Add a custom filter rule:

@@||static.doubleclick.net^$important

This made search appear for me, but without personal search history. It appears to show "top" searches instead of the personal history, which is what it shows to a user who isn't logged in. "Top" searches have a flame icon to the left of them. Personal search history has a clock icon to the left of them.

I suspect this is going to go down the road of Roku blaming YouTube, YouTube blaming Roku, nobody knows anything about what happened (probably a typo or bug somewhere), and until someone can forward this issue to the people who actually code the channel, it's going to stay like this. If it goes any way I've experienced in the past, it could be months until this is fixed, or maybe even never.

Very frustrating for users.

[MrMark]

You got my attention with "Adguard".  What/where is that?   I know what it is as relates to real computers, but have no idea how that applies to Roku.  Perhaps a public DNS server?

[edburgos]

I was having the issue with the search page being empty. 

Turns out, long ago, I changed my router's DNS to use Adguard DNS which blocks lots of ads when you browse the internet. Looks like that may be causing issues with the youtube app. I switched the DNS to Google's and it's working now.

These are the DNS server I was using previously:

DNS1: 176.103.130.130
DNS2: 176.103.130.131

I am now using Google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

The issue with AdGuard's DNS could be because of this: AdGuard DNS moves to new addresses

But I am not 100% sure. At a later time I will try to switch back to using AdGuard with the new DNS addresses. I would hate it if it doesn't work, I don't think it ever blocked YouTube ads (I ended up getting premium) but they did work amazingly for web browsing, now that I switched to Google's DNS I'm seeing a bunch of ads in pages I didn't previously (on mobile/iOS, on desktop I still use an AdBlocker)

You'll have to figure out if this is the case for you, I really wouldn't know. It could be DNS within your OS (Windows/Mac/Linux) configuration or it could be DNS at the router level like mine. It's your setup, if you don't think you've ever done a change like that then perhaps you have a different problem.

Chances are that by accessing 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 on the webbrowser (type it out as if it were a website) you may hit your router admin page. Those are the most common IP addresses for the gateways, there's always a chance yours is different.

How to set up AdGuard DNS

^ that page takes you through the steps to setup adguard in different systems. You could use these steps to see what DNS are configured on your system, if they are the ones I pointed out above (176.*) then you have the old AdGuard DNS setup. Remove it or change it to the new AdGuard or Google's DNS.

[Psilobite]

This now affects the watch history. Anything I watch with the YouTube Roku channel while signed in with my brand account does not record in my watch history. That is global... if I log in to YouTube on a computer with a web browser using my brand ID, videos watched on the YouTube Roku channel under my brand ID don't appear.

While the problem described above is still happening with the search history, anything I search for in the YouTube Roku channel when logged in with my brand account does seem to record and can be viewed in a web browser on myactivity.google.com.

Another thing I should mention, is that when I used to log in to YouTube on a clean web browser, it would prompt me for which account I wanted to log in with (I have two... the "Google" account and the YouTube brand account). Now, it only shows my "Google" account, but when I log in with that, it then defaults to my brand account, and I can switch to the Google account after logging in.

And another thing... that thing about this not affecting the YouTube app on an older smart TV? Well, I did the "Reset App" on the smart TV, then logged back in, and now it too has the same symptoms as the YouTube Roku Channel. So this appears to NOT be a Roku problem. I believe this will affect brand accounts (not sure how many... mine is quite old, created pre 2010) on ANY YouTube app for televisions (Playstation, Amazon Fire, etc.), but users may not notice an issue unless they either reset the app, or log out and log back in again, and select their brand account.

[Psilobite]

I tried creating a new channel (brand account). I logged into the YouTube Roku app and selected this new channel. Here, too, search history does not appear (only "top" searches with the little flame icons appearing to the left), and watch history is not tracked at all. So, this seems to affect *any* brand account on YouTube apps for television.

[atc98092]

You are all overlooking one thing: Google creates and maintains the YouTube application for the various devices. Roku has nothing to do with how a channel functions. If YouTube on Roku devices is lacking something that is available on other devices, it's because that's the way Google developed the channel. Perhaps it's a limitation of the programming language that is used on Roku devices (it is different than what any other device uses), or it's simply because the programmers wrote the application that way. But in both cases, it has nothing to do with Roku themselves. You simply cannot compare functionality of applications written for different devices with each other.

[Psilobite]

I edited my post... it only worked on my older smart TV because I was still signed in from an older login and re-authenticated. When I reset the app and logged back in, it now has the exact same symptoms as the Roku YouTube channel. So it's definitely a Google/YouTube issue.

It's possible that this is affecting more users who don't know it yet, because their app is still using an older login cookie or credential like my old smart TV was. If they reset the app or log in on a new device with a brand account, then they'll have the same problems described here.

This is so far only affecting brand accounts, not regular Google accounts, so I'm in the process of trying to move my brand account. I don't want it on my main Google/Gmail account (that's why it's a brand account), so I'm going to try to move it to a new Google account, following the instructions here (at the bottom, titled "Move your Brand Account to a different Google Account):

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3056283

This requires me to wait seven days until I can set the new Google account as primary owner. After that, I will try to transfer the brand account to the new Google account, using "Move channel" on this page:

https://www.youtube.com/account_advanced

But I'm not sure if that's going to work for a transferred brand account.

They might fix this by then, but, I'll be surprised if they do.

[J_Mo]

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@Psilobite wrote:

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@J_Mo wrote:

I have this exact problem.   The search page is empty.  I have search history turned off, but youtube is useless to me without the search page.

---

Are you using Adguard? Add a custom filter rule:

@@||static.doubleclick.net^$important

This made search appear for me, but without personal search history. It appears to show "top" searches instead of the personal history, which is what it shows to a user who isn't logged in. "Top" searches have a flame icon to the left of them. Personal search history has a clock icon to the left of them.

I suspect this is going to go down the road of Roku blaming YouTube, YouTube blaming Roku, nobody knows anything about what happened (probably a typo or bug somewhere), and until someone can forward this issue to the people who actually code the channel, it's going to stay like this. If it goes any way I've experienced in the past, it could be months until this is fixed, or maybe even never.

Very frustrating for users.

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I'm not using adguard, but I'm using a similar system; pihole.  The interesting thing for me is, even if I disable the pihole, the search page still does not reappear.  Only after changing my DHCP server to deliver google's DNS server addresses instead of the pihole address, and then resetting the ROKU's networking or rebooting the ROKU, will the Youtube search page reappear.

This is a problem that has only appeared in the last week or so.  Prior to that, it all worked fine with pihole.

[MrMark]

Well, I think there's truth in what you're saying because in trying to make it work on my Roku, I signed out all of my Roku's at https://myaccount.google.com/device-activity, and then after that, all of my Roku's started the aberrant behavior.

With that said, YouTube works as expected on all browsers and mobile devices, so it's not YouTube as such.  Perhaps Roku did a firmware update that made it stop working.  I don't know, and honestly, I shouldn't have to figure it out because I'm neither Google nor Roku.  It's one of them for sure, so if they unwilling to collaborate, what hope does any Roku user have?

And I'd like to point out too that I can't remember the option to use a phone to sign in on Roku ever working.  Roku even published a work-around.  If they know it doesn't work, why not fix it instead?

[MrMark]

We need friends at Google and Roku.  They could call each other up and figure it out.  Seems obvious, but also impossible.  This stupid forum software insists on more than 140 characters, so...