Roku setup

[61Seagrave]

I've gone 'all-in' with Roku, and am setting up 6 devices (2 Roku TV's, 4 Roku Ultras, and 2 Streaming Stick+).

Anyway, I've got everything working just great, but I was wondering if there was a way to 'copy' one devices settings and then 'paste' it into the other devices. I understand that credentials for pay services will need to be authorized on each one...no problem there. But is there some easy way to get my Home screen layouts and channel lineups to look exactly alike?

[atc98092 · Accepted solution]

If they are all linked to the same Roku user account, they will all have identical channels installed. If a channel is added or removed from one, the same happens on all of them. However, each device is permitted their own tile layout on the home screen. No, there's no way to copy that between devices. And yes, you'll need to enter login credentials for each device individually for each channel that requires it. 

[61Seagrave]

Thanks! It's nice to hear from an expert.

[Joemama]

That is so annoying for a household with many TVs ...  please Let me know if there’s a way to do this or if this has been updated

[atc98092]

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@Joemama wrote:

That is so annoying for a household with many TVs ...  please Let me know if there’s a way to do this or if this has been updated

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Nope, no way to do so. You get all the same channels on every Roku device linked to the same account (assuming the device supports that channel), but you'll have to enter the credentials on each set and arrange the home screen tiles as desired. 

[CoolCondoChick]

is that true if you add the app directly on the roku device? It doesn't show up on other Rokus.  Do you have to add it on a computer to get it on all of your devices?

[atc98092]

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@CoolCondoChick wrote:

is that true if you add the app directly on the roku device? It doesn't show up on other Rokus.  Do you have to add it on a computer to get it on all of your devices?

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No, it doesn't matter where you add the channel, either the web site or on a device. It will appear on every device linked to that account. You might have to force an update for it to appear, but it should be there the following day if you don't. The only exception is if the channel isn't supported on a specific device. For example, if you have an older Roku, say the Roku 2 2720, and you add Disney+ to your devices, it will not appear on the 2720, because Disney+ doesn't support that old of a device. 

[kbachler]

Seems odd. ROKU "knows" the channel positions, so there must be information representing that. It would seem to be ideal to layout channels online and then "push" the tile organization to each device.

Something similar can be done with YoutubeTV's line-up channels. I can go online, reorganize the channels, and it automatically carries wherever watched.

This sounds like a feature that should be added - and that shouldn't be that difficult.

[atc98092]

Your device knows the tile layout, but that doesn't mean that information is available to the main servers. If you think about how many Roku devices there are in circulation, even adding an insignificant datapoint like the position could translate into a huge increase of the size of database that stores your account info. Some privacy groups would probably be against storing any additional user information in a central location. And any time you move a tile it would need to be uploaded to the server. Myself personally, I can't think the effort involved would be worth the result. I have about 50 channels attached to my account. When I added a new device recently, I of course had to reposition my tiles as desired. Even with that many channels, I spent less than 5 minutes arranging them. Partly because I only care about the position of maybe 6-10 of them. The rest I really don't care where they end up, as they're rarely used. 

Also, don't forget that some users may prefer being able to put tiles in a different location. For a device used by children, you might want the kid's preferred channels at the top, while someone else may wish a different channel there. You could of course have a check box that tells the Roku to ignore the user layout, but again you're doing more programming and have the need to store additional information. Most Roku devices have limited memory, and there simply may not be enough room for stuff like that. 

[AVDesignGuy]

A HUGE feature for Audio Video techs & consumers alike would be home screen management from the online Roku account.  This lack of easily making multiple players have same apps and layout is a major advantage to using Roku's chief streaming player competitor (ATV).

For consumers who buy players 1 at a time, perhaps it's not such an important feature (although I still believe it is), but for technicians setting them up, this makes the difference between installing 10 Streming players in 1-hour install (ATV) or several hours install (Roku) -- Which of course also means the installation cost to the client is significantly more for Roku.

The ideal way of this working would be from either a computer or an app to be able to:

1) Push out the Home Screen layout from 1 player to all players

2) Edit players Home Screens individually (as opposed to the syn feature that when enabled, adds and deletes apps across all devices_ I may not want my Kids & guest bedroom roku players to have the Playboy channel app on it for example)

3) Lock the Home Screens so no one can delete apps

4) Ability to Enter login credentials for streaming service providers at the account level that syncs with all players