Roku Client updates?

[ServerNoob005 2]

I don't mean to sound indignant so please read the following neutrally as that is the intended tone. My two cents: My genuine feeling is that the Roku app is severely lacking, relative to its peers. I feel I would potentially use Emby completely over Plex (especially since their UI and controls are going to hell on their side) if I wasn't a Roku user. It feels like if you chose Roku, you chose the wrong streaming box for Emby. My two key complaints are thus:

1. This has been talked about before, but it remains a major miss that in the Roku app there is NO control over the video time (least for shows. I need to recheck for movies).

1. There is no forward/backward 10 seconds buttons, only pause and next/previous episode.
2. You cannot scroll up to the time bar and tick it back or forward to any spot to manually fast forward/backward. 

This leaves you with starting from the beginning or from a chapter- no other options. In my eyes it's a critically important feature. This is something you can do on a VHS but not Emby on Roku. This is a basic/quintessential feature of digital movies and youtube. Why do we have less options than a VHS?

 

2. With regard to QLA, I think the answer to make the Roku app better is fundamentally simple. Users just want the same experience on all devices. I know the answer is not that simple on a technical level, but on a surface level, in my eyes that's is what Emby needs and it's what plex does even as its being enshittified. On PC and IOS, emby rocks, and it's basically the same experience on the devices. The Roku app simply has choices in its design that I don't understand. Things that make me just ask "Why did you do this? You already solved this on PC."

For example, watching a show: 
The process to select a show episode in Emby on Roku: Press TV show, scroll down to episodes thumbnails which are horizontal, press thumbnail. Now we are brought to the same exact screen except the title text changed. You need to notice that the text changed and hit play- there is no other indicator. To me this is strange. because

The process to select a show episode on PC and IOS: Drop down of episodes vertically. If you select the video it plays, if you select the text, it opens a page...with the thumbnail!

 

In short, I don't think you need to feel like you are reinventing the wheel for Roku. If the displays are designed exactly the same, people will figure it out. There aren't a lot of things you can press and screw up. There is no manual, but a roku only has arrows, an okay button which is "forward", and a back button which is used as "previous". And that is kind of it. In the end, we just need the same experience.

Edited September 27, 2025 by ServerNoob005

[speechles 2055]

  

16 minutes ago, ServerNoob005 said:

1. This has been talked about before, but it remains a major miss that in the Roku app there is NO control over the video time (least for shows. I need to recheck for movies).

1. There is no forward/backward 10 seconds buttons, only pause and next/previous episode.
2. You cannot scroll up to the time bar and tick it back or forward to any spot to manually fast forward/backward. 

 

There actually is something for both of these issues.

For #1: Use the D-pad and press left to go back 10 seconds or right to go forward 10 seconds. It will not bring up the OSD. You can press it repeatedly say 4x fast to move 40 seconds.

For #2: Use the thumbnail scrubbing. You can visually see where you are. Press the fast-forward or rewind button on the Roku remote. The first press is 1x the second press 2x until you get to 4x them it loops back around. Using this method there will be visible screenshots of what will be on the screen at those moments.

Because of this we do not actually have users requesting to gain focus onto the timeline directly to scrub. Were you not aware it worked this way?

16 minutes ago, ServerNoob005 said:

For example, watching a show: 
The process to select a show episode in Emby on Roku: Press TV show, scroll down to episodes thumbnails which are horizontal, press thumbnail. Now we are brought to the same exact screen except the title text changed. You need to notice that the text changed and hit play- there is no other indicator. To me this is strange.

Can you show screenshots of what you mean?

 

I think it mainly depends on what you have set for this setting. You can also press Play on the remote directly on something to play it. You do not have to enter the detail screen.

If you show us screenshots of what you mean and where in the Roku app this happens I can better understand and perhaps we can solve this too.

I know you aren't being indignant. You are being human and you have a need. You have to express that need somehow. Some people feel attacked when people ask for changes. We do not feel that way here. We understand that change is a part of evolution. We will evolve as people want things and time moves forward. We do not have plans to incorporate anything except "Your Media, Your Way!". If we are not doing that we are fail at our jobs. We do not plan on fail. We are just missing expectations. If we knew what those expectations were in the fist place we could do better. Hope you understand. We are human just like you and we actually want the same thing. A kick ass media player on the Roku for all our personal media collection. We are on your side.

[rookies 12]

40 minutes ago, ServerNoob005 said:

For example, watching a show: 
The process to select a show episode in Emby on Roku: Press TV show, scroll down to episodes thumbnails which are horizontal, press thumbnail. Now we are brought to the same exact screen except the title text changed. You need to notice that the text changed and hit play- there is no other indicator. To me this is strange. because

The process to select a show episode on PC and IOS: Drop down of episodes vertically. If you select the video it plays, if you select the text, it opens a page...with the thumbnail!

In short, I don't think you need to feel like you are reinventing the wheel for Roku

This is to my point, functionality notes aside.  The app doesn't follow standard patterns for this type of app.  It's not "intuitive", creating this feeling of "ok so what do I do now!"
 

40 minutes ago, ServerNoob005 said:

I feel I would potentially use Emby completely over Plex (especially since their UI and controls are going to hell on their side) if I wasn't a Roku user

As for the point regarding plex:
Plex did two things simultaneously that generated the issue they have with their Roku app. They made major change and they did so while reducing functionality.  This pissed off a LOT of people.  Because people don't like change, and they like losing functionality even less.  The current Roku app for plex is a complete slow motion train wreck, but not for the reasons you will hear a lot of people giving. It's mostly a perception and communication problem.  The reality is that the new app utilizes continuity of design and know patterns to create an intuitive experience. My wife figure out the new plex UI in a matter of a day or two and quit complaining about it. So once the hoopla subsides adoption will likely remain about the same. 

Both Plex and Roku have much bigger issues related to their treatment of user data, and utilizing them as profit centers, than they ever will have with the implementation of their apps because of this. 

Edited September 28, 2025 by rookies

[ebr 16169]

1 hour ago, ServerNoob005 said:

For example, watching a show: 
The process to select a show episode in Emby on Roku: Press TV show, scroll down to episodes thumbnails which are horizontal, press thumbnail. Now we are brought to the same exact screen except the title text changed. You need to notice that the text changed and hit play- there is no other indicator. To me this is strange. because

The process to select a show episode on PC and IOS: Drop down of episodes vertically. If you select the video it plays, if you select the text, it opens a page...with the thumbnail!

Hi. I'm afraid I'm not understanding this either but, also, you are comparing a point and click interface on a small screen to a remote-control only interface on a big screen.  I think it you looked at our other apps on a TV, you would see very close to the same interface when dealing with videos.

However, as Speechles pointed out, there are a number of quick ways to play something and seeking is exactly like the other apps too with very quick, one-button-press actions for that.  

Also, if you turn on the option on your server to create thumbnails in your videos, you will get thumb-by-thumb seeking along the timeline in the Roku app.

 

Finally, our settings screen is using the standard Roku elements for settings.  Its pattern follows the exact same pattern as the Roku itself.

[ServerNoob005 2]

@speechles@ebr

1. What the... am I stupid... No, I was honestly not aware that was a thing, as silly as that might sound. I can accept I am wrong. Mixed feelings I suppose. On one hand its better- less clicks, on the other I suppose I expected the lower dashboard to be your one stop shop to control the video. Funny enough it looks like plex does something similar. Now I'm wondering if I'm gas lighting myself. Did I just never try to do that because learned behavior from plex to go down to the bar? Did they have both options or...I dunno. Well- don't I feel stupid.
2. Okay I did a bit more back and forth comparison and I guess my complaint is more of a preference I suppose. What I was seeing with vertical vs horizontal is that on your PC if you have a series with multiple seasons, you get a horizontal and then a vertical display. I see why. It's because you are showing the cast data. On the opposite end, if you have a series that is a single season, and you don't show the season you get a horizontal display because you show the cast data. I suppose I get and it doesn't mean anything.
   
   I guess what I actually don't like is a lot simpler. I just find it weird when you select an episode in Emby, that it doesn't change the art on screen or show a thumbnail to show a visual indicator that you did. In the PC app, in the IOS app it does. I guess personally I always look more at the image for verification than the text as a verification that I am there. It just feels clunky to me for some reason. Maybe its standard practice across streaming services. I guess without the visual indicator, it feels weird when it doesn't jsut start, and likewise with the inclusion of "more from season #" it makes it feel like you didn't move. Maybe that makes some kind of sense I dunno- I probably just need to get used to it.
   
   Huh...well another classic case of me being dumb in the forums, but I guess at least I'm learning, albeit slowly.

[ebr 16169]

I guess I'm still not completely following but you are still comparing a mobile interface to a TV one.  I think if you looked at our Android app on a TV device, you'd see pretty much the exact same presentation.

But, also, you are looking at different item screens on the two devices too.  You opened a Season on mobile but the Series on the Roku.  If you opened a Season on the Roku, you would get a very similar presentation there, too.  However, as Speechles pointed out, the Roku (and all our TV presentations) has an option to not show seasons as individual items.

Finally, you can always use the "Play" button on your Roku remote to directly play the focused item without opening its detail screen.

P.S. Also note that, once you start watching something, the "Next Up" and "Continue Watching" features are going to present to you the next episode right up front in a number of places.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

I guess what I actually don't like is a lot simpler. I just find it weird when you select an episode in Emby, that it doesn't change the art on screen or show a thumbnail to show a visual indicator that you did

Hi, do you just mean a loading indicator so that you don't end up pressing it again?

[ksj01 1]

The issue with the Roku app that I’m finding is that there is no way to perform actions against a show from the “Continue Watching” strip. For example, you can’t mark an episode as Watched without clicking into the episode’s page. 
 

But more importantly, there’s no way to remove a show, as far as I can tell, to remove a show from Continue Watching via Roku. You can do it from the iOS app and from a web browser, but I have not found any way to do it from Roku. 
 

I also can’t figure out how to use vertical posters for the “Continue Watching” row. It uses the horizontal banners instead on Roku, despite my Samsung TV displaying the vertical posters that I’d expect.

The UI sometimes feels a bit strange, though. Like sometimes the spinning loading icon will be a chunky segmented circle, and other times it’s a much more modern thin “smooth” circle. The chunky segmented circle is throughout most of the UI, and the modern circle finally comes up once a show officially starts to load content. This chunky segmented circle also lags a bunch, stuttering frequently, which makes the whole UI feel stuttery , even when you’re not navigating it. Another issue is the way the “Continue Watching” row loads in after the rest of the UI using a spinning circle, which causes the UI to jump a bit once the row finally loads; a more seamless experience might be to have empty poster art rectangles where the shows and movies will eventually load into, which are then populated with posters and titles once the load is complete; alternatively, waiting until all visible elements load before displaying anything, though this would likely “feel” slower, even if it’s less clunky. And while I think it’s already been mentioned, having the libraries display as a row rather than a menu item along the top or left comes across as “out of place”. Roku also doesn’t respect the UI color highlights I’ve selected in my user settings, while others do. 
 

And while this isn’t exclusive to Emby or Roku, I’ve always hated how the “Continue Watching” row will display two different instances of a show if it exists in two libraries (like a TV library and a 4K TV library). Emby obviously recognizes that they are the same content, because watch status and current playback position and whatnot, so it seems it should be possible to merge them in Continue Watching. If there is a concern about which version will play when resuming from Continue Watching, the user could be prompted with which one to play once the content has been selected, or it could default to the highest resolution or something. This double listing issue also happens when you Favorite a show, which makes the Favorites page look kind of ridiculous. 
 

Another peculiarity that I’ve found is the way the “back” button works when navigating through multiple episodes of the same season. For example, let’s say I have a show on my “Continue Watching list, but I fell asleep while watching it and I need to mark several episodes as “Unplayed”. So I click into the episode I have in Continue Watching, which takes me to the episode details. Let’s say it’s Season 2,  Episode 8. Below the episode details is a horizontal list of episodes in Season 2. So I go down to this horizontal list and select the previous episode, Episode 7, to mark it as “Unplayed”. Then I do the same thing again, going down and selecting Episode 6, then Episode 5. Now that I’m done, I press the “back” button on my remote, expecting to leave the show entirely, but I’m instead taken back to Episode 6. Pressing it again takes me back to Episode 7. And again, it takes me back to Episode 8. It’s only at this point, where I’ve navigated back through every page I’ve just come through, that pressing the “back” button finally takes me out of the show. I can’t think of any other application I’ve ever used that works this way, where every single page is a breadcrumb to be reversed through. 
 

Another reason I find the application clunky is because of the way the “episode details” load in while navigating the Home Screen. It’s clunky because I’ve arranged my Home Screen such that the Continue Watching is at the top, then my libraries, then the Recently Added section. The Continue Watching section has the episode details above the tiles, listing the episode number, title, description, etc. Then I go down to the Libraries row, which doesn’t have this information. But the episode details from the previous row don’t disappear immediately, and the whole UI “jumps” once the episode details finally disappear. Going down again, it’s the same thing: the UI scrolls immediately, but it takes a second for the episode details to load, and the entire UI “jumps” again. 
 

I’m sure I can give other examples once I’m actually using it again, if you’d like more. 

[ksj01 1]

On 9/27/2025 at 8:34 PM, ebr said:

Hi. I'm afraid I'm not understanding this either but, also, you are comparing a point and click interface on a small screen to a remote-control only interface on a big screen.  I think it you looked at our other apps on a TV, you would see very close to the same interface when dealing with videos.

However, as Speechles pointed out, there are a number of quick ways to play something and seeking is exactly like the other apps too with very quick, one-button-press actions for that.  

Also, if you turn on the option on your server to create thumbnails in your videos, you will get thumb-by-thumb seeking along the timeline in the Roku app.

 

Finally, our settings screen is using the standard Roku elements for settings.  Its pattern follows the exact same pattern as the Roku itself.

I’m actually running into a small problem with the seeking behavior. Specifically, I will often click the “OK” button or press “Up” on the d-pad to see where I’m at in a show, and there’s no way to seek from there. You have to first exit the progress bar view before you can actually change your progress, which feels really peculiar. Even the “fast forward” and “rewind” buttons don’t do anything if the popup menu is active (the “back 10 seconds” button does work, though). I know I’ll get used to this one, but it’s just so strange to see the progress bar and have no way to actually interact with it, and only be able to interact with it when you can’t see it. 

[ebr 16169]

14 hours ago, ksj01 said:

I can’t think of any other application I’ve ever used that works this way, where every single page is a breadcrumb to be reversed through. 

Really?  That's how the back button works in most applications that have them.  Its taking you back to where you just were.  That's no different in any of the other Emby apps, correct?

14 hours ago, ksj01 said:

but I fell asleep while watching it and I need to mark several episodes as “Unplayed”

You might want to turn on the "Are you still watching" feature in the app to minimize this.

14 hours ago, ksj01 said:

Like sometimes the spinning loading icon will be a chunky segmented circle, and other times it’s a much more modern thin “smooth” circle

Yes, the basic UI and the internal Roku player have different progress indicators.  The function pretty much identically, however.  The only difference is visual.  We can probably update the UI one but, honestly, I've kinda liked knowing when the Roku player is actually loading something.

14 hours ago, ksj01 said:

But more importantly, there’s no way to remove a show, as far as I can tell, to remove a show from Continue Watching via Roku. You can do it from the iOS app and from a web browser, but I have not found any way to do it from Roku. 

We can look at adding this to the detail screen.  The main issue with these operations from the list and grid screens is that the Roku doesn't really have a good "context menu" paradigm like most other platforms.  The Roku UI stresses simplicity.

 

12 hours ago, ksj01 said:

Even the “fast forward” and “rewind” buttons don’t do anything if the popup menu is active (the “back 10 seconds” button does work, though). I know I’ll get used to this one, but it’s just so strange to see the progress bar and have no way to actually interact with it, and only be able to interact with it when you can’t see it. 

We can definitely look at improving this.

[ksj01 1]

50 minutes ago, ebr said:

Really?  That's how the back button works in most applications that have them.  Its taking you back to where you just were.  That's no different in any of the other Emby apps, correct?

I am seeing that it happens in the iOS Emby app, but it’s still something I have never come across. But as I think about it, it may be the way the page is set up. Or more specifically, the Episode Detail page doesn’t feel like it should be a new page for each episode, but rather an updating module based on what has been selected from the list of episodes below. To me, it doesn’t feel natural for a whole new page to load with identical elements. Instead, I would expect only the specific episode details to refresh with an AJAX call. This would result in the behavior I anticipate, though I’m sure other users would disagree. But really, if we’re comparing to other streaming apps, they’ve almost all moved away from even having Episode Detail screens, instead just offering a vertical list of seasons on the left and a vertical list of episodes on the right. 
 

50 minutes ago, ebr said:

Yes, the basic UI and the internal Roku player have different progress indicators.  The function pretty much identically, however.  The only difference is visual.  We can probably update the UI one but, honestly, I've kinda liked knowing when the Roku player is actually loading something.

The result of this is an app that feels pieced together, rather than a unified experience with a consistent design philosophy. A more appropriate solution might be to have a percentage indicator load once the Roku player starts loading something, which aligns with other streaming apps. 

50 minutes ago, ebr said:

We can look at adding this to the detail screen.  The main issue with these operations from the list and grid screens is that the Roku doesn't really have a good "context menu" paradigm like most other platforms.  The Roku UI stresses simplicity.

This one is tricky, because many streaming apps simply don’t let you remove media from your Continue Watching (looking at you, Netflix). But the ones that do (or allow you to interact with the UI with context menus in any way) use the “Star” button on the remote. When in the application, the “Star” button will trigger a context menu, while pressing it while a video is playing will open the Roku-native menu (which includes video, audio, subtitle, accessibility, etc. settings). This is true of the Roku Home Screen as well, where the “Star” button is used to load a context menu for the app tiles, allowing you to rearrange the tiles, check for updates for each app, and uninstall apps. I also checked Roku’s “Howdy” app, and they use the Star button as an item-based context menu, allowing you to mark specific content as Watched, “I like this” or “I don’t like this”, add to save list, and view description.
 

As far as I’m concerned, the Emby menu in the Roku app offers so few options that there’s no reason for it to monopolize one of the few buttons on the Roku remote. The only settings in the app are really “set once and never touch again”, so it’s sufficient for them to be accessible only from the “Settings” icon in the corner of the screen, rather than pulling them up using the contextual “star” button. 

[ebr 16169]

2 hours ago, ksj01 said:

When in the application, the “Star” button will trigger a context menu

Yes this is the Roku paradigm and what we'll use when we get around to context menus in our app.  Most Roku users don't care much though because the Roku itself stresses simple interfaces (I'd venture that over 60% of Roku users have no idea the star function is there - even with the hint on the Roku home screen).  So we haven't put in the time yet to build these (as an aside, the Roku UI is probably the most primitive and difficult to work with just FYI).

[Tremas 197]

23 hours ago, ebr said:

Most Roku users don't care much though because the Roku itself stresses simple interfaces

Um... i'm not in that camp, so +1 for context menus. I would use it daily. 

I agree that most like roku for the simplicity of the app selection/home screen interface, but once I'm in the app I would like the enhanced functionality. 

[ksj01 1]

I hope the following comes across as feedback as opposed to criticism. I recognize the difficulty in maintaining an app across such a range of devices and ecosystems. But it was mentioned in this thread that the team relies on user feedback to improve the app, so I figured I’d outline what I’m seeing in the app. With that said…

 

 

Roku’s own apps use the Star button to open context menus for interaction across the board. It’s used on the home screen and in the apps themselves.
 

Other apps that don’t offer any user interaction, like Netflix and Hulu, I feel do so because they have an “algorithm knows best” mindset where they don’t actually want you to interact with the interface in any way other than pressing “Play” on whatever they feed you. But Emby is fundamentally contrary to that mindset; it’s explicitly a user-curated experience. There is no algorithm deciding what you should watch, so there’s a fundamental need to allow the user to manipulate the content in place of that algorithm.
 

But it’s also strange to restrict interaction on a specific platform, especially when that platform has a dedicated “content interaction” button. The mobile apps and the web browser rely on context menus for interactivity, so why would the behavior differ for other platforms? 
 

And that ultimately brings me back to what I think is the main point of this thread, which is that the Roku app is not inline with other platforms in some ways that make it feel like it’s lagging behind. Here is a list of areas I’ve found that differ from other platforms:

1. A consistent loading icon across the board.

2. Context menus (though the Samsung app has no context menus as there is no dedicated button on the remote). 

3. No side menu.

4. Logo on the initial splash screen when launching the app.

5. On an Episode Details screen, there is no “Go to Season” button that exists on other platforms. I use this to mark a full season as Played or Unplayed (the Roku app has a “Go to Series” button, but other platforms have both).

6.  Very limited Settings menu (compared to Samsung app). A significant portion of the settings are behind a menu item that simply says “To adjust please use the user menu in the web app.”

7. When viewing episodes in a season, some platforms have the episodes displayed horizontally, while others have them displayed vertically. Not really a significant difference functionally, but still inconsistent.

8. No themes

9. Roku app doesn’t respect the “Accent Color” setting. I’ve found that other Roku apps have this feature, so it should be possible from a platform standpoint.

10. No “subtitle offset” option

11. No way to search for and download additional subtitles from the Internet

12. When watching content, pressing “down” on the d-pad simply brings up the progress bar, and pressing it again closes the progress bar. On other platform, there are 4 “tabs” below the progress bar that you can access with the d-pad: Info, Chapters, Cast & Crew, and Up Next; moving between these tabs automatically brings up their content without actually clicking on them. On Roku, these exist as separate icons to the right of the “Skip Back/Pause/Skip Forward” icons, and their content doesn’t load until you click the icon (and navigating to a different one requires backing out, then navigating, then clicking again). Not a significant difference in functionality, really, but it’s a difference that causes the Roku platform to feel out of date compared to other platforms. 

There are also some peculiarities that I’ve found across platforms that confuse me a bit:

1. On the mobile app, I can see technical details about a particular episode/movie file, like file size and bitrate, on the content’s Details page (below the Cast & Crew), but this information isn’t available on Roku or Samsung. The only way I can find the bitrate is to first start streaming the content and then enable “Stats for Nerds”. But for a server with a wide variety of file sizes and bitrates, this information can be helpful to know. 

1b. Outside of the system-wide quality settings, I can’t find a way to change the streaming quality until the content has been started and loaded enough to where it actually starts playing (there’s no way to open the playback menu while the content is loading, so you must wait until it’s buffered enough to begin playing the actual content). I find that the “Auto” quality is over aggressive, so I choose to run at “Original” quality, but there are days when my internet is acting up, so it can be helpful to change the quality before launching the content. If my internet is struggling enough, it may never actually load the content before timing out, which makes for a frustrating experience. 
 

1c. In instances where 1a occurs, I then need to go into the system menu to change the system-wide quality settings, but you have to go all the way back to the Home Screen to do so (the “Star” button only opens the Settings menu in the home screen and does nothing on any other page, and there is no side menu or setting button on the content Details screens). If you’d searched for the content, you then have to go through that process again after changing the streaming quality. 

2. There’s no “recent searches”, which makes the process of 1c even more frustrating, as you then need to type everything out again, which is never a fun experience with a TV remote (though I do appreciate the Roku keyboard is a grid, as opposed to the one long line that it is on my Samsung’s Emby app). 
 

3. The vast majority of the time, the “content loading” spinning icon (as opposed to the app’s chunky segmented icon) doesn’t have a progress percentage, but very rarely it does. I’ve seen this on both the Roku and the Samsung apps. On the mobile app, I’ve never seen a percentage. I don’t totally get why it’s only there occasionally (or rather, extremely rarely). 
 

4. As I mentioned in a previous post, there aren’t any “placeholder” squares in most of the UI when loading content, which makes loading any pages feel clunky. This is especially true when it causes the UI to shift as content loads in, but this depends on the page that’s trying to load. If you look at Netflix, Hulu, Roku’s apps, etc., you’ll find that they all feature empty gray placeholders where content will eventually load. This results in a much more fluid loading experience and makes the loading seem faster (even if it’s not actually any different). Perception is a very powerful thing when it comes to loading screens. 
 

5. If a side menu were added, I would configure it to have the following behavior, rather than the current behavior of prompting to exit the app/change server/sign out:

5a. If the “Horizontal Scroll Style” is set to “Fixed” (where rows become a continuous loop), pressing the “Back” button on the remote opens the side menu and places the cursor in it. 
5b. If the “Horizontal Scroll Style” is set to “Float” (where rows have a distinct beginning and end, at which point the cursor stops), pressing the “Back” button takes the user to the very beginning of the row they are on. From there, pressing “Back” again or “Left” on the d-pad opens the side menu. I’ll admit that this is just intuition on my part, and that using “Back” to immediately open the side menu and places the cursor into it regardless of the “Horizontal Scroll Style” may feel more natural overall. 
 

I’ve also found a few bugs in the Roku app while using it:

1. When changing the video quality during video playback, the app will occasionally just crash outright as soon as the quality option is selected. 
2. After searching for content and selecting a TV show, if you navigate down to the list of episodes, it’s impossible to navigate back up to the series details. The green highlight indicator will go up off-screen, and it seems like you can interact with the buttons, but you won’t be able to see what you’re doing because the display doesn’t reset at the top; it just stays stuck on the episode list. Once the cursor is up off screen, pressing “down” on the d-pad will cause the screen to “scroll” as if it were showing the Details portion of the screen. It’s really strange. 

 

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

3 hours ago, ksj01 said:

I hope the following comes across as feedback as opposed to criticism. I recognize the difficulty in maintaining an app across such a range of devices and ecosystems. But it was mentioned in this thread that the team relies on user feedback to improve the app, so I figured I’d outline what I’m seeing in the app. With that said…

 

 

Roku’s own apps use the Star button to open context menus for interaction across the board. It’s used on the home screen and in the apps themselves.
 

Other apps that don’t offer any user interaction, like Netflix and Hulu, I feel do so because they have an “algorithm knows best” mindset where they don’t actually want you to interact with the interface in any way other than pressing “Play” on whatever they feed you. But Emby is fundamentally contrary to that mindset; it’s explicitly a user-curated experience. There is no algorithm deciding what you should watch, so there’s a fundamental need to allow the user to manipulate the content in place of that algorithm.
 

But it’s also strange to restrict interaction on a specific platform, especially when that platform has a dedicated “content interaction” button. The mobile apps and the web browser rely on context menus for interactivity, so why would the behavior differ for other platforms? 
 

And that ultimately brings me back to what I think is the main point of this thread, which is that the Roku app is not inline with other platforms in some ways that make it feel like it’s lagging behind. Here is a list of areas I’ve found that differ from other platforms:

1. A consistent loading icon across the board.

2. Context menus (though the Samsung app has no context menus as there is no dedicated button on the remote). 

3. No side menu.

4. Logo on the initial splash screen when launching the app.

5. On an Episode Details screen, there is no “Go to Season” button that exists on other platforms. I use this to mark a full season as Played or Unplayed (the Roku app has a “Go to Series” button, but other platforms have both).

6.  Very limited Settings menu (compared to Samsung app). A significant portion of the settings are behind a menu item that simply says “To adjust please use the user menu in the web app.”

7. When viewing episodes in a season, some platforms have the episodes displayed horizontally, while others have them displayed vertically. Not really a significant difference functionally, but still inconsistent.

8. No themes

9. Roku app doesn’t respect the “Accent Color” setting. I’ve found that other Roku apps have this feature, so it should be possible from a platform standpoint.

10. No “subtitle offset” option

11. No way to search for and download additional subtitles from the Internet

12. When watching content, pressing “down” on the d-pad simply brings up the progress bar, and pressing it again closes the progress bar. On other platform, there are 4 “tabs” below the progress bar that you can access with the d-pad: Info, Chapters, Cast & Crew, and Up Next; moving between these tabs automatically brings up their content without actually clicking on them. On Roku, these exist as separate icons to the right of the “Skip Back/Pause/Skip Forward” icons, and their content doesn’t load until you click the icon (and navigating to a different one requires backing out, then navigating, then clicking again). Not a significant difference in functionality, really, but it’s a difference that causes the Roku platform to feel out of date compared to other platforms. 

There are also some peculiarities that I’ve found across platforms that confuse me a bit:

1. On the mobile app, I can see technical details about a particular episode/movie file, like file size and bitrate, on the content’s Details page (below the Cast & Crew), but this information isn’t available on Roku or Samsung. The only way I can find the bitrate is to first start streaming the content and then enable “Stats for Nerds”. But for a server with a wide variety of file sizes and bitrates, this information can be helpful to know. 

1b. Outside of the system-wide quality settings, I can’t find a way to change the streaming quality until the content has been started and loaded enough to where it actually starts playing (there’s no way to open the playback menu while the content is loading, so you must wait until it’s buffered enough to begin playing the actual content). I find that the “Auto” quality is over aggressive, so I choose to run at “Original” quality, but there are days when my internet is acting up, so it can be helpful to change the quality before launching the content. If my internet is struggling enough, it may never actually load the content before timing out, which makes for a frustrating experience. 
 

1c. In instances where 1a occurs, I then need to go into the system menu to change the system-wide quality settings, but you have to go all the way back to the Home Screen to do so (the “Star” button only opens the Settings menu in the home screen and does nothing on any other page, and there is no side menu or setting button on the content Details screens). If you’d searched for the content, you then have to go through that process again after changing the streaming quality. 

2. There’s no “recent searches”, which makes the process of 1c even more frustrating, as you then need to type everything out again, which is never a fun experience with a TV remote (though I do appreciate the Roku keyboard is a grid, as opposed to the one long line that it is on my Samsung’s Emby app). 
 

3. The vast majority of the time, the “content loading” spinning icon (as opposed to the app’s chunky segmented icon) doesn’t have a progress percentage, but very rarely it does. I’ve seen this on both the Roku and the Samsung apps. On the mobile app, I’ve never seen a percentage. I don’t totally get why it’s only there occasionally (or rather, extremely rarely). 
 

4. As I mentioned in a previous post, there aren’t any “placeholder” squares in most of the UI when loading content, which makes loading any pages feel clunky. This is especially true when it causes the UI to shift as content loads in, but this depends on the page that’s trying to load. If you look at Netflix, Hulu, Roku’s apps, etc., you’ll find that they all feature empty gray placeholders where content will eventually load. This results in a much more fluid loading experience and makes the loading seem faster (even if it’s not actually any different). Perception is a very powerful thing when it comes to loading screens. 
 

5. If a side menu were added, I would configure it to have the following behavior, rather than the current behavior of prompting to exit the app/change server/sign out:

5a. If the “Horizontal Scroll Style” is set to “Fixed” (where rows become a continuous loop), pressing the “Back” button on the remote opens the side menu and places the cursor in it. 
5b. If the “Horizontal Scroll Style” is set to “Float” (where rows have a distinct beginning and end, at which point the cursor stops), pressing the “Back” button takes the user to the very beginning of the row they are on. From there, pressing “Back” again or “Left” on the d-pad opens the side menu. I’ll admit that this is just intuition on my part, and that using “Back” to immediately open the side menu and places the cursor into it regardless of the “Horizontal Scroll Style” may feel more natural overall. 
 

I’ve also found a few bugs in the Roku app while using it:

1. When changing the video quality during video playback, the app will occasionally just crash outright as soon as the quality option is selected. 
2. After searching for content and selecting a TV show, if you navigate down to the list of episodes, it’s impossible to navigate back up to the series details. The green highlight indicator will go up off-screen, and it seems like you can interact with the buttons, but you won’t be able to see what you’re doing because the display doesn’t reset at the top; it just stays stuck on the episode list. Once the cursor is up off screen, pressing “down” on the d-pad will cause the screen to “scroll” as if it were showing the Details portion of the screen. It’s really strange. 

 

For me that comes across as TLDR. But I have noticed that many Roku users are very turned off by any complications. In fact I would have retired my Roku except there are a few apps I regularly use that are not available for Android including the NWSL app.

You might have better luck if you posted a separate post for each issue as issues are mostly worked on one at a time.

[speechles 2055]

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

I hope the following comes across as feedback as opposed to criticism. I recognize the difficulty in maintaining an app across such a range of devices and ecosystems. But it was mentioned in this thread that the team relies on user feedback to improve the app, so I figured I’d outline what I’m seeing in the app. With that said…

 

 

Roku’s own apps use the Star button to open context menus for interaction across the board. It’s used on the home screen and in the apps themselves.
 

Other apps that don’t offer any user interaction, like Netflix and Hulu, I feel do so because they have an “algorithm knows best” mindset where they don’t actually want you to interact with the interface in any way other than pressing “Play” on whatever they feed you. But Emby is fundamentally contrary to that mindset; it’s explicitly a user-curated experience. There is no algorithm deciding what you should watch, so there’s a fundamental need to allow the user to manipulate the content in place of that algorithm.
 

But it’s also strange to restrict interaction on a specific platform, especially when that platform has a dedicated “content interaction” button. The mobile apps and the web browser rely on context menus for interactivity, so why would the behavior differ for other platforms? 

I will go out on a limb here since you have been so gracious to give us your time. I know it took awhile to write your post. Because we value that time I will respond to most of your points. Otherwise they may never get answered. Keep in mind, some of what you are asking cannot be answered directly. I am just a team member. I cannot speak for the entire team. I am just speaking for myself.

The reason the star/options isn't being used for context is because at this point, quite honestly, IMO, no one has really complained about it. The app is developed to a far enough point now that those actions could now be considered. The other apps on Roku have updated to adopt the star/options button for context menus. We could do the same. I agree.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

And that ultimately brings me back to what I think is the main point of this thread, which is that the Roku app is not inline with other platforms in some ways that make it feel like it’s lagging behind. Here is a list of areas I’ve found that differ from other platforms:

1. A consistent loading icon across the board.

What do you mean? Can you show where this is inconsistent?

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

2. Context menus (though the Samsung app has no context menus as there is no dedicated button on the remote).

This will happen eventually. We will use the same star/options button as other apps.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

3. No side menu.

Indeed. We will eventually get to this point and it will happen just like context menus. Just cannot say when. We are working on updates. It is just hard to go into details without saying too much. Suffice to say, yes, we don't have one.. yet.

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

4. Logo on the initial splash screen when launching the app.

Hmm. What is wrong with the logo?

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

5. On an Episode Details screen, there is no “Go to Season” button that exists on other platforms. I use this to mark a full season as Played or Unplayed (the Roku app has a “Go to Series” button, but other platforms have both).

Merely on oversight on our part. We can add the other button, sure.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

6.  Very limited Settings menu (compared to Samsung app). A significant portion of the settings are behind a menu item that simply says “To adjust please use the user menu in the web app.”

This is by design. We can only offers options which we have framework built in the Roku app to support. People asked where are those options in the Roku app. We added them as stubs which reference back to the web app. The Roku is very limited in how large the app can be in size. We have to be very careful that the additions we make are worth the cost to include them. This is why some things may look jaggy or blurry with icons or images. We cannot afford the cost to include them at the full size because the bytes they consume could be used for actual code. There is a trade-off that must happen. We have tried to offer the best options most users would appreciate.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

7. When viewing episodes in a season, some platforms have the episodes displayed horizontally, while others have them displayed vertically. Not really a significant difference functionally, but still inconsistent.

We have both. In the settings under "Preferred TV show display". If you choose "Show all episodes of all seasons together" it will display all episodes in a row. It will also give you series tabs above the row. If you move to these tabs and press OK you can go to season view in vertical mode. If you move to those tabs and wait a bit the row at the bottom will adjust to match the season you are focused on. There are also "Show all episodes for only single season shows" and "Always show season folders" options too. You pick the one right for you. One of them can do both.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

8. No themes

I agree. The themes are not there because there is a complexity to adding them. The cost factor of do these include different images/icons which consume up bytes of space in the app package? We must be very careful how we spend those bytes. That is really the honest answer. If we do it now will that limit what we can do later. Then we have to remove old functionality to allow new. Or they would have to get dumbed way down once we get to a certain point. That is honestly why. If we get to a point where we can splurge on themes of course we would want to. That would be fun to make and fun to use. But it might blow the budget. That is why we have to be careful on how we approach everything on the Roku.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

9. Roku app doesn’t respect the “Accent Color” setting. I’ve found that other Roku apps have this feature, so it should be possible from a platform standpoint.

This also factors into the image/icon budget thing. But most of the accent color is just that. Color changes. But one thing still takes new images to change color. We would have to change how that thing is built to make it able to just accept color changes. Then it wouldn't cost us anything but lines of code to add this feature.

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

10. No “subtitle offset” option

I am sorry on this one. The Roku interface doesn't include anyway to modify the offset. We are using the standard Roku video player to render the subtitles.

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

11. No way to search for and download additional subtitles from the Internet

Yes. We do eventually plan on this happening. It just doesn't have a timeline, but it is on our issue tracker as missing from the app.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

12. When watching content, pressing “down” on the d-pad simply brings up the progress bar, and pressing it again closes the progress bar. On other platform, there are 4 “tabs” below the progress bar that you can access with the d-pad: Info, Chapters, Cast & Crew, and Up Next; moving between these tabs automatically brings up their content without actually clicking on them. On Roku, these exist as separate icons to the right of the “Skip Back/Pause/Skip Forward” icons, and their content doesn’t load until you click the icon (and navigating to a different one requires backing out, then navigating, then clicking again). Not a significant difference in functionality, really, but it’s a difference that causes the Roku platform to feel out of date compared to other platforms.

Yeah. The navigation uses the down keypress from the buttons to dismiss the OSD. If we were to change that and now have labels underneath it that you must navigate through it might cause people to become upset. Rather than change that trained behavior they were just added as icon buttons like the rest of them. It is just a design consideration we did to keep it simple.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

There are also some peculiarities that I’ve found across platforms that confuse me a bit:

1. On the mobile app, I can see technical details about a particular episode/movie file, like file size and bitrate, on the content’s Details page (below the Cast & Crew), but this information isn’t available on Roku or Samsung. The only way I can find the bitrate is to first start streaming the content and then enable “Stats for Nerds”. But for a server with a wide variety of file sizes and bitrates, this information can be helpful to know.

The "streaming cards" at the bottom of the web app. I know exactly what you mean. You are the first to question their absense in quite some time. They are on the issue tracker as missing from the Roku app. I can elevate the issue and raise it. This is one of the few missing things from the details view.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

1b. Outside of the system-wide quality settings, I can’t find a way to change the streaming quality until the content has been started and loaded enough to where it actually starts playing (there’s no way to open the playback menu while the content is loading, so you must wait until it’s buffered enough to begin playing the actual content). I find that the “Auto” quality is over aggressive, so I choose to run at “Original” quality, but there are days when my internet is acting up, so it can be helpful to change the quality before launching the content. If my internet is struggling enough, it may never actually load the content before timing out, which makes for a frustrating experience. 

You cannot change quality when the item is buffering. Once the item is playing the OSD is able to spawn and you can use the cog/gear and the video quality option. You can also access it from the settings. On the Roku many things are tracked when you start to play something back. There are lots of moving parts that get set in motion. If we allow you to reset all this as the playback is buffering there are so many ways things can do wrong. We tried to allow users to change subtitles/audio/quality before the stream starts and during buffering and it was just maddening to keep all those variables in sync. A serious headache mind trap of logic must be developed to do that. This is why so many other apps do not do that.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

1c. In instances where 1a occurs, I then need to go into the system menu to change the system-wide quality settings, but you have to go all the way back to the Home Screen to do so (the “Star” button only opens the Settings menu in the home screen and does nothing on any other page, and there is no side menu or setting button on the content Details screens). If you’d searched for the content, you then have to go through that process again after changing the streaming quality.

The star button should open the settings on the home, library, and search screens. On the library screens it will also ask if you want to open application settings or set a default tab. The details screen is meant to lack those so you get to see the backdrop unobstructed by that overhang. The overhang has the buttons and tabs and such. I understand what you mean though. I also suffer the same and have to press back until the overhang appears then can press star.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

2. There’s no “recent searches”, which makes the process of 1c even more frustrating, as you then need to type everything out again, which is never a fun experience with a TV remote (though I do appreciate the Roku keyboard is a grid, as opposed to the one long line that it is on my Samsung’s Emby app).

This was due to the simplicity of the Roku app. We aren't using the mini-keyboard. We use the full-size keyboard which allows style changes. So you can type a double quote. In order for search hints to appear we would need to have some area designed to contain them that you could focus on and select from. Rather than delve into that we chose to keep it very simple. The voice remote is fully functional on all the keyboards/pinpads. You do not have to type.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

3. The vast majority of the time, the “content loading” spinning icon (as opposed to the app’s chunky segmented icon) doesn’t have a progress percentage, but very rarely it does. I’ve seen this on both the Roku and the Samsung apps. On the mobile app, I’ve never seen a percentage. I don’t totally get why it’s only there occasionally (or rather, extremely rarely).

You don't like the chunky/clunky segmented spinner? We have had that for so long. That sleek slender spinner is part of the Roku UI layer. They spinner changing is indicative of when the hand off to the video player has occured. The percentage buffered only appears when it takes longer than it should. If it takes longer than 5 seconds to start video the percentage buffered will show in the middle of the spinner.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

4. As I mentioned in a previous post, there aren’t any “placeholder” squares in most of the UI when loading content, which makes loading any pages feel clunky. This is especially true when it causes the UI to shift as content loads in, but this depends on the page that’s trying to load. If you look at Netflix, Hulu, Roku’s apps, etc., you’ll find that they all feature empty gray placeholders where content will eventually load. This results in a much more fluid loading experience and makes the loading seem faster (even if it’s not actually any different). Perception is a very powerful thing when it comes to loading screens.

There are placeholders used on the grid. It allows loading these. But on the rows we do not know how many items are going to show ahead of time. With the grid you know on the first fetch you have 300 items out of 6000. So you know when loading more you can request 300 and show placeholders on those. But on the rows, it works differently. Each row title appears and then the entire row begins to fetch data top to bottom each row list. Then as the row has no data you see the row title disappear. The other rows move up to take its place. We do show placeholders. The first item in each row will be a loading spinner. That is until the row loads. The loading spinner is a single spot in the row because there is no concept of how many items will actually populate with data. It is very hard to next to impossible to change the code to do this without incurring time penalties. Time penalties are when you try to code around an issue. It adds overhead that must get executed. Then it might be slower to render having to wipe out all those placeholders and replace them.

 

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

5. If a side menu were added, I would configure it to have the following behavior, rather than the current behavior of prompting to exit the app/change server/sign out:

5a. If the “Horizontal Scroll Style” is set to “Fixed” (where rows become a continuous loop), pressing the “Back” button on the remote opens the side menu and places the cursor in it. 
5b. If the “Horizontal Scroll Style” is set to “Float” (where rows have a distinct beginning and end, at which point the cursor stops), pressing the “Back” button takes the user to the very beginning of the row they are on. From there, pressing “Back” again or “Left” on the d-pad opens the side menu. I’ll admit that this is just intuition on my part, and that using “Back” to immediately open the side menu and places the cursor into it regardless of the “Horizontal Scroll Style” may feel more natural overall.

That is likely how it will get done. Exactly as you have described.

22 hours ago, ksj01 said:

I’ve also found a few bugs in the Roku app while using it:

1. When changing the video quality during video playback, the app will occasionally just crash outright as soon as the quality option is selected. 
2. After searching for content and selecting a TV show, if you navigate down to the list of episodes, it’s impossible to navigate back up to the series details. The green highlight indicator will go up off-screen, and it seems like you can interact with the buttons, but you won’t be able to see what you’re doing because the display doesn’t reset at the top; it just stays stuck on the episode list. Once the cursor is up off screen, pressing “down” on the d-pad will cause the screen to “scroll” as if it were showing the Details portion of the screen. It’s really strange. 

 

1. The crash should not be happening. It is probably some exception when a value is expected to be there but instead finds a null. There are a few spots where Roku says values will always be there. But we have found that isn't always true. This is probably one of those times. If after this happens you can immediately restart the app and send debug logs it will give us the reason. You can run the app in debug mode. It will just run a little slower since it is logging. A few hundred milliseconds slower. You may not even notice. Then when in that mode if you experience any crash, relaunch the app and immediately send a debug log. Then make a post on Emby forums in the Roku section mention you sent logs. The username that sent the logs and the time in EST. Then it will be possible to spot exactly where this is happening. Thanks.

2. We have fixed this bug. I know exactly the one you are talking about. The fix for that should already be in Beta or soon to be in Beta.

I hope that answers your questions. Hopefully I do not get in trouble. I am just trying to keep the userbase from giving up hope on the Roku app. We are trying to do right by you guys. I do appreciate the post too. It is very hard for people to be critical when they don't want to be mean. I don't see it as mean. It is what it is. You don't have to be afraid of hurting our feelings or coming off the wrong way. You want a kick ass personal media player for your personal collection. You deserve it. We are trying to fill the goal. Without knowing where we are doing right, or doing wrong, or doing it different. We can only assume. Thanks for helping us and giving us clues. I do appreciate the time it took for you to make your post. If you find any other issue, complaints, or concerns please bring them up. Thanks again for your time. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Stay safe.

 

Edited December 19, 2025 by speechles

[Luke 42077]

By the way we plan to add recent searches as a server feature.

[ebr 16169]

On the side menu we are seeing some apps already moving away from that and our own users are probably split down the middle on liking/hating it on the TV form factor so I'm going to say the jury is still out on that one...