When you walk into a new house or apartment, there’s a high chance that the centerpiece of the room is going to be a TV. Like a modern-day campfire, people gravitate around it to get cozy, spend quality time with others, and even eat food — unlike that campfire, though, you don’t typically cook meat on a stick over the latest season of Stranger Things.
You turn on the TV to watch it, so you want a silky smooth interface that gets you to your desired entertainment as quickly as possible. Roku devices are known for their straight-forward menus, affordability factor, and most of all, panoramic views of Roku City washed in a violet sunset. My Roku Streaming Stick 4K is admittedly not the priciest or flashiest streaming stick on the market, but it gets the job done.
However, just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything to do to make it better. After diving through menus and making my desired tweaks, I made my Roku Streaming Stick 4K experience a heck of a lot smoother (and less annoying) — here’s what I did.
- Brand
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Roku
- Operating System
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Roku OS
- Downloadable Apps
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Thousands
One of the most reliable plug-and-play streaming solutions on the market, the Roku Streaming Stick lets you pipe 4K entertainment from dozens of services to any HDMI-compatible set. With Dolby Vision support and a voice-controlled remote, it’s a great way to take your media from display to display.
Get rid of that awful clicking sound
Not everything needs a sound effect
It doesn’t matter what device I’m using — my iPhone, iPad, or even TV — the little clicks that accompany any navigational movement or button press drive me nuts. It’s a personal vendetta (I know), but if I’m suffering, I know there are users out there that feel the same.
You can hear Roku’s clicks whenever you navigate the home screen. Admittedly, they aren’t as bad as other streaming devices’, but I got rid of them anyway. To mute the menu volume, go to Settings > Audio > Menu volume > Off.
Re-order my apps
Organization goes a long way
There’s nothing worse than a cluttered space, and that includes digital ones. So, I took a couple of minutes to reorganize all the apps on my Roku’s home screen. You can do so by highlighting an app and clicking the asterisk on the remote. It will give you several options:
- Move app
- Move app to top
- Check for updates
- Remove app
- Close
Focus on the options I highlighted. First, remove any apps you don’t use or see yourself using at all — they can always be reinstalled later. Then, I move all my favorite apps to the top. Finally, once I have everything I need at the top, I select the more tedious ‘Move app’ option to put them in a specific order. I don’t need Howdy up at the top next to Netflix and HBO Max.
Opt out of certain ads
If you can’t beat them, personalize them
Unfortunately, the biggest drawback of Roku devices is the advertisements plastered all over the sides of the home screen. That’s what you get for choosing the purple streamer — but alas, they aren’t so intrusive that it makes watching Star Trek reruns impossible.
While you can’t opt out of ads entirely, there is a way to tell your Roku that you don’t want to see specific promotions. Two things I truly can’t stand are political ads and horror movie previews. It’s a strange combination, I know, but they’re the two reasons I found this option at all. You can limit these categories as well as violence, sexual content, substance promotions, and more. Go to Settings > Privacy > Advertising > Sensitive ad content > and select the ads you want to see less.
This does not reduce the total number of ads you’ll get on your Roku.
Turn on volume leveling
No more jumpscares
Have you ever watched a scene so quiet you feel like you’re constantly cranking up the volume? I have, and the commercial for chronic migraine medication that appeared 10 seconds later was as loud as a train barreling through my little apartment. When your TV switches apps or even to a commercial break, the audio is often mixed differently on the producers’ ends, which can cause this ultra-intrusive, dramatic shift in volume.
If you live in an apartment complex like me, or are simply not trying to wake up your whole house at night, you’re going to want to turn on volume leveling. Volume leveling is a feature built into many Roku devices and TVs that automatically turns down louder moments and boosts quieter ones, basically bringing the extremes back to a more balanced middle ground. As someone who just watches TV at night to wind down after work, it’s a necessary feature.
Directors like Christopher Nolan might call it a cinematic sin, but if I know I’m watching a masterpiece of his (or other amazing filmmakers) it’s easy to turn it on and off:
- Go into any show or movie you’re watching.
- Click the asterisk (*) button on your Roku remote.
- Go to Volume mode and select Leveling.
There’s also a Night mode, which effectively smooths out sudden loud sounds, too.
