Taking Control of Your Roku Home Screen
Modern streaming devices are powerful tools, but they have increasingly become digital billboards. When you first set up a Roku, the home screen is filled with rows of suggestions, "Special Event" tabs, and a sidebar menu crowded with links to stores and ad-supported content hubs. For many, especially seniors who just want to find their favorite shows, this clutter makes the television feel unpredictable and overwhelming.
The good news is that you can strip away the noise. By navigating to specific areas in the settings, you can transform a cluttered interface into a simple, utility-focused launcher.
Cleaning the Sidebar Menu
The sidebar is the list of options on the left side of your screen. By default, it can contain ten or more items, many of which are designed to lead you toward paid subscriptions or ad-supported channels.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Sidebar showing 10 items including Subscriptions, Live TV, and Olympics]
To clean this up, go to Settings and select Home screen. Under the Menu items header, you will see a list of every tab currently appearing on your sidebar. You should scroll through this list and change the setting for each of the following to Hide:
- Subscriptions
- Live TV
- What to Watch
- Featured Free
- Sports
- Daily Trivia
In this same section, you will see Shortcuts. You should uncheck both Add Apps and TV Off. Once these are hidden or unchecked, your sidebar will be reduced to the core essentials: Home, Streaming Store, Search, and Settings.
Organizing the Main Layout
Once the sidebar is handled, the next step is to address the main area where your apps live. If you scroll down past your installed apps on a standard setup, you will often find pages of categories like Anime, Horror, and Kids & Family. These are effectively forced advertisements that make the home screen feel bottomless.
To fix this, stay in the Home screen settings but look under the Layout header. Here, you will find two key options:
- Recommendation rows: Set this to Hide. This single action deletes all the extra marketing categories, ensuring your home screen ends exactly where your apps end.
- Tile size: Select Larger. This gives you a 3-across grid instead of 4-across. While you see fewer rows at once, the icons are much larger and easier to read, which provides a much calmer visual experience.
Maintaining Your Simple Setup
Roku will occasionally introduce new items during major global events. Because these are often turned on by default, you may occasionally see a new tab appear in your sidebar. There is no need for a complicated password or a website login to fix this; you simply return to the Menu items settings and set the new intruder to Hide.
Taking these few minutes to de-clutter your device ensures that your television remains a tool for your enjoyment rather than a platform for someone else's revenue stream. This approach keeps the technology out of the way and lets the content take center stage.
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