Roku Unveils Biggest Home Screen Overhaul in More Than a Decade

Roku‘s more than 100 million streaming households already watch billions of hours of content every month. But the company wants to get those numbers even higher.

On Wednesday, Roku took the wraps off a new home screen that it says is more dynamic, more personalized — and smarter. A key design point: It’s meant to help viewers more quickly find their next favorite show to binge-watch.

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The new Roku home screen begins rolling out Wednesday (May 27) across all Roku TVs and streaming devices in the U.S. The company says it will expand to additional countries in the coming months.

According to the company, the new experience is the first significant update of the Roku home screen in over a decade. The new interface and features were developed using “deep behavioral insights” and viewer input, Roku says.

“When we set out to rethink the home screen, we knew we should listen to the people who use it every day,” Anthony Wood, Roku’s founder and CEO, said in a statement. “Now, our new home screen puts entertainment at the center of everything, while staying true to Roku’s simple, intuitive roots.” Wood added that users “will feel the difference the moment they turn on their TV — and it opens up a better, more powerful experience for our partners as well.”

The new Roku home screen recommends content based on an individual household’s interests, geared around speeding up the time users are able to start watching titles they may be interested. According to the company, there are billions of possible home screen combinations — and Roku’s intelligence models pick the optimal one for each viewer every time they turn on their TV.

Here’s a rundown of the new features of the Roku home screen highlighted by the company:

• The first thing users will see is an “intelligence-driven” and expanded “Top Picks for You” section
• There’s a new “Quick Access” section for a user’s most-used apps, which continuously adapts to changing usage patterns
• The menu is more streamlined (and collapsible)

• There are new genre-based destinations including:

  • For You, with recommended titles based on a user’s interests
  • Subscriptions, providing a single place for users to browse and discover content from across the services they subscribe to
• Key destinations in the interface include a search function, with relevant suggestions and results
• The guide includes elevated shortcuts for everyday actions including Save List and Continue Watching
• Your Daily Scoop, a dynamically generated row that provides a curated digest of breakout shows and cultural trends
• There’s a new tile for Roku City, which lets users launch an interactive version of the screensaver

Here are more images of the new Roku home screen: