Roku client increasingly slow/buggy/non responsive

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#: 1.40.0.7998-c29d4c0c8
Player Version#: 7.15.5.9034-bc5ewutisthisstringsolongfor-Plex

The issue described below is not specific to those versions. They just happen to be the current version I have running. This problem has been happening for months at this point through many plex server upgrades and presumably roku app updates (which happen automatically)

The roku app seems to be… degrading. Not sure how else to describe it. I recall it being extremely snappy several years ago. Now it tends to be real laggy.

Cons:

  • Libraries and their media (cover art, metadata, etc) are frequently slow to load.
  • Up/Down/Left/Right can all lag sometimes
  • Sometimes when a show ends, it lands on the “next up screen” with all the boxes blank. Nothing loads. The autoplay spinner doesn’t do its thing and if you manually press play it just wont load up the next episode. (I restart the plex app at this point)

Pros:

  • Generally playback is unaffected. So once a show is started all is well.
  • The app is still useable. It’s just noticeably not as good as other apps or as it used to be.

I realize all of that is somewhat anecdotal. Here’s some more :slight_smile:

  • I only use one other client. The web app. I see no problems with the webapp.
  • I have three roku streaming sticks. They are roughly 3 years old.
  • The main roku interface doesn’t show much lagging
  • Other apps like netflix, hulu, prime, peacock seem to work well
  • To the best of my knowledge things are mostly up to date

I say all of that in order to eliminate other culprits. It does seem like it’s only the plex app that is problematic.

If there’s anything more concrete I can provide I’d be happy to do so. Thanks!

1 Like
2

I am noticing the same issues. curious to see if there is a fix for this.

3

You might try the Plex Preview channel which is up to 7.17.6 - I’ve been running Plex Preview for years pretty reliably and I feel like the most recent version sped up a bunch of the loading you’re describing. It at least felt snappier than usual since this latest version.

Plex for Roku - #398 by ljunkie - latest updates
Plex for Roku - #154 by ljunkie - how to get the Plex Preview channel.

I definitely notice my RokuTV experience is very slow but that’s because TCL put low-end chips in those while my older Roku box is very snappy and my older Roku stick falls somewhere in between but definitely faster than my RokuTVs.

On RokuTV, I turn off all the dynamic theme stuff - the color changing background to match images as that seems to help with the snappiness; at least it feels like it. I only have that enabled on my Roku Ultra box. That might help a bit to try if you have than dynamic background enabled.

You also might try unplugging from power for 30 seconds. Roku caches a LOT and the built in restart\reboot doesn’t clear those caches and pulling power can be the only way to fully clear it out. I’ve found when things get a little slow or buggy doing that can sometimes resolve some things - including asset loading issues.

4

Thank you for the tip. I will unplug both of my Roku boxes to see if this improves the performance of Plex. I will report back

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