Make Roku's New Home Screen Work Better 'For You' With These Easy Hacks

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Roku has upgraded the home screen on its devices for the first time in 10 years with a new For You section and a great big ad. But if you don’t like the changes, the great thing is you can make your TV or stick work more or less like it used to. And it only takes a couple of minutes.

See also: Best Streaming Devices of 2026

Customize For You and Quick Access to Work for You

The new Roku home screen at a New York City event.

Ty Pendlebury/CNET

While Roku’s changes have been really good for elevating content when you don’t know what to watch, it’s not as helpful when you want to watch a specific show. For instance, when I’m sitting down to watch Fallout, I may forget which service that show is on.

Roku has not been much help with picking up where I left off before, but I was excited about the possibility of seeing all the shows I was in the middle of. This is all thanks to the new Continue Watching section. Sadly, the new For You can’t integrate this information (yet), though I do hold out hope it will do so in the future. But there are still things you can change that make a meaningful difference.

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I will preface this next part by saying I started with a fresh Roku Ultra, which I then logged into, but it appears it retrieved none of my watched data on the device. I like sci-fi and comedies. What I did receive was seemingly random suggestions for religious movies and Taylor Sheridan. Something was amiss.

If you’re in the same boat and find the For You is not at all helpful, you have two options: remove individual suggestions or remove the whole section altogether.

Remove individual shows from For You

Highlighting a program in For You lets you tell Roku if you do or don’t like a show.

Ty Pendlebury/CNET

To remove individual suggestions:

Navigate to the thumbnail of the show you don’t want and press the * (the asterisk) button on the remote.
Scroll down and select I don’t like this show/movie. You can also choose like or save if you want to keep it.

That’s it! The algorithm then learns that you don’t want that content. However, telling Roku you don’t like something doesn’t delete the shortcut straight away. The only way I’ve found to do that so far is to restart the device. Either way, next time you open the home screen, it should populate with new suggestions.

Be aware that sometimes the show isn’t removable at all, and you can only choose Add to Save List. So far, I’ve only seen this happen with the Savanna Bananas, though, and who doesn’t love them? Also, the shortcut disappeared the next day.

Remove the For You section

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Maybe you don’t want to catch up on the new Marshals show, and you’re happy finding your own content. You can remove the For You section altogether, and it’s pretty easy.

Navigate to Settings from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
Choose Home Screen from the list.
Scroll to Recommendation rows.
Choose Hide (or Show if you want to toggle).

Add Continue Watching to Quick Access

The Jump To section on the Home Page gives you the shortcut for Continue Watching.

Ty Pendlebury/CNET

Adding a Continue Watching shortcut to the home screen is not the same as having it display automatically, but doing so will help you navigate past the dozens of unnecessary thumbnails and give your Quick Access some added purpose.

To add a Continue Watching shortcut:

Scroll all the way down the Home page until you reach the Jump to shortcuts section.
Navigate to the Continue Watching tile.
Press the * (the asterisk) button on the remote.
Choose Add to Quick Access.

The tile will now appear in the Quick Access section at the bottom of the page and may save you some time in choosing the show you want to continue watching without hunting for it. However, I did notice as I was compiling this article that the shortcut disappeared from my Quick Access and I had to add it back.