Arriving at a hotel or Airbnb guest house and seeing there’s a Roku device already installed on the TV is a great feeling. Realizing once you’re on the plane back home that you’ve forgotten to log out of that Roku, however, is a terrible feeling. Your Airbnb host probably isn’t too thrilled by it either. Well, good news is here for both parties, as Roku has just announced that it is rolling out an automatic sign-out feature to its platform, beginning with select Roku devices in the U.S., Mexico, and Latin America. Over the coming months, it will arrive on all remaining Roku players, with Roku TVs expected to get the update last.
The feature will work a lot like the checkout feature for most booking sites. The guest simply sets the time and date that they want to be automatically signed out of that particular Roku device. If you’re a host, you can choose to turn this feature on or off, though we can’t imagine why you wouldn’t use it. Receiving a panicked text from a former guest at 2 a.m., when they realize they’re unable to watch Netflix because your current guest is unwittingly using that account, doesn’t sound like a recipe for a productive day. To enable the feature, your account must have a 4-digit PIN associated with it.
Cleverly, if your guest uses channels that you haven’t downloaded to your Roku, they can add these from the Channel Store, and they’ll be removed from your device once they’ve been automatically signed out, leaving your Roku experience untouched.
It’s been a busy few weeks for the streaming device company. Earlier this month, it revealed that it would be ending its dependence on its devices, with the news that its ad-supported Roku Channel would work directly within the Roku app on iOS and Android. Then, at CES 2019, it launched the first 8K Roku TVs with partner TCL. Most recently, its users became the first people to get access to a new product offering from Sling TV that provides free TV shows from the platform’s channels, and gives people the ability to subscribe to individual à la carte channels, without having to first pay for the full base set of channels.
