Roku app development
Roku is its own world: a proprietary language, a proprietary UI framework and a certification process with rules that no other TV platform has. A Roku channel is not a port of an Android TV app - it is built from scratch against the Roku SDK, which is why Roku work is usually the part of a multi-platform project that needs specialist experience.
- Language
- BrightScript
- UI framework
- SceneGraph (XML components)
- Store
- Roku Channel Store
- Billing
- Roku Pay
- DRM
- Widevine, PlayReady
- Streaming
- HLS, DASH, smooth streaming
BrightScript, SceneGraph and how Roku apps are actually built
Roku channels are written in BrightScript, a dynamically typed language specific to the platform, with the interface declared in SceneGraph - an XML component tree that runs rendering and animation on a separate thread from your logic. The split is deliberate and it is what keeps navigation smooth on cheap hardware, but it means blocking work on the render thread shows up immediately as a channel that feels sluggish.
Video playback goes through the platform Video node rather than a bundled player, so the codecs, DRM and streaming protocols available are the ones Roku OS supports on that device. In practice that is a strength: playback is hardware-accelerated and consistent, and there is no player library to keep updated.
Certification, Roku Pay and advertising
Publishing to the Roku Channel Store means passing certification, and the rejections are predictable: deep linking that does not resolve correctly, missing or incorrect trick-play behaviour, artwork that does not meet spec, and performance on entry-level devices. Testing on an actual Roku Express rather than a current-generation Ultra is the single most useful thing a team can do before submitting.
Subscription and transactional billing run through Roku Pay, which handles the purchase flow and takes its share of the revenue. Ad-supported channels must use the Roku Advertising Framework - it is a certification requirement, not an option, and it is where ad tracking and the platform ad identifier live.
Hardware you have to design for
Roku devices stay in the field for a long time and the low end has very little memory, so a channel that loads an entire catalogue into a grid up front will run out of memory on the hardware a large share of your audience actually owns. Lazy loading rows, releasing off-screen images and keeping the component tree shallow are not optimisations here, they are requirements.
The remote is minimal - a D-pad, back, and a handful of keys - which pushes navigation towards shallow, row-based layouts. Anything that would need a pointer or a keyboard, such as account signup, is better handled on the web with the TV doing sign-in only.
Frequently asked questions
- Can an existing Android TV app be ported to Roku?
- No - Roku uses BrightScript and SceneGraph, so the app is rebuilt against the Roku SDK. What does carry over is the backend, the API contract, the metadata model and the UX design.
- Can we still use Roku Direct Publisher instead of a custom channel?
- No. Direct Publisher - the feed-based tool that generated a channel with a fixed UI - stopped accepting new channels in July 2023 and was shut down on 12 January 2024. Every channel on the platform is now a SceneGraph channel built against the Roku SDK, which also means your own design, authentication and business logic are available from the start.
- Does Roku support DRM-protected streams?
- Yes. Roku devices support Widevine and PlayReady through the platform player, so encrypted HLS and DASH play without a custom decryption layer in the channel.