Roku’s latest feature is surprisingly useful

All too often I’m writing tips about how to hide annoying new features, but this one from Roku is actually pretty handy. 

It’s called Subscriptions, and it arrived alongside Roku OS 15.1, a software update that primarily packs under-the-hood streaming improvements. 

Subscriptions does a single thing well: It aggregates content from your paid subscriptions into a single, easy-to-find location on the main Home menu.  

Just scroll down to it using the Roku remote and you’ll get a quick glance of popular shows from your paid subscription services, as well as a Continue Watching list. 

Yes, the Roku interface already has a Continue Watching list in its What to Watch section, but as Cord Cutters News points out, the Subscriptions version of the row filters content from any random free Roku channels you might have clicked on, a change that makes the list much more focused.  

(Pro tip: If you don’t want to deal with two Continue Watching rows, you can nix the What to Watch version by navigating to Settings > Home Screen > What to Watch, and then selecting Hide.) 

Aside from the Continue Watching list, the Subscription section also serves up an aggregated Saved List and new shows from your subscribed services, along with various “included with” rows. There are also a fair number of random “Trending on” rows, but these are relegated to the bottom. 

My main gripe about the Subscriptions section is that I’d like Continue Watching to be the first row rather than the second—anyone listening, Roku? 

Roku OS 15.1 includes a variety of other enhancements, but they’re mostly aimed at app developers, including tools for tracking the performance of Roku apps as well as new metadata for media playback and content (yawn).

This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best streaming media players.