Platforms · Beta

Roku app testing on a real device, from a browser

Roku app testing on real hardware, streamed to your browser. Drive the remote, type into on-screen keyboards and inspect the UI tree. Beta — read the limits.

Start free See pricing

A physical Roku streaming live in the sandbox, the Signal channel on screen with the focus ring on a tile, the command bar above it and the remote control rig beside the device

A physical Roku, streamed to your browser. Beta: streaming, remote, typing and the UI tree work; no automated test runner yet.

Roku app testing works differently here, and the differences run in both directions.

The good one first: there is no Roku emulator, from Roku or anyone else. So a Roku session streams a real physical device to your browser — the same hardware your viewers own, not an approximation of it. On every other platform we support, you are driving a simulator. Here you are not.

The honest one second: Roku support is in beta, and the automated test runner is not there yet. Streaming, remote control, text entry, UI inspection and channel upload are. Read the limits section before you plan around this.

Who this is for

Teams who need people to reach a real Roku without one being on their desk — a developer reloading a channel from Windows, a QA engineer in another country, a support agent reproducing a viewer's bug, a producer reviewing a build. Upload the channel's sideload package and the session installs it. If you want automated runs, this beta does not do that yet.

What works today

Real hardware, not a simulator

Sessions stream a physical Roku device. Playback, performance and platform behaviour are the real thing, because the device is the real thing.

The full remote, from your keyboard

Arrow keys move the d-pad, Enter is OK, Escape is back. No remote to borrow and no device to be sitting next to.

Typing that just works

When a Roku on-screen keyboard has focus, printable keys go straight to it and Backspace deletes. There is no separate typing mode to enter first.

UI tree inspection

Inspect the elements the device reports while you work. Coordinates are best-effort, so treat highlighted positions as approximate rather than exact.

Remote · Beta

The full remote, from your keyboard.

Arrow keys, Enter and Escape Arrow keys move the d-pad, Enter is OK, Escape is back. No remote to borrow and no device to be sitting next to.
Typing that just works When a Roku on-screen keyboard has focus, printable keys go straight to it and Backspace deletes. There is no typing mode to enter first.
Confined to your app System and home navigation is blocked, and if the device leaves the app it is brought back automatically.

TV testing UI Tree Inspector

Sessions stay inside your app

A shared physical device has a failure mode a simulator does not: someone navigates to the home screen, opens a different channel, and the next person to connect finds the device somewhere unexpected.

Roku sessions are confined to the app under test. System and home navigation is blocked, and if the device leaves the app for any reason, the app is brought back automatically. The device you hand to a colleague is the device they get.

What is not there yet

No automated test runs. The AI test runner does not support Roku sessions. Recording flows, replaying them and running suites in CI — all of which work on our other platforms — do not apply here yet.

Approximate coordinates. UI tree inspection works, but element positions are best-effort. Use it to understand structure, not to measure layout.

A physical device is a shared device. Sessions queue when the device is busy, every session starts from a channel you uploaded rather than from an empty device, and the channel is installed fresh each time — which takes a few seconds, and means nothing the channel stored survives between sessions.

Beta means beta. This is the narrowest platform we support, and it is newer than the rest. If Roku is the centre of your testing strategy rather than an edge of it, the honest answer today is that this covers streaming, control and inspection, and nothing beyond that.

What it is genuinely good at

Strip away what is missing and something specific is left: remote access to real Roku hardware, with reliable control and a view of the UI tree, from a browser anywhere.

That solves a real problem. Roku devices are cheap but physical, and a distributed team ends up with one device on one desk in one city. Reproducing a viewer's bug means asking the person who owns that desk. Streaming the device removes the desk from the equation without pretending a simulator would have caught the bug — because there is no simulator, and on Roku there never was.

Getting started

Upload your channel's sideload .zip package under Apps, click Play on its row, pick the Roku device and start the session. The stream comes up first and the channel is installed in the seconds that follow. To iterate, vibeview dev --platform roku re-packages, uploads and reloads the channel into the session you are already watching, on demand or automatically with --watch. The step-by-step version is in how to test a Roku channel from your browser, and the record of a coding agent building and verifying a channel on this Roku shows the whole loop end to end, bug included.

If you want the interaction model in detail first, TV testing covers the d-pad, focus and text-entry behaviour across all three TV platforms, and the UI Tree Inspector page covers what the inspector shows and how fresh its data is.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a Roku emulator?

No, and that matters. Roku publishes no emulator, so a Roku session here streams a real physical Roku device to your browser. Everything you see is running on the hardware your customers use — which is the opposite of our iOS, Android and Apple TV support, where the devices are simulators.

Can I upload my channel to a Roku device?

Yes. Upload the channel's sideload .zip package under Apps, click Play, and the session installs it on the device. Every Roku session starts from a channel you uploaded, and the channel is removed when the session ends and installed fresh for the next one, so each run begins from a first-launch state.

Can I run automated tests against Roku?

Not yet. The AI test runner does not support Roku sessions. Streaming, remote control and UI tree inspection work today; automated runs do not. If a test runner on Roku is what you need, this beta will not give it to you.

How do I control the device?

The same keyboard model as our other TV platforms. Arrow keys move the d-pad, Enter is OK, Escape is back. Text entry works directly — when a Roku on-screen keyboard has focus, printable keys go straight to it and Backspace deletes, with no separate typing mode to switch into.

Can a session wander off into the Roku home screen?

No. Sessions are confined to the app under test: system and home navigation is blocked, and if the device leaves the app for any reason it is brought back automatically. A shared device does not end up parked on someone else's channel.

Are the UI tree coordinates accurate?

Treat them as approximate. UI tree inspection works on Roku sessions, but element coordinates are best-effort, so a highlighted position tells you roughly where an element is rather than exactly.

See it on a device

Start free — two concurrent sessions, 30 streaming minutes a month, no card.

Start free Read the docs