The YouTube TV app has been absent from the Roku Channel Store since April this year. However, the app was accessible for customers who kept the app on their Roku. We’re now seeing first hints of this temporary arrangement starting to fall apart with some users finding the YouTube TV app broken or frozen in some instances.
According to a handful of customers on the Roku forums (via), the most recent Roku update may have caused this issue. Users claim that playback can freeze every few minutes or even with a shorter frequency. The issue seemingly affects users of Roku-branded televisions from the likes of Hisense and TCL, as well as Roku players.
Google or Roku haven’t offered any information on this new bug, so there’s still some mystery about the cause. While it’s plausible to assume that the Roku update may have led to this, it could just as likely be something to do with Google. The problem first received widespread attention on November 19 as more users reported on the issue.
The standard YouTube app is leaving Roku in December
In cases where the app freezes or crashes, a common remedy is to delete the app and reinstall it. But this can’t be done with the YouTube TV app since it was removed from the Roku store earlier this year.
The fallout came after Roku alleged that Google prioritized its own apps over others. The company also asked Google not to “leverage their YouTube monopoly to force Roku to accept hardware requirements that would increase consumer costs.”
Eventually, Google let its distribution contract with Roku expire, which meant the removal of apps like YouTube TV from the platform. This was a significant loss for Roku, given that a considerable amount of users still relied on YouTube TV content. This is why Roku allowed users to continue using YouTube TV despite the app’s removal.
Google came up with a fix by providing an option for YouTube TV within the standard YouTube app. However, this solution is also short-lived since the standalone YouTube app will be removed from Roku in December.
Given the circumstances, an app update to fix the bug is out of the question. So it’s unclear if a fix is even on the way. We’ll keep an ear to the ground for more information on this particular concern.