How to Turn off Voice on Roku

Ivana Kotorchevikj Ivana Kotorchevikj

Written by Ivana Kotorchevikj Streaming / Roku

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Roku offers an Audio Guide feature, also known as Screen Reader or Narrator, which reads aloud the text appearing on the screen. While this feature is really helpful for those with vision issues, most users don’t prefer using it.

When you navigate through with the remote control Roku, it reads through the interface. This is how you know that the Audio Guide has been enabled.

However, if you're watching a TV show or movie and hear audio describing the scene, this is another accessibility feature called Descriptive Audio.

If you are one of those people that finds these audio readers annoying, you’ll be glad to hear that you can turn off the audio guide and descriptive audio. Below we’ll show you how to do it.

Turn off Audio Guide with the remote shortcut

The easiest and quickest way to turn off the audio guide on Roku is with the remote control.

  1. On your Roku remote, press the Star button 4 times in short successions.
  2. After this, you’ll hear the message, “Audio Guide disabled”. This means the narration is off.

To be able to use this shortcut, you first need to enable it:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
  2. From the Accessibility menu, select Audio Guide in the Audio Guide section.
  3. In the Audio Guide, select Shortcut and switch the toggle from Disabled to Enabled.

Quick tip: You can also turn on the Screen Reader by pressing the Star button 4 times in a row, by accident or on purpose. This shortcut can't be disabled, so keep this feature in mind when using the remote.

Turn off Audio Guide from Roku Accessibility Settings

You can also turn off the Narrator or the Audio Guide in the Accessibility menu.

  1. Press the Home button on the Roku remote, which will take you to the home screen.
  2. From there, again go to Settings > Accessibility.
  3. Go to Audio Guide > Audio Guide.
  4. With the remote, highlight Off to disable the feature.

How to turn off Descriptive Audio on Roku

The Audio Guide describes interactions on the platform, such as location on the screen, channel names and navigation items within apps. But if you hear audio descriptions of scenes and actions in movies or TV shows, it means that the audio description track for that specific program has been enabled.

If you want to turn off the descriptive audio, you can do it in the audio/language or accessibility settings on Roku apps with descriptive audio. This is how to disable it for some of the most popular streaming apps:

  • Apple TV — Go to Settings at the top of the home screen, choose Accessibility, Audio Descriptions, and Off.
  • Netflix — Press the Up button on the remote to view the language options box. Instead of Language - Audio Description, select a language without narration.
  • HBO Max — Press the Star button on the Roku remote and choose Accessibility > Captioning Track. From the list of options, choose a language without descriptive audio.
  • Hulu — Press the Up button on your Roku remote, then go to Settings > Audio. Change the language to one without an audio description.
  • Prime Video — Press the Roku remote Up button, go to Audio & Languages and choose the available language without audio description.

If you are watching Netflix on Roku, and you want to log out of it for some reason, learn how to log out of Netflix on all models of Roku.

How to turn off video description on Roku

If you are using traditional cable TV input connected to your Roku TV or player, and you hear a video description feature on some TV shows and movies, you can disable this by turning off the Secondary Audio Programming (SAP) settings.

If you have Spectrum TV, open the app, and with the Roku remote and go to Settings > Preferences > Audio Language (SAP).If you have Xfinity X1, go to Device Settings > Languages > Audio Language (SAP) Reset.

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