Control Every Roku TV in the House From One iPhone.

How one scan finds every Roku at once

Discovery is a broadcast, not a search through a list of known addresses. The app shouts a single query onto the local network and every Roku that hears it answers with its own address, which is why finding one device and finding six take about the same amount of time.

One physical Roku can answer that broadcast more than once, under several different identifiers. The app collapses replies by network address rather than by identifier, so a device that answers three times still appears once. Without that step a three-Roku household would show nine entries, most of them duplicates of each other.

Telling identical TVs apart

Two TCL Roku TVs bought at the same time report the same model and, until you intervene, a near-identical default name. The app can only display what each device tells it, so the fix lives on the Roku: Settings, then System, then Device name. Rename them once and the list becomes self-explanatory forever.

If a device still refuses to identify itself clearly, the address it reports is the tiebreaker — press a volume key and watch which room responds. It is inelegant, but it takes five seconds and settles the question permanently once you have renamed the device.

When several people control the same TVs

Nothing in the design limits control to one phone. Roku accepts commands from any device on the network without an exclusive session, so two people can each have the app open and both will work. The practical consequence is the obvious one: if two people press volume at once, the TV obeys both.

There is no locking, no "in use by" state and no queueing between phones. For a household that is usually the right behaviour — nobody has to hand over control — but it does mean the app cannot stop a sibling in another room from changing the channel.

Mixing device types on one network

Several Roku TVs

The best case. Each answers discovery independently, each carries its own name, and volume and power land on the right panel because each TV owns its own speakers.

A mix of Roku TVs and streaming sticks

Both appear in the same list and switch identically. Expect the controls to differ: a stick has no volume of its own and no panel to power down, so those keys depend on the TV it is plugged into.

A Roku Ultra alongside older players

All appear together. The Ultra is the most likely of the group to accept a network power-on command; older players generally will not, so they need their TV or their own remote to wake.

A Roku on a wired connection

A device on Ethernet is discovered exactly like a wireless one, as long as the wired and wireless sides of your router are the same network rather than separated segments.