Submitting a Roku App Submitting a Roku App

Submitting a Roku App

Taylor Kirchwehm Taylor Kirchwehm

This documentation will walk you through how to package and submit your app to the Roku marketplace. You will first need to generate a signing key for your app in order to package it for submission. 

Step 1: Generate a Signing Key for Your App

You will need to key your Roku Channel using your computer and command line. Keying your channel is done differently depending on the computer you are using, so please read the official Roku documentation on how to generate your key.

Note: If you are using a Mac computer with High Sierra OS, you'll need to first install HomeBrew in order to utilize Telnet. 

Save your developer ID and password as it will be required in the next step and in the future anytime the channel needs to be updated or repackaged. 

Step 2: Package Your Sideloaded Channel

1. Open the Application Packager

a. Navigate to the Development Application Installer (Roku IP address (i.e. http://192.168.x.x) on a web browser)

b. Select "Packager" in the top right hand corner to open the Application Packager window

2. Enter an app name and version and the password generated in Step 1 of this documentation. Then, click "Package".

ch-packaging-genkey-password.png

3. The following window will appear displaying the Currently Packaged Application indicating that the package is now available. The signed package can be downloaded using the .pkg link indicated below in the red box. Select this link to download to your computer.

package-download.png

 

Good to Know

Roku has maximum size for app packages that they will accept. Roku does not accept any app packages over 4MB. You may see an error when running a Static Analysis if your package exceeds 4MB. This error does not necessarily indicate that your app will be rejected.

Step 3: Submit to the Roku Channel Store

Now that you have a final, packaged Roku application, you will need to submit your package to the Roku Channel Store. You can choose to either publish a private channel or a public channel.

A private channel will be published right away but is not searchable in the Roku Channel Store. You will be given a Channel URL that you can share with others.

To publish a public channel, you will be added to the Roku Publishing Queue for Roku QA. Roku takes roughly 4-6 weeks to approve and publish your app live to the Channel Store.

Log into your Roku Developer account, and click here to submit your Roku app!

For detailed instructions, visit Roku's documentation HERE.

Good to Know

During the app submission process, you must provide Roku testers with valid deep linking parameters. These should be included in the Test Accounts & Deep Linking Parameters text box under the Support Information tab like the below image or your app will be rejected. Roku requires submitting as many as necessary in order to show the content in your app.

deep-linking2.png

Definitions:

mediaType includes following categories: movie, short-form, series, season, or episode.

contentID is the video ID and/or playlist ID for an active video in the Zype platform. You can find the video ID by clicking on a video in your Zype library, and at the bottom of the details page, you'll find the video ID. We recommend submitting a video ID from a video that does not have a paywall so that Roku is able to play the video during testing. 

  • If you use the episode or season mediaType, the contentID needs to include the playlist ID as well as a video ID for a video in the playlist. The playlist ID and video ID are separated by a dash.