How to turn on vacation mode on your Roku Smart Home lights and plugs
The next time you want to get away for a quick weekend or plan to travel across the country, you can put your Roku Smart Home bulbs, plugs, and light strips into vacation mode giving would-be intruders the impression that you are still at home. During your travels you can rest easier knowing your lights will turn on at random times making it look like you never left town.
This article provides more details about vacation mode and teaches you how to use the feature.
How vacation mode works
Vacation mode must be turned on separately for each smart bulb, plug, and light strip, or you can create a device group and turn the feature on for all devices in the group at once. Keep in mind that device groups that work with vacation mode can only contain like products in one of the following categories.
- Lighting group
- Indoor plug group
- Outdoor plug group
For help creating a group, refer to the detailed article about grouping and sorting your smart home devices.
Whether you turn the feature on for an individual device or an entire group, vacation mode will be active from 6 to 9 am in the morning, and again from 6 to 11 pm in the evening, all local times. During these active windows, your bulbs, plugs, and light strips will:
- Power on randomly one time each hour
- Stay on for 5 to 60 minutes
When you return from your trip, your lights and plugs will remain in vacation mode until you turn the feature off.
How to turn on vacation mode
To turn on vacation mode, launch the Roku Smart Home mobile app and complete the appropriate steps below for each device or device group. When you want to turn vacation mode off, repeat the instructions but turn the feature to off.
Bulbs and light strips
- Tap Home
from the navigation bar - Select your bulb or light strip, or select a device group
- Tap Settings
- Toggle Vacation mode to on
Indoor and outdoor plugs
- Tap Home from the navigation bar
- Select your indoor or outdoor plug, or select a device group
- Tap Vacation mode
- Tap Turn on if the confirmation window appears
Last updated at 2/25/2026 10:03:42 PM
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