Sling TV: 14 tips that will change your live TV streaming experience

Whether you’ve just signed up for Sling TV or have been on board since its 2015 launch, you could probably learn a thing or two about making the most of it.

Like any other live TV streaming service, Sling TV has a lot of features that are easy to miss, especially if you’re coming from cable and are learning a new TV menu system for the first time. And with last year’s major Sling TV app update, some of these features are still pretty new.

Here are 14 tips for making Sling TV better, including ways to channel-surf more efficiently, maximize your DVR storage, and even pull in over-the-air channels:

Filter the Sling TV channel guide

To browse the Sling TV channel guide more efficiently, use the filter tabs at the top. You can sort alphabetically, view recent channels, or switch to genres such as news, sports, movies, and kids.

Need to get back to the filter menu? From anywhere in the guide, just click Back, then Up (or Back, Back, Up if you’ve scrolled ahead in the timeline.)

Mark Sling TV channels as favorites

You can also tame Sling TV’s channel guide by creating a list of favorite channels, which appear in the “Favorite” tab at the top.

• On Roku devices, hit * on the remote while highlighting a channel name in the guide.
• On other devices, scroll to the left of the channel and click the heart icon.

Create quick recordings on Sling TV

When you’re browsing the Sling TV channel guide, you can quickly set up recordings without wading through any extra menus:

• On Roku devices, hit * on the remote to view your recording options.
• On Fire TV devices, hit the remote’s menu button.
• On other devices, long-press the select button.

Launch Sling TV’s picture-in-picture mode

On Fire TV and Android TV devices, you can go back to the grid guide without closing the current channel. Just click Up on the remote while watching any live channel, and the video will switch to a thumbnail view with the guide behind it.

On Apple TV devices, Sling TV goes a step further with full picture-in-picture support. While watching a live channel, swipe up on the remote, then scroll to the double-box icon that says “Start PiP.” This will send the video to a miniature window, which will stay open even as you use other apps.

Use the Sling TV mini guide

While viewing any live channel, click down two times to show the mini guide. The default view shows your most recently-viewed channels, but you can also scroll over for a sports view and a full channel list. (On Roku devices, this is the only way to watch live TV while also seeing what else is on.)

Launch Sling TV channels by voice

If you have a Fire TV, Android TV, or Google TV device, you can quickly tune into Sling TV channels with voice commands. Try pressing your remote’s voice control button, then saying something like “tune to TNT on Sling TV.”

Start a show over on Sling TV

Some Sling TV channels let you jump to the start of any live program without having to record it first. After selecting a program from the guide, press the select button on your remote, then click the “Play From Start” button in the playback menu.

Lock your Sling TV recordings

Sling TV includes 50 hours of DVR storage with its base plan, or 200 hours for an extra $5 per month. Either way, that space can fill up quickly with series recordings, at which point Sling will automatically delete your oldest or watched recordings.

To protect specific recordings against deletion, head to the DVR menu and select a movie or show. From there, you can either lock a movie or lock individual episodes.

Keep a limited set of recordings on Sling TV’s DVR

Unfortunately, Sling TV’s DVR provides no easy way to delete an entire season at a time, or to keep only a limited number of recent episodes. Your DVR space can fill up fast as a result, especially if you’re recording a syndicated program or daily news show. So here’s a workaround:

• Select the show from Sling TV’s DVR menu.
• Click “Delete All” to send that show to the trash.
• At the top of the DVR menu, head to the “Trash” section.
• Select the show you just deleted, then restore the most recent episodes or the specific season you want to keep.

This can still be a time-consuming process, but it’s faster than deleting episodes one at a time if you only want to keep a handful of them.

Adjust Sling TV’s video quality

If you’re on an internet plan with a data cap or you’re routinely having issues with buffering, try manually dialing down Sling TV’s video quality.

To find this setting, click Down twice while watching any video, then scroll over to “Settings.” Select “Video Quality,” then choose from High, Medium, or Low.

Add over-the-air channels to Sling TV

While Sling TV doesn’t include local channels in most markets, you can add them with an AirTV device, which pulls in over-the-air broadcasts from an antenna and makes them available inside the Sling TV app. The $200 AirTV Anywhere has a built-in hard drive for recording local channels as well, though you can also connect an external hard drive to the $100 AirTV 2. This is much cheaper in the long run than paying upwards of $65 per month for YouTube TV or other live TV services that have local channels included.

Hide duplicate channels on Sling TV

Sling TV’s Orange and Blue packages have a lot of overlapping channels, and if you’re subscribed to both packages, you may end up seeing duplicates in the channel guide. To fix this, head to Sling’s “My Account” page and check off “Show only the Sling Blue” version.

Hide Sling TV’s upsells

Are you seeing channels in the guide that aren’t part of your subscription? Head to Settings > Account > Manage Content Display, and then turn off “Display Unsubscribed Content.” When it comes to things you’re not paying for, ignorance is bliss.

Don’t let Sling TV sell your personal data

Like many other streaming services, Sling can share your personal data and viewing habits with marketers by default, and you must opt out to prevent that from happening.

To do so, head to Sling’s “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” website and select “Opt Out 2.” Fill out the form that appears, then hit “Continue.”

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