The Complete Roborock App Guide

Overview

Welcome to our comprehensive walkthrough of the Roborock App—which is our favorite robot vacuum app as of this writing. This guide will help you find the features of your Roborock robot vacuum’s control app. In this article, we’ll walk through the setup process, review the features of the home screen, explore the main dashboard and control panel, and make use of advanced map editing tools.

Not all features are available on all Roborock robot vacuums, and this will be noted where appropriate.

Setup

Roborock’s setup prompts are easy to follow, which makes it one of our favorite ‘open and go’ apps. The prompts are clear, and the app knows what to do for the most part. Here are the steps you will follow when setting up your new device on your app.

Add Device and Map House

After you have downloaded the Roborock app on your phone and setup your profile, you need to add your device to your network for app control. The app will prompt you to scan the QR code, which is located under the top panel of your robot. This panel is easy to lift and replace by simply pulling up on the edge of it. Hold your phone’s camera up to the QR code until it recognizes it, then hold down the two buttons on the top of your robot as prompted.

House Mapping

Once you have put in your internet name and password – usually found on the bottom of your router – linking the robot up to your house’s Wi-Fi (a necessary step to use the app), the Roborock app will initiate mapping, which will take a few minutes.

Need to add a second floor to your map? Click here to jump to how to add another map.

Home Page

After Mapping and Setup, the app will open onto the Home Page, which will have access to Messages and Notifications, Quick Start Routines, Profile Settings, Remote Viewing for Roborock models with cameras, and the Main Dashboard.

Notifications and Messages

You can access Device Notifications history and Sharing Messages (messages about the other household member’s activity) directly from the home page using the small speech bubble in the top right corner. There is a “+” sign next to the speech bubble that you can tap in order to add another Roborock device to be managed by the app.

Profile

Device Sharing

In order to allow another member of your household have shared control of the robot, the other user needs to download the Roborock app on their phone and set up an account with their phone number or email address. Then, you tap ‘Device Sharing,’ on your Roborock Profile page, add their account information, and follow prompts to add the other user to the account.

Third Party Smart Speaker

If you want to integrate your Roborock into your Alexa or Google smart home controls, you will access the Profile from the Roborock home page, select ‘Smart Speaker’, and select your third party controller of your choice. Managing an Alexa or Google Assistant account goes beyond the scope of this guide, but you will find that these programs are user-friendly and will prompt you to take appropriate steps to integrate these parties into your Roborock.

Profile Settings

Theme

Here you will find the options to switch from system theme (which is whatever theme your phone system prefers). Our phone system prefers Dark theme, but you may switch from System to Dark or Light theme. This is also where you can change the home page view to be either a picture of your selected device (as this example is), or a list view if you have multiple devices.

Message Settings

Here you will decide your notification settings, which is whether and what kind of notifications you want to receive on your phone. We understand that this is where you can disable Roborock ads through the “Allow Roborock Product and Services Updates” toggle, although this can be different depending on your region. This one is disabled, and we have not received ads through the app.

Other Profile settings

The rest of the profile settings in the list are simple to explain.

• Language Settings is where you would change the language in the app
• Firmware Updates is where you can toggle on and off automatic firmware updates
• Room Management allows you to assign different devices to different rooms
• Network Settings is where you can manage your Wi-Fi

Note that you can access Remote Viewing (if your model has this feature) and Routines from the home page. For more information on Remote Viewing click HERE, and for more on Routines, click HERE.

Main Dashboard

On your Home screen, you can tap the blue ‘Enter’ button, or simply tap the robot in the center of the home screen. This will open the main dashboard of your app.

The dashboard includes Dashboard Settings (three dots in a circle in the top right corner), Map Editing (an icon of a map with a pencil), Remote Viewing access (a small camera icon, only available on camera robots), a display of your Map in the center, and a Control Panel with press and play options at the bottom.

Dashboard Settings & Scheduling

Dashboard Settings

Dashboard settings can be reached by tapping a circle with three small dots in the top right hand corner of the dashboard screen. These settings will be where you can find the tools to manage schedules, edit floor cleaning settings, set permissions, see commands for voice assistant (when available), and other useful tools.

Creating Schedules

A Schedule is a cleaning session that you program to happen at certain times. From the Dashboard Settings, you will select Schedules. From here, you can edit existing schedules or add a new one.

To add a custom schedule, tap the + Add a Schedule button. This will open a schedule-making tool, which prompts you to choose the start time and frequency of your scheduled clean. Then, you can select the cleaning area, vacuuming or mopping or both, and suction power and waterflow settings.

Floor Cleaning Setting

You can set the floor cleaning mechanics in this tab of the Dashboard Settings (Home > Dashboard > Settings > Floor Cleaning Setting). Here, you can Edit the Surface (which we go into in further detail here), toggle on and off the Extending FlexiArms (where available), toggle Automatic Remopping, and determine if the robot rises over or avoids carpet in Carpet Settings.

Pin n Go

Pin N Go allows you to manually select a place on the map and send the robot there.

Open the Dashboard Settings and select Pin N Go. The map is then ready for you to tap it, which will send the robot to that spot. Once the robot arrives at its destination, you can tap “Spot Clean” and adjust the cleaning settings to make the robot clean a square area 1.5 meters across (about 4.5 feet). As with any other cleaning cycle, when the robot has finished its spot clean, it will redock itself.

Manage Maps

Managing Maps is where you will manage multiple house levels and multiple maps. It is also another way to access Map Editing (more on that below). Jump to Map Editing

At the bottom of the screen, you will see a button to Create a New Map. This will begin the same prompts that mapped the first map.

Docking, Reactive AI, and Maintenance Settings

Dock Settings

Dock settings on “Ultra” docks, Qrevo docks, and Saros docks can be very robust. You can select how often the mop is washed, how powerfully the dustbin is emptied, how long to let the mop heads dry, water tank emptying and refilling, and more. This feature can be accessed through the Dashboard settings or by simply tapping the small dock icon on the Control Panel.

Reactive AI Obstacle Avoidance

This setting where you will decide whether the robot takes pictures as it cleans, how sensitive the AI obstacle avoidance should be, and others. This is not a way to access Pet Snaps (click for Pet Snaps access), an often advertised feature of camera-based Roborock vacuums. This is only a place to set whether the robot takes pictures. You must access Pet Snaps on the map where the robot most recently ran. The map will place icons on the map to show what it ran into (and avoided) along the way.

Maintenance

The Maintenance tab on the Settings list (Home > Dashboard > Settings > Maintenance), will tell you how much life in percentage your mopheads, brushes and sensors have before they will need replacing or cleaning.

Voice and Remote Features

Voice Assistant

If your robot has “Hello Rocky” Voice Assistant, then you need to know the preset commands that come on the robot. As an onboard voice assistant, “Rocky” does not use the cloud, and therefore you cannot talk to it in the same natural-language way you can talk to assistants like Siri or Alexa.

In order to find Rocky’s commands, you will go Home > Dashboard > Settings > Voice Assistant. Say “Hello Rocky” to get the robot’s attention, then say any of the commands to activate a cleaning session. The robot will store your customized map locally, so even if you are offline, Rocky can recognize room names.

Remote Viewing Settings

Remote Viewing Settings is not a way to access Remote Viewing. This is where you set up Remote Viewing. To access Remote Viewing and learn how to use it, click here.

Access Remote Viewing Settings from Home > Dashboard > Settings > Remote Viewing Settings.

This is where you set up permissions for Remote Viewing (which you must do in order to use this feature for security reasons). You can also set a password, and you can disable it entirely if Remote Viewing is not something you want active on your robot.

Additional Device Management

Here is a brief summary of the other settings tabs:

Robot Settings

Home > Dashboard > Settings > Robot Settings

This is where you set Child Locks, Do Not Disturb mode, and Offline Mapping. Offline mapping refers to allowing the robot to tell the map where it was last if it falls asleep and loses its charge (This can happen if it got caught in something and you weren’t around to untangle it). This will help you find the robot again after it goes offline.

Firmware Updates

Home > Dashboard > Settings > Firmware Updates

This is where you can toggle on or off automatic firmware updates. If you do not toggle this on, your app will notify you to update your firmware manually, which you can also do in this section.

Device Sharing

Home > Dashboard > Settings > Device Sharing

This is another place to share your device with another household member who has the Roborock App.

Delete Device

Home > Dashboard > Settings > Delete Device

Removes the device from your app. You can also do this if you have repeated trouble with the robot in order to reset it (in addition to updating the app’s firmware). This writer was unable to get the robot to recognize her pet until she deleted and re-added the robot, and now the robot recognizes her pet without issues.

Map Editing

The easiest way to edit the map is to tap the small Map and Pencil icon to the top right of the map in the center of the Dashboard. This will open a page with two tabs: Map Details and Edit Map.

Map Details

3D or 2D Map Display

Map Details allows you to decide how you want the map to be rendered on the dashboard. You can choose between a 2D and a 3D map, and on the 2D map, you can choose to toggle on and off labels for the room names, floor types, furniture, and obstacles.

Edit Map

Edit map is an important feature where most users are going to need to know the lay of the land. This is where you will set No-Go Zones, Edit Rooms, Edit Furniture, and Edit Surfaces.

Set No-Go Zones

Home > Dashboard > Map Icon > Edit Map > No-Go Zone

This is how you set up areas you don’t want the robot to enter. You can set up an invisible wall, which can restrict a large area, like half a room, or a No-Go Zone, which appears on the screen as a red rectangle that you can move and reshape as you like. This will be stored on the map and your robot will bypass the restricted area.

Edit Room

Home > Dashboard > Map Icon > Edit Map > Edit Room

Room editing allows you to merge room (where you combine rooms to become one), divide (where you split a room into two or three using a line you can manipulate on the map), rename , and remove rooms.

Edit Furniture

Home > Dashboard > Map Icon > Edit Map > Edit Furniture

Here you can customize the furniture on your map to help the robot avoid them, which increases the robot’s efficiency and helps you visualize your house better, which is useful when using Pin N Go or other manual robot directing. You can select the type of furniture from a list, and you are able to turn an resize them with controls on the map.

Edit Surface

Home > Dashboard > Map Icon > Edit Map > Edit Surface

This area is used for adjusting floor type, carpet settings, and threshold placement. Placing a threshold on your map has special utility because for the robots that have advanced threshold climbing, this helps them get a “running start” for clearing the threshold.

Control Panel

Overview of the Control Panel

The Control Panel is the ‘press and play’ portion of the Main Dashboard. Here, you will find a Play/Pause Button (to stop and start a cleaning session), full, rooms, and zone cleaning (to determine which part of the map to clean), routines (preset cleaning settings and zones), cleaning settings, and another way to access settings for the dock. To know more about dock settings, see above.

Control Functions

Play/Pause

If the robot is in its dock, pressing play will cause it to begin whatever cleaning you have selected. If the robot is currently cleaning, the play button will turn into a pause button, and pressing it will cause the robot to stop cleaning and stay in place, waiting for further instructions.

Add Area / Skip Area

When the robot is in motion, you can use “Add Area” and “Skip Area” to add a new zone or make the robot skip a room. “Add Area” will create a zone box that you can manipulate on the map. The robot will clean the area in the box and then resume the cleaning it was doing before.

Note that “Skip Area” makes the robot skip the entire room and move on to the next one.

Cleaning Settings

Tapping on the icon to the left of the play button will open your cleaning settings. This is one way to access the controls for suction power, water flow, how often the robot cleans, and to activate Roborock’s AI-based SmartPlan, if it is available on your model. SmartPlan will use AI to determine cleaning count, suction, and other settings based on the room and surface type.

Routines Management

Routines are preset areas and cleaning patterns that you can select from a list of pre-made routines or that you can make yourself. Once you create a routine, you can activate it from the Home screen or the Control Panel on the Dashboard.

Recommended Routines

When you tap the Routine tab on the Control Panel, you will see a list of recommended routines. You can add any of these, and they will appear under My Routines, both here and on the Home Page.

Customize Recommended Routine

If you tap the three dots on the routine, you can edit it to change any of its settings and tap the complete button to save them.

Create a New Routine

To create a custom routine, once again select “Routine” from the control panel. You can then tap the “+” sign, which will open a screen for you to select an area for cleaning. Remember that Full means the entire map, Room means select a room or rooms on the map, and Zone opens the zone creating tool, where you can select a rectangular area of the map.

After you select the area, the app will open the tool for selecting the cleaning settings, then it will prompt you to name your new routine. When you select Complete, your new routine will appear with the other routines under My Routines

How to Access

Remote Viewing can be accessed from the Home Page or from the Dashboard by clicking on the small camera icon. Either will open remote viewing, and you can then see through the robot’s camera while the robot moves through the house. The robot will repeat “Remote Viewing Active” while it moves through the house so that no one in the home is caught unawares.

1. Remote Call

Tap the green phone icon to use the robot to make a phone call. You can change the volume and set permissions in the Remote Viewing Settings (see above). This is advertised as a way to talk to pets, but of course you can use it to speak to humans as well.

2. Search For Pet/Pin N Go/Cruise

The control panel with a map in the right upper corner of the remote viewing image will allow you to access Pin N Go.

You can also select Search for Pet which will cause the robot to leave its dock and move around the house, turning in circles until it encounters your pet while you watch through the viewer. You can also select Cruise which will cause the robot to move independently around the house.

3. Remote Control With Camera Viewing

If you wish to control the robot yourself, you can tap either one of the arrows on the lower right side. This will switch to manual control and you will “drive” the robot around. This is, in this writer’s opinion, the most fun option. You can move forward or backward with the straight arrows on the right, and turn left or right with the circle arrows on the left.

Bonus: Where Are My Pet Snaps?

For those with camera-based Roborock robots, you might want to know where to find the often-advertised Pet Snaps. These are images that the robot takes when it encounters your pets, and you are able to download them.

If you have set the Reactive Obstacle Avoidance settings to allow images, then the robot takes pictures of all of the obstacles that it senses and labels them with icons on the map, which displays the route of the most recent cleaning job. Pet Snaps are indicated with a paw print.

If you tap on the Paw Print in the map (or any obstacle icon, for that matter), you will see the image that the robot captured during its cleaning cycle. It’s not exactly high art, but it is a way to see what your pet is up to, or to see how your pet responds to the robot.