DISH Anywhere App Review

Are you shopping for DISH satellite TV service? We recommend America’s Top 200 ($104.99 a month). It has 240+ channels, includes the Hopper Duo DVR (or the awesome Hopper 3 for an extra $5.00 per month), and has a two-year pricelock.

And, of course, you’ll also get the DISH Anywhere app, which allows you to. . .

You can watch TV away from home (hence, DISH Anywhere) with your PC, smartphone, or tablet. You can do some other stuff with DISH Anywhere too.

• Stream live TV, DVR recordings, on-demand titles, and rented or purchased content—at home or away—on your computer or mobile device
• Transfer (that’s DISH-speak for “download”) DVR recordings to watch offline
• Set and manage DVR timers
• Create up to five user profiles
• Watch on up to five devices at a time
• Create watchlists and manage parental controls
• Pair the DISH Anywhere app to any Amazon Fire TV Stick
• Use your smartphone as your DISH remote

Let’s dive a little deeper into DISH Anywhere’s features.

Okay, there are times where you can use DISH Anywhere at home—like when the household can’t agree on something to watch. As we mentioned, DISH Anywhere supports up to five users at a time.

Just remember this, satellite internet customer: you could run into bandwidth problems depending on your household’s internet usage. Wait—bandwidth? Isn’t DISH a satellite service? It is—but DISH Anywhere is a streaming app, which requires an internet connection.

Again, DISH Anywhere is mostly about mobile viewing. You can watch live TV channels, stream DISH on demand titles and DVR recordings, or transfer your DVR recordings directly to your mobile device.

Bad news for PC users, though: DISH Anywhere doesn’t support transfers to personal computers.

Bandwidth isn’t such a problem when you’re on the go—but DISH Anywhere does use up your data. Here’s a table to help you monitor your usage and avoid potential overage fees.

If you have satellite internet, you’ll want to watch your data usage closely when streaming TV shows. Streaming or downloading shows can hit your data hard and push you past your data cap before you know it.

DISH Anywhere allows you to transfer (download) DVR recordings to your mobile device to watch offline. This is pretty sweet for satellite internet customers since it can help prevent the aforementioned bandwidth and data usage issues.

How’s that? Well, once you’ve transferred a movie to your device, you’re no longer streaming it over your internet connection. That’s probably why we were able to wiggle around the one-user limit too.

And when you watch a transfer on your mobile network, it won’t use data if you remember to do your transfers on your home network.

Another benefit of transferring your DVR recordings to your mobile device is commercial skipping. You can’t skip ads on DISH on-demand movies and shows—but you can if you record them to your DVR.

One caveat, though: transferring DVR recordings to a mobile device deletes the recording from your DVR. So maybe don’t transfer something that someone at home intends to watch while you’re gone.

Can you use DISH Anywhere on multiple devices?

You can access your DISH Network programming using DISH Anywhere on up to 5 devices at once. 

To activate DISH Anywhere, you'll first need to download the app on your smart TV, firestick (or other streaming device), or phone. Once that's finished, log in to the device using your DISH login information. That should gain you access to your account fairly easily. 

If you run into any problems, we recommend checking in with DISH customer service. 

DISH Anywhere fire stick activation should be as straightforward as setting up DISH Anywhere on any device (see above), except for the initial setup of the Amazon fire stick (plugging it into the wall and the TV), pairing your DISH remote to the streaming device, and registering the fire stick with your Amazon account. 

Once your Amazon fire stick itself is setup, you can get to the actual DISH Anywhere app by searching for it in the app store and downloading it. From there, simply logging into your DISH account when prompted should do the trick.

DISH Anywhere doesn't have an official app for either PC or Mac, but you can watch it using a browser on either a PC or Mac. Unfortunately, DISH Anywhere is a bit selective about its browsers. Right now, it's compatible only with Chrome and Safari, but that at least covers the most popular browsers, so you should be good to go on either PC or Mac.

If you're determined to use DISH Anywhere's app on your PC (or Mac), you'll have to download and Android emulator first to gain access. The process is tricky, and in almost every situation, unnecessary, so we recommend you against it. DISH Anywhere on a browser should give you all the normal access you'll need.

Children are diabolically tech-savvy in 2021. Fortunately, DISH partners with Common Sense Media to offer some of the best parental controls around. That’s why CableTV.com named DISH the Best TV Provider for Kids—not to mention the Best Overall TV Provider.

With DISH Anywhere, you can steer your kids away from raunchy content and toward movies and shows that have educational value and positive messages. You can also set and change your passcode to thwart your li’l angels’ devilish impulses.

There are two ways to watch DISH Anywhere: online through a web browser or via the app on your mobile device.

Here’s what you need to get started.

• A Wi-Fi internet connection or mobile connection (3G or higher)
• The latest version of the DISH Anywhere app
• Your DISH username and password
• A supported device (see table)

DISH Anywhere and the DIRECTV app have pretty much the same features. But if you’re trying to decide between one provider and the other, we recommend checking out the following articles to see key differences between the two services.

• DISH vs. DIRECTV Satellite TV
• Best Satellite TV Providers

DISH Anywhere supports a variety of devices. We’ve listed them all in this table.

The DISH Anywhere app is completely free—but only to DISH customers—but it will use data when you watch via your mobile network.

You can download the DISH Anywhere app on an Amazon Fire TV Stick, which will enable you to stream your DISH content on your TV. That way, you can take DISH to a friend’s house or on vacation (as long as you don’t leave the country).

There is no charge for DISH Anywhere, but you will need a DISH subscription to use the app.

To watch DISH Anywhere on PC, visit www.dishanywhere.com in Google Chrome (Mac or Windows) or Safari (Mac only) and sign in with your DISH credentials.

Unfortunately, you cannot watch DISH Anywhere on Roku.

DISH Anywhere is a streaming app that allows you to watch your DISH content on your computer or mobile device. All you have to do is download the app (or, on PC, visit www.dishanywhere.com in Google Chrome or Safari), sign in with your DISH credentials, and start binge-watching.

Yes, DISH Anywhere uses data.