What do we think of the Disney+ user interface?
What do we think of the Disney+ user interface?
Disney+ is the next streaming service that’s trying to do it all. Its interface was plenty crowded enough when it housed only its own content, such as the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, animated classics from Disney and Pixar, and entertainment purchased from Fox like “The Simpsons.”
But Disney wants to make its flagship streamer a one-stop streaming destination, and to do that, it needed to incorporate more content from the other streaming services across the company. Disney+ got the ball rolling in that regard when the Hulu on Disney+ experience launched in early 2024, and the transformation continued when the streamer began offering live sports from ESPN+ last December.
With all that extra content available on Disney+, one might assume that the streamer’s user interface can feel crowded. Are viewers still able to access the shows, movies, or sporting events that they want to watch with ease? I decided to review Disney+’s user experience to answer some of the most frequent questions about its use, and you can read the results of my testing of its UX on smart TVs here.
Breaking down Disney+’s user interface?
What is the Disney+ home screen like?
The first thing that jumped to my attention when opening the Disney+ home screen is how big everything feels. The first content carousel at the top of the screen is a giant-sized rotation of all the titles Disney+ wants to capture my imagination the most. Two rows down is the Recommended For You row, whose tiles take up almost the entire screen thanks to a larger vertical size.
Is bigger better? The Disney+ home page seems to think so._
The navigation menu on Disney+ is a left-hand pop-out menu, and you have to scroll down at least one row to be able to call it up. Options in the menu include Search, followed by Home, Watchlist, Movies, Series, Originals, and Settings.
Disney+ puts its Continue Watching row right under recommended titles, which isn’t that far down but feels like it is because of the size of the content carousels discussed above. I appreciate that the brands’ content row is near the top of the screen, as this allows viewers to easily locate sports options and Hulu titles if they want to jump straight to those.
I thought the left-hand menu could use those options as well; however, having a Sports category in that menu would go a long way toward raising the score of the Disney+ home page, especially since its parent company is about to add more sports to the Disney+ app when it launches the new ESPN streaming service in fall 2025. Disney+ also could use a Live option in that menu, as it now carries a set of live, continuous playlists that operate very much like FAST channels without the ads, which I think could be easier to find.
Clicking on a show in the Disney+ Continue Watching row on the home page takes you to that show’s details page, instead of beginning playback automatically. I appreciate that about the service, and the details page itself is simple to navigate, with ease of moving between seasons.
Home page score: 6 out of 10
Is content discovery easy on Disney+?
There isn’t a ton of friction when it comes to content discovery on Disney+. As I mentioned in the section above, the streamer’s most popular brands are put in their own content row near the top of the home page. If you want to browse Star Wars, Marvel, or Pixar titles only with Disney+, you can click on those brand tiles to be taken to their pages in an instant.
The Search option is right at the top of the left-hand menu, and while I don’t appreciate the size of the Recommended For You row, it certainly puts shows and movies I haven’t watched yet but might be interested in based on recent viewing history right at my fingertips.
Content discovery score: 9.5 out of 10
Is it easy to move between categories on Disney+?
For the most part. The brand tiles discussed above combined with the ability to narrow your view to Movies, Series, or Originals, is a good start, especially the Originals button; too often, streamers don’t delineate their original content very well, and with the large library Disney+ boasts, this could become a major problem for audiences.
Once again, however, I have to knock a few points off the Disney+ interface for not making live content a little easier to find, especially live sports. I don’t doubt this is something Disney will tweak in the future, but for now, it’s a factor that needs work.
Category switching score: 7 out of 10
Does Disney+ make it easy to find live content?
No need to go into crazy detail here, as I’ve brought up this topic multiple times in preceding sections. I do want to point out that the Streams row with live channels discussed above is 15 rows down the Disney+ home page, and the live sports content row is also quite a scroll down the page. Disney+ likely figures that most of its customers are coming to the streamer to watch on-demand content, but that comes at a cost of making live programming more difficult to find.
Live content availability score:** 5 out of 10
How are Disney+’s playback controls?
The playback controls on Disney+ are fairly rudimentary, and I don’t mean that as a complaint. The streamer has a button for changing audio and subtitle options, fast forwarding and rewinding, pausing, and that’s about it. There are no recommendations for other shows or episode menus that come up when using them.
This may be a bit simplistic to users who are used to getting more from playback controls on Hulu, but I find that simplified setup to be a good thing. If I want to browse recommendations, I’ll seek out that super-sized row in the home screen — it isn’t hard to find.
Fast-forwarding and rewinding allow viewers to scroll through the title at up to four times regular playback speed. Viewers can also skip ahead or back by 10 seconds using the directional buttons on their remote.
The Disney+ playback controls are fairly rudimentary.
Playback controls score: 8 out of 10
How easy is it to skip credits and intros on Disney+?
Skipping intros is very easy on Disney+. The streamer’s Skip Intro button comes up automatically when the opening credits roll, and while it does go away after a few seconds, pulling up the playback controls will bring the Skip Intro button back onto the screen.
Skipping credits on the streamer is just as easy, with the Next Episode button popping up automatically when the credits begin. All in all, this might be the thing Disney+ did the best in my review.
Ease of skipping intros and credits score: 10 out of 10
Conclusion
I came into my review expecting a little more from Disney+. It’s not that the streamer’s interface is bad per se; it still gets you where you need to go. But some of its content rows are wildly different sizes, and I think it needs to do a bit more refining when it comes to showing viewers live content.
Overall score: 7 out of 10
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”