What are our 7 favorite hidden feaures of Hulu?
What are our 7 favorite hidden feaures of Hulu?
We’ll run through the best secret features on Hulu to help you make the most of your subscription.
After months of gradual progress, Hulu is now nearly fully embedded in the Disney streaming ecosystem. The future of the streamer’s standalone app is very much in question, as Disney has made it possible to stream Hulu titles from within the Disney+ app. But Hulu is still a unique, feature-rich streaming service on its own, and it has a ton of hidden aspects that even long-time customers may not know about. Find out our seven favorite features of Hulu below, including how to add more content, watch sports through the Hulu app, and maximize your subscription.
The 7 best hidden features of a Hulu subscription
Add Disney+ to Hulu for just $0.50
Of course, the ability to bundle Disney+ and Hulu together isn’t new and isn’t a secret. But with the most recent price increase on Disney streamers, it’s actually never been cheaper to add Disney+ to a Hulu subscription.
In this latest round of price hikes, Disney left one of its bundles untouched: the combo of ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu. The combo still costs just $13 per month — only $0.50 more than subscribing to Hulu by itself. And once you’re a bundle subscriber, you unlock a new layer of convenience.
That’s because Disney now allows viewers to not only watch titles from Hulu on the Disney+ app, but to link their Hulu profile to Disney+, as well. Doing so allows subscribers to see their viewing history and watchlists on the Disney+ app as well, making it even easier to stream all the on-demand entertainment content in one’s subscription on a single platform.
Get Paramount+ Premium, HBO Max, STARZ, more Hulu add-ons
Readers might think of live TV streaming services like YouTube TV or larger subscription aggregators like Prime Video as being the best ways to watch multiple streaming services on a single app. But entirely aside from Disney+, Hulu offers several add-on streamers that allow customers to pay an additional fee and watch even more content through the Hulu app.
These add-ons include premium streamers like Cinemax, Paramount+, and STARZ. Viewers who add these to a Hulu subscription will be able to watch part of their library directly through Hulu, and will also be able to sign in to the apps of the services themselves for even more access to TV shows, movies, and even live sports (with Paramount+ Premium). You can also sign up for a bundle that integrates content from Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max, bringing popular HBO titles into the Hulu app.
Watch live sports from ESPN on the Hulu app
Hulu subscribers who have access to ESPN Unlimited through a participating TV provider can watch ESPN Unlimited content directly through the Hulu app, bringing a huge selection of live sports to the service. ESPN Unlimited includes everything you can watch on ESPN linear channels, including ESPN on ABC events.
Customers can also pay $14 per month for the ESPN Select add-on with a Hulu subscription. While this doesn’t include everything in an ESPN Unlimited subscription, it does offer out-of-market and exclusive NHL games, PGA TOUR LIVE, Grand Slam tennis, college football, college basketball, a ton of international soccer, and more. Stream it all through the Hulu app, and enjoy the convenience of the single-platform experience.
Create up to 7 user profiles on one Hulu account
Sharing a Hulu account with others in a household can quickly get out of hand if everyone is using one profile. If you’re trying to watch the latest season of “American Horror Story,” you don’t want it being buried in the “Continue Watching” row after a family member or roommate decides to start bingeing three different shows from the Fox library, or one of the other thousands of titles available on Hulu.
Instead of suffering these annoyances, subscribers should take advantage of the fact that Hulu allows viewers to set up as many as seven user profiles per account. These let viewers keep their watchlists and viewing history separate from others using the account, and allow parents to create kids’ profiles that restrict content viewing and in-app purchases.
Download your favorite Hulu titles to watch offline
Customers who opt to upgrade to an ad-free Hulu subscription can enjoy a bonus feature that isn’t available for ad-supported customers: the ability to download TV shows and movies for offline viewing on mobile devices, letting customers take their Hulu favorites anywhere.
Hulu allows Premium subscribers to download up to 25 movies or TV episodes at a time across a maximum of five supported devices per account. Using this feature, customers can bring Hulu titles along for a long flight, and even into territories where the streamer might not be available.
Start a show over by resetting your Hulu watch history
Hulu has an incredibly bingeable library, but that can sometimes lead viewers to start a series, set it down in favor of another, and not come back to it for some time. I know I’ve done this plenty of times, and when I do, I usually prefer to restart the series in question instead of trying to pick up where I left off and remember everything that happened.
Hulu allows subscribers to delete show or movies from their Continue Watching row, which will wipe the viewing history for that title clean. Start your binge from the beginning and make it a true start-to-finish experience with this Hulu feature, whether it’s your first binge or your 101st.
Use Reduce Motion to cut distractions on the Hulu app
Finally, one of the most annoying things about streaming apps for those with auditory and visual sensitivities is that their user interfaces are often packed with autoplay videos, some of which can be for explosive action movies or other titles that inject an unnecessary amount of volume into a peaceful scroll.
But Hulu users can toggle a setting called Reduce Motion to suppress animations and autoplay video banners in the streamer’s user experience. This removes a ton of visual distractions from the app and transforms its layout into a lower-bandwidth experience that’s perfect for avoiding accidental audio play.
Hulu
Hulu is a video streaming service that gives access to thousands of full seasons of exclusive series, hit movies, kids shows, and Hulu Originals like “Only Murders in the Building,” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”