Disney+ Update Adds ‘Continue Watching’ Option to Streaming Interface

After a supremely successful launch, which forced Disney+ to disable features like “Resume,” “Restart,” and “Continue Watching,” the company has been re-enabling the features.

Last week, Disney+ added “Resume” and “Restart” to its platform, and now its re-enabled the “Continue Watching” feature, reads a new report from CNBC. Similar to other services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ now shows a row on your home screen of shows and movies you’ve recently started watching.

In the Disney+ interface, “Continue Watching” appears as a new row underneath originals. The update doesn’t require a new app download, as the streaming service is implementing the feature on the server-side. As you would expect, “Continue Watching” works across platforms, so if you pause a show on your connected TV device, you’ll be able to resume playback on a mobile phone, for example.



Kevin Mayer, chairman of Disney’s Direct-to-Consumer and International division, said last week at the Code Media conference that developers had temporarily disabled Continue Watching and other features while engineers fixed the Disney+ app. Mayer acknowledged that the snafus for Disney+ out of the gate “had we to do with the way we architected the app.”

Disney+, which seeks to rival Netflix, costs $8.99 CAD a month. It launched November 12 in Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands. It hit Australia and New Zealand last week and will come to the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain on March 31. It’s a vast library of Disney’s media empire, including content from Disney’s own back catalogue, Fox, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic.