YouTube added 1,500 free movies, but good luck finding them

If you are willing to sit through some ads, you can watch more movies and TV shows for free on YouTube. Finding them all is not easy.

This is the first time that YouTube has branched out to TV shows. Over 1,500 movies and 100 television shows are included in the updated catalogue of free content, which was announced last week.

Some of the recently added films are not new to the site. Legally Blonde was previously free to stream with ads, but later left the platform and is back now. If you want to save money on a night in, you can check out YouTube.

The free titles on YouTube are more annoying than they need to be. The platform will not only show you all the free titles, but will also let you scroll through them to find your next binge watch. It will not allow you to narrow your search to all of the free movies on the site.

The rest of the movie section is hidden by the algorithm, which selects a few hundred ad-supported titles to show you. According to Mashable, there are over four times as many ad-supported films available in this category. There were 100 free TV shows.

Users can see personalized selections for themselves, instead of seeing the entire library at once.

There is a search bar that viewers can use to look for titles, as well as browse through content in genre-themed sections which contain a mix of free, hire, and purchasable content. There is no section for listing all of the free films or television shows on the site, giving users no choice but to trust that YouTube knows what they should watch.

You can see and search for all 1,500 free movies and 100 shows on the Movies section, as well as watch the next selection on your home page, all of which are personalized.

It seems like a strange lack of function, but then again, the bread and butter of the site is user-uploaded content. If you end up giving up and paying $5.99 to rent No Time To Die, it will benefit them.

Don't bank on it for your quick-fix weekend entertainment, because the ad-supported film offerings are an option to browse idly when you have time.