Plex’s latest beta features can help you navigate every streaming service you have

Image: Plex

Having to search through a bunch of different services to find something to watch is a modern problem, and the latest features of Plex are a modern solution. The company announced a new feature called "Discover", which gathers everything you want to watch in one place, and a universal watchlist.

The Discover screen acts like most streaming services' homepages, giving you recommendations on what to watch next, but with the ability to show content from many different catalogs. You don't have access to all of it, so it shouldn't overwhelm you. You can choose only the services you have. The new menu may finally be able to pull off the new model of ad-supported free TV that Plex has been working on for several years.

Image: Plex

If you know what you want to watch but not where to find it, there is a new watch from these locations feature. There is a section on the info page for movies and TV shows that show which streaming services offer that content. On some versions of the app, you can bounce right to the streaming service from the page.

To put it lightly, the list of streaming services supported by Plex is immense. It includes all the big names, like Hulu, Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Peacock, along with almost 150 others. If you can legally stream what you are watching on the internet, Plex can probably tell you about it, with only a few exceptions. You can allow it to search your libraries of self-hosted videos or other media.

According to the support page for Plex, not all platforms allow sending the user to the corresponding streaming app. It seemed to work okay, but it was a very clearly abeta. I was able to open links to Apple TV Plus, but I got an error trying to open links to the other channels. Even though they were, the apps weren't installed. It worked for every platform I could think of, even though it took me to the search results page for the title instead of the actual page for the movie itself.

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This might be the thing that finally gets me to use Plex. My wife and I spent an hour figuring out what to watch when I experienced the streaming struggle. The Apple TV has a built-in universal search that lets you make a watchlist, but these features have very limited support for content on Netflix. Other smart TV platforms have universal search features as well, so you can find what you're looking for. It would be great to have it all in one place and in a neat interface that works across many different devices.

If you use the most up-to-date version of the Plex app, these features should be free. I didn't have to sign up for a program to get access to them, but you may have to follow their instructions.