Hulu is one of the best streaming services out there, with its diverse and appealing selection of TV shows and movies to watch. But up until last month, it also had an atrocious user interface.
"Old Hulu" made it weirdly difficult to do basic things, like the ability to continue watching something you'd paused the night before. "New Hulu," which started rolling out in late May, aims to be different. Gone are the unreasonable ways of old, replaced by something more akin to Disney+.
Hulu's revamped UI isn't revolutionary by any means, but those who have been frustrated by the app in the past might find something to like about the way it's laid out now.
So, what's different?
Big cards!
Image: hulu
The most noticeable change up front is that Hulu's app on streaming devices is no longer coated in a sickly green color everywhere you look. That, alone, makes the update worth it.
More substantially, the Hulu home screen has been slightly rearranged to feature different collections of content. These range from categories like "Movies For You" to "FX on Hulu" and other groupings you'd expect to see on a streaming app. The collections themselves are stacked vertically, but the contents of a collection are presented horizontally, making it pretty similar to the way Disney+ arranges its home screen. Disney, if you weren't already aware, has majority ownership of Hulu, so the UI alignment here makes sense.
Unlike Disney+, however, Hulu's new look presents shows and movies with massive cards featuring a still image, age rating, genre, release year, and (if applicable) original network. I'm a little torn on this; on one hand, the cards' massive size makes them eminently readable even from a distance. But, on the other hand, only two full cards can fit on the screen at once, which cuts down the amount of information you can get at a glance. That said, the app only does this for things you haven't watched yet — content in your "Keep Watching" collection is presented with smaller cards.
Undoubtedly, the best change was made to the top row of the Hulu app. It used to contain a handful of nondescript icons for things like "My Stuff" and "Browse" that you had to hover over to find out what they meant. Now, there are three plain text options for "Home" and the two aforementioned categories. Go to "My Stuff" to see everything you've told Hulu to keep track of and "Browse" to take a deeper look at the app's catalog. Easy!
It's difficult to communicate the change to someone who hasn't tried both the old and new Hulu interfaces, but overall, everything just feels more efficient. In almost every way, Hulu requires a little less hassle to navigate now. Well, almost.
What still needs work?
Show pages on the Hulu app are still an atrocity. They haven't changed much with the new update, if at all. Seasons are arranged vertically on the left side and episodes within the selected season are also...arranged vertically on the right side. Animated series and sitcoms that tend to have seasons with 20-plus episodes become kind of painful to scroll through as a result.
It's baffling that Hulu has kept show pages in this ungodly format, especially considering the web browser version is infinitely better. Take a look at the image below to see how Deadwood's show page looks in Chrome. You choose seasons from a drop-down menu and episodes are arranged in a grid, making it easier to find the one you're looking for.
Image: hulu
I'm not saying the Hulu app needs to emulate that browser format completely, as drop-down menus inherently work better for mouse-driven devices. Still, a grid view is just a cleaner and easier way to showcase TV episodes.
Why can my TV app only fit three episodes on screen at once while my significantly smaller laptop can fit at least eight?
I hope Hulu's next UI adjustment changes this because the app is otherwise pretty pleasant to use now. I've grown to like Hulu a lot over time, mostly because no other service will personally cater to me by hosting King of the Hill. The new app interface doesn't fix every single problem I had with it before, but overall, it's a much-needed improvement that brings the service up to par with its high-quality catalog.
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June 04, 2020 at 08:10PM
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