One of Disney+’s little known features was the ability to watch movies and TV shows synced with your friends no matter where they are. The feature, first launched in 2020, allowed you to share a link to let your friends and family watch a show with you even if they are not in the same home. Now, though, that feature is gone, and all mention of it has been removed from the Disney+ website.
Yesterday on Reddit many started to notice the feature was gone. Chat support has been telling anyone who asks that “as of September 18th, 2023, the GroupWatch feature will no longer be available on Disney+.” Disney has made no official announcement of the change outside of chat support messages to customers who ask.
Update Disney has confirmed to What’s on Disney Plus that they have removed the Groupwatch feature. No other details have been offered.
Groupwatch had limitations as you both had to be Disney+ subscribers and be in the same area. If it all worked for you, Disney would automatically stream what you are watching synced so you can talk about the show or movie together. Now, you will have to go back to the days of manually trying to start the movie at the same time together.
This all comes as Disney+ has announced it will soon raise its price and crack down on password sharing. Disney+ Premium will go up by $3 to $13.99 a month. Hulu without ads will also increase by $3 to $17.99. ESPN+ rises by $1 to $10.99 a month. It’s also going to crack down on password sharing next year.
Removing Groupwatch doesn’t seem to help with a crack down on password sharing, as both parties had to have a Disney+ membership. This is likely more about it being an underused feature and removing it lets the team focus on more popular features.