Key Takeaways
- Pluto TV offers thousands of free shows and movies, a mix of current, recent, and classic content.
- The Channel Guide is extensive and takes time to get used to, but it has hundreds of options across different categories.
- Kids Mode limits content for children, and the search function makes finding specific shows easier.
Doomscrolling social media takes up far too much time out of my life, and I’m sure the same can be said for streaming TV series and movies when we have some downtime. But, trying to sift through vast content libraries, even after narrowing down what service to use, just pours sand out of the hourglass.
If you’re someone that enjoys using a free streaming service, one of the top options on the market is Pluto TV. This streaming service is free for anyone to use and works on your smart TV or streaming device. It has thousands of shows and movies available right at your fingertips, and all of them are free. You can watch what Pluto TV is currently showing, or you can choose from their On Demand library and customize your experience even more.
If you haven’t used Pluto TV before and are interested in trying it, here are some tips and tricks straight from my living room. You won’t be sorry because it’s completely free.
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Pluto TV
- number of users
- 80 million
- notable shows
- The Andy Griffith Show , Sanford and Son , The Twilight Zone , Charmed
- notable movies
- Top Gun , Trading Places , Mission Impossible , Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Premium Subscription
- No
- Originals
- No
- Live TV
- 250+ channels
1 Learn the layout of the home page
It will make everything easier going forward
Starting on the home page, you can see plenty of what is available when you first open up the app. The app may either need to be downloaded from your smart TV or streaming device’s app store, but remember that it’s free. You can select any of the top options that Pluto TV has laid out for you, as well as rejoin any of the channels that you have previously watched. There is also a list of popular movies that you can search through and top TV series, sections for movies that have been added that month, ones that are only available that month, and also movies and TV series that are leaving the service, giving you a heads-up that you should watch them before they are gone.
There are no specific dates in the “last chance” section, so if you see something here you want to watch, you’ll need to seize your chance immediately!
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2 The Channel Guide may take some time to get used to
But once you get them, you’ll be set
If you toggle over to the left-hand side of the platform, you can choose the Channel Guide to scroll through all of what is currently airing on Pluto TV. They are laid out in different categories:
- Last Watched
- Favorites
- Featured
- Movies
- Comedy
- Classic TV
- Westerns
- Sci-Fi
- Drama
- True Crime
- Reality
- Big Brother Live
- Competition Reality
- Entertainment
- Game Shows
- Daytime TV
- News + Opinion
- Sports
- History + Science
- Home + Food
- Animals + Nature
- Kids
- Anime
- En Español
- Music Videos
- Local News
Last Watched only shows up if you have an account, which only takes typing in your e-mail address to create.
There aren’t any numbers on the Channel Guide, which works because there aren’t any numbers on the types of remotes that you use with something like cable. So you’ll need to choose your favorite channels if you want to make them easy to find or you’ll have to scroll through the channel guides every time you want to go to a specific channel. When you click into a channel, you can press over to the Favorite button on the right side and that will show the channel in your favorites.
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3 Turn on kids mode for children
This will stop them from watching some channels
Also on the left-hand side menu is Kids Mode, which you can scroll down to. If you click into this, it opens up a settings menu where you can manage your account, activate kids mode, choose your app preferences, send feedback, and read a legal note. Turning on kids mode will allow for kid-friendly experiences on Pluto TV, meaning that some of the content will not be available to be streamed.
When you enable kids mode, Pluto Kids will activate and the Channel Guide will change. It will offer channels such as Nickelodeon, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Dora the Explorer TV, Little Angel’s Playroom, Baby Shark TV, Transformers TV, and more. Many of the channels provide animated content for children. There are 25 totals in all to choose from. But you can also choose from the On Demand Kids section, which offers even more content to be streamed. There are numerous categories in the On Demand section, ranging from full-length films to TV episodes to shorts.
If you don’t want your little ones to be able to leave kids mode, you can enable a four-digit PIN that can be required to be entered in order to exit
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4 The search makes it easier to find things
It will give you a wide range
The search function makes it simpler to find a specific show or channel that you want to watch. If you know the channel that you want to watch, or even the type of content that you want to watch, such as Black Cinema, you can type that into the search bar, and it will bring up the channel for it. If you want to search for a show or movie, like a Star Trek movie, you can do that as well, and it will show you whether it is available on the platform.
Once you use Pluto TV for a while, you’ll get to know what kind of channels or shows to search, as some shows such as The Walking Dead, have their own channels.
Whether you’re searching for a movie or TV show that is currently showing on a channel or one that is On Demand, it doesn’t matter, as they will both show up in the search function. The ones that are on demand will have a watch now icon on them and the ones that are currently on a channel will have a Live icon. Many of the ones that are live, you will have the option to restart the program rather than join them where they currently are in their runtime.
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5 On demand offers a wide array of programming
There’s something for everybody
Pluto TV will give you some options for you to watch with some curated content for you at the top of the on demand menu. This will be based on what you have watched in the past or what your favorites are. You can also continue to watch any programs that you have started On Demand. When you click on a show or movie in either the channel guide or on demand menus, you can add it to your watch list, which is saved in the On Demand menu, giving you another easy way to keep track of what you want to watch.
There are a number of options when it comes to categories in this area many of them similar to the channel guide subsections. If you choose a TV series from the list and Pluto TV has multiple seasons of that series, you’re able to select a specific episode, have it play from the series’ beginning, or you can scroll through the different seasons.
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