Play Store on Android getting rid of ‘Movies & TV’ tab in favor of Google TV app

Abner Li | Mar 22 2022 - 2:39 pm PT

After the death of Play Music, Google Play was left with applications, books, and television. The Play Store will soon drop Movies & TV on Android with the Google TV app being the new place to buy and rent content.

When YouTube Music replaced the Play equivalent entirely, Google stopped selling songs and albums that could be purchased individually. The upcoming Play Movies & TV transition is slightly less drastic than that, but it does further the breakup of Google Play as a unified store for media.

Starting in May, Google says “Movies & TV will no longer be supported” in the Play Store found on Android phones and tablets. The company announced this change in an email to customers today.

This means that tab will be removed from the bottom bar, with search also no longer surfacing films and shows. Users are redirected to the standalone Google TV client, which is already pre-installed on Android devices.

You will be able to buy and rent content as you do today, while all “purchased content will continue to be available in the Google TV app.” There is no impact to family sharing, Play Points, or the ability to use Play credits/gift cards since the backend infrastructure is not changing. Other aspects that stay the same are refund requests and wishlists. Meanwhile, no changes were announced for play.google.com on the web today.

In late 2020, the Play Movies & TV app on Android was overhauled to become Google TV. The client acts as a library, store, and recommendations feed for media. That coincided with the new Chromecast and a slew of content integrations for the streaming dongle. The app is only available on Android, with Play Movies & TV unchanged on iOS.

For a good year or so, the Google TV rebrand was limited to the United States, but it came to 14 more countries in September of 2021. It also gained an in-app Android TV remote at that time.