Samsung TV Plus Is Disappearing for Many Users and They Aren't Happy

The Gist:

• Samsung TV Plus offers Samsung TV users a free, ad-supported channel with hundreds of movies and channels.
• The app disappeared from many people's TVs in late December.
• Samsung is aware of the issue and working to resolve it.
• In the meantime, you can use screen mirroring to watch the app on your TV if you have a Galaxy phone.

Although it's only available to people with Samsung TVs, many people have come to rely on Samsung TV Plus as one of their go-to streaming options. The service is totally free and ad-supported. The app has more than 250 channels and thousands of movies for users to peruse.

That may be why there was so much confusion and surprise for users when, around Dec. 20, 2023, they noticed that the app seemed to have disappeared altogether. Many had intentionally kept the app in a spot where they could access it easily, only to discover that they could no longer find it at all.

Thankfully, the disappearance of Samsung TV Plus is now under investigation. Samsung's message boards were quickly filled with people who had questions about where the app had gone. A Samsung representative explained that the company was looking into the app's disappearance and trying to find a solution.

"This situation is currently under investigation," the rep wrote on the official Samsung message board.

"So far based on the comments in the threads, the application is not appearing on the sources, Smart hub, or displaying a 'Not available' message on the screen when selecting the Samsung TV plus button on the standard remote," the rep continued.

The rep encouraged everyone to make sure that they had the latest version of their TV's firmware downloaded, but didn't indicate when the problem might be resolved.

The rep did note, however, that there was a workaround available to anyone who owns a Galaxy phone. The smart view feature allows you to screen mirror your Samsung TV Plus app from a mobile device onto your TV. While that definitely isn't a long-term fix, it's workable for anyone who wants to watch something while Samsung tries to resolve the broader issue.

Pluto TV is also available and has many of the same channels and movies as the Samsung app.

Based on the volume of comments coming into message boards, it seems clear that this issue is fairly widespread and still needs to be resolved. Previously, Samsung announced that they would be updating the app, but it doesn't seem like this kind of outage was part of their initial plan.

Given that we don't have a firm timeline for when the app will be back up and running, users will have to just wait and see when the app shows back up on TVs. For now, users can take comfort in the fact that Samsung is working on the problem. Hopefully, the issue will be resolved soon.