To those paying attention, Disney looks to have been dismantling Hulu and its status as a standalone app since around Spring 2024, and we may now be close to the endgame. A leaked internal document (as reported by Business Insider in May) described a phased migration dubbed ‘Project Gemini’, which ends with Hulu being decommissioned as soon as users are prompted to move to Disney+.
Publicly, Disney has said it doesn’t plan to sunset the app, but committed Hulu users have plenty of reason to be skeptical. Both things can be true at once, after all.
That, of course, leaves a particularly annoying question unanswered for around 50 million people who still use Hulu regularly: what happens to your watchlist?
Disney hasn’t set a date
But that doesn’t mean it’s not coming
Things got moving in earnest back in August 2025, when Bob Iger and Hugh Johnston told shareholders that Disney would be “fully integrating Hulu into Disney+”, promising a big, unified app come 2026. That’s now a global initiative, with the Star tile gone from international Disney+ accounts by October 2025, and the Hulu app itself starting to disappear from platforms like the Nintendo Switch.
What May’s leaked document added was the word “decommissioned,” and one Hulu staffer described the app as being on life support with no active development. The plan going forward is apparently to migrate users gradually rather than push them to switch, but Disney maintains that no current plans include decommissioning Hulu.
There’s a solid argument that losing the app is the best thing that could happen to Hulu’s originals, and it actually fits well with Disney’s wider super app ambitions.
Your watchlist is your responsibility
And no one’s going to move it for you
Your Hulu watchlist won’t move on its own, sadly, and the service’s help pages spell that out in black and white. According to them, content in My Stuff (Hulu’s equivalent of a watchlist) and your watch history will not carry over to your Disney+ Watchlist until you link your profiles. Do this, though, and your history, Continue Watching carousel, and recommendations will sync.
This linking process went live on May 19 for eligible bundle subscribers, and it’s a one-time task, not an ongoing one. Sign in to Disney+ with the same MyDisney login you use for Hulu, and if you’re eligible, you’ll be prompted to attach your Hulu profile to an existing Disney+ profile.
The sync only works one way, though, and linking your Disney+ and Hulu accounts pushes activity to the former, not the other way around. This arguably makes the Hulu app pretty useless after performing the process, since it can’t read what you’re doing on Disney+, but you can access both easily if you use Disney’s app as your main hub.
Of course, some Hulu titles aren’t available on Disney+ right now, so a linked watchlist may still be incomplete. Disney also says that there may be a limit on how many movies and shows a Disney+ Watchlist can hold at once, so if you’ve spent years (like me) hoarding things to watch later, some of those titles might not make it.
Not everyone can link yet
You need to make sure you’re eligible
This may not have crossed your feed yet, as the rollout started with Disney+ / Hulu Bundle and Disney+ / ESPN Bundle subscribers and will widen to all bundle subscribers over the year. Keep checking, but don’t panic if you haven’t been prompted to move over yet.
As far as we can tell, three groups are excluded for now: anyone on Hulu + Live TV, the Disney+ / Hulu / Max bundle, and anyone with Hulu add-ons. Live TV is on its own track entirely, with channels, DVR and add-on packages still in the Hulu app, and Disney+ has no firm timeline.
You also can’t link any Kids profile (or any profile set to under 18), and those don’t actually seem to be in the rollout plans at all. So, if your household is mostly made up of children’s profiles, you currently have no official route to move them.
What to do right now
Future-proof your streaming data while you still can
If you’re on an eligible plan and you’ve seen a prompt, I’d link your accounts now rather than waiting for a deadline. This may arrive with very little notice, and no one likes dealing with tech on a tight timeframe. You only have to go through the process one time, and the alternative is finding out the hard way that Disney has decided to pull the trigger.
If you’re in one of the excluded groups, however, there’s really no elegant fix. The admittedly crude, analog way to solve the problem is to take screenshots of your My Stuff page, or even keep a list somewhere else, and manually add your titles to Disney that way. Something like a Roku Save List does the job if that’s your streaming device, and has the added benefit of surviving whatever any individual service decides to do with its apps next.
