The trick to navigating Disney Plus’ challenging menu

Now that Disney Plus has launched, you can watch dozens of classic Mickey Mouse shorts, obscure Disney Channel television shows, and low-budget network TV movies from the 1970s and ’80s. Assuming you can find them.

While the Disney Plus design makes it easy to watch the company’s biggest properties — like Marvel films and shows, or The Simpsons — locating older or less-popular programs can be a challenge. Here’s a helpful trick.

The Disney Plus homepage presents five main categories: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. But the service has many other categories that allow for easier browsing. To find them, click the magnifying glass icon and scroll beneath the search field.

Disney Plus

In traditional streaming-service language, the magnifying-glass icon just means “search.” You type the name of the thing you want to find, and shows with similar names or genres appear on the screen. That still remains an option on the service when you tap the icon. However, the button also automatically loads a variety of useful categories, which then break down into help subcategories.

Looking for anything Mickey Mouse? Try the Mickey Mouse & Friends category. The Disney Channel Original Movie category lets you browse that specific catalogue by decade, beginning with the 1990s. The huge catch-all category Disney Through the Decades invites you to surf the entire Disney catalogue by decade, beginning with the 1920s and 1930s.

Disney Plus

It’s not a perfect solution, and some of the categories are thin and frivolous, particularly the Darth Vader Collection, which only has 12 entries, many of them Star Wars Lego novelties. But if you’re out to skim through old Disney movies and shows, and to find forgotten classics and oddities, the magnifying glass is your best bet.