The Google Play Movies & TV app got rebranded to Google TV not too long ago, and in the process, it went from being a storefront of movies and TV shows available on the Play Store to a hub that serves as the center to your entertainment experience, integrating with many of your video streaming services. The app also has a watchlist, which you can add shows and movies to as a reminder to watch them later. Now, Google's making this watchlist a little bit more useful with notifications that give you a heads-up once content becomes available for free on one of your connected streaming services.
These new notifications were first spotted by 9to5Google. Now, not only will the watchlist serve as a, well, watchlist, but it will also proactively tell you whenever one of the items saved to it goes free. This is part of a new "Available to watch free" option in the app settings, which is enabled by default.
The language surrounding this "available for free" is a bit unclear, as you could think that the app will notify you of any movies or shows actually going free to watch on Google's storefront, but it's much more likely that it's about notifying you when content becomes available on one of your go-to streaming services. Unfortunately, it's hard to actually test these notifications right now, given that streaming services aren't really predictable when it comes to updating their libraries. But no matter which of those two options are right, both make the watchlist much more useful.
This feature is live on Google TV version 4.29, which is rolling out over the Play Store now, so if you're interested, be on the lookout for an update. Alternatively, you can download the APK over at APK Mirror, too.