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The era of Max is upon us as HBO and Discovery combine

Starting Tuesday, May 23, logging in to your HBO Max app will be a bit different. That’s the day that HBO Max combines with Discovery under a new tech stack — which promises to be better than the last — and a new brand. And, with luck, it’ll be a seamless transition.

A reminder that HBO Max is becoming Max on May 23, 2023.
Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

The gist is this: HBO Max is going away as a brand. But the content — most of it, anyway — will live on with the HBO name. That goes for the best shows on HBO Max, like Succession. (Seriously, someone thought it’d be a good idea to do this conversion just days before the finale?) The same is true for the best movies on HBO Max. And it’ll live alongside a ton of content from the Discovery family of networks, all under the Max branding. And, for what it’s worth, the Discovery+ app isn’t going anywhere.

That perhaps is a little confusing, we know. But the short version is that the HBO Max app is going away, and will be replaced by Max.

You shouldn’t have to do anything for this transition to happen, by the way, save for perhaps updating your HBO Max app, if it didn’t already do so automatically. (If you’re on an Amazon device, Cox cable, Roku, Vizio, or Xfinity, your app should be good to go. Otherwise, you may have to update things yourself.) And you might have to log back in. But that theoretically should be the worst of it.

Your HBO Max account will be automatically transferred to Max. That includes profiles and settings. You will, however, need to re-download anything you’ve snagged for offline viewing.

And it (probably) is that simple. While it’s definitely possible that things could go off the rails, HBO Max has done this sort of transition before, when it changed from HBO Go/HBO Now to HBO Max in May 2020.

Phil Nickinson
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
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