Getting started is as easy as picking a show and pressing play. However, there are a few tricks you can use to get the most out of your viewing experience, like killing autoplay trailers.
(Photo by Olly Curtis/Future via Getty Images) The « net » in Netflix might as well stand for « network. » Faced with the prospect of losing licensed content as studios got into the streaming biz themselves, Netflix leaned heavily into original programming starting in 2013 with House of Cards. It now streams dozens of Netflix Originals, from Lupin and Stranger Things to award winners like The Crown and Ozark. There is life on Netflix after The Office. The competition is fierce. Disney+, Apple TV+, Peacock, and HBO Max are just a few of the video-streaming services from deep-pocketed backers fighting for eyeballs. That means Netflix has to be strategic—cancelling series (or opting not to save shows like Manifest Manifest) and greenlighting shows that wouldn’t ( shouldn’t?) stand a chance anywhere else. With so much bingeable original content, it’s easy to forget that there’s a huge stock of TV shows and movies that change on a regular basis. So get some popcorn and get going. You might be watching Netflix on the sofa by yourself, but you won’t be alone. Netflix has more than 200 million subscribers, so you’re never far from a fellow binge-watcher. Getting started is as easy as picking a show and pressing play. However, there are a few tricks that you can use to get the most out of your viewing experience. Turn Off Autoplay Trailers In a bid to showcase its original fare, Netflix will autoplay its trailers when you log on to find something to watch. Autoplay with sound, which can be quite annoying when you’re just trying to browse the app. Netflix heard your complaints, however, and added the option to turn off autoplay. On a desktop, click your account avatar on the top right, and go to Manage Profiles. Click your account and uncheck Autoplay previews while browsing on all devices. Set a Sleep Timer NFTimer (left) and iOS Clock app Are you still watching? When Netflix asks this annoying question, the answer is often a rather shameful yes. But some of us like to drift off to episodes of Schitt’s Creek or some other comforting fare. After a few episodes of a given show, Netflix will eventually stop playback, display an « Are you still watching » alert, and go to sleep if you don’t respond. But what if you want the app to stop after a set amount of time? Netflix is reportedly testing a sleep timer feature, though it has yet to roll it out. But there are workarounds. On iOS, open the Clock app, go to Timer, and set it for how long you would like Netflix to play. Under When Timer Ends, select Stop Playing. For Android, download NFTimer, which does the same thing. Make sure to tap the ellipses icon on the top right and enable screen locking; otherwise, when your timer runs out, your Netflix window will just reduce to a small, picture-in-picture window. With screen-locking enabled, your screen will go to sleep and Netflix will stop playing. Start your timer on either OS, open Netflix, press play, and it will close when the timer expires. Turn Off Post-Play Another way to avoid continuous play as you sleep (or curb your binging) is to disable Netflix’s Post-Play feature, which automatically plays the next episode of the show a few seconds after the credits roll. Go to Account > My Profile > Playback Settings, and uncheck the box that says Autoplay next episode in a series on all devices. Browse Hidden Netflix Categories Netflix has a huge library of content that can be hard to navigate. You can drill down by genre, but to get even more specific, consult Netflix-Codes.com. Whereas on the Netflix app, you can drill down to Thrillers, for example, Netflix-Codes breaks it down further into things like Spy thrillers, Supernatural thrillers, and Sci-Fi thrillers. It does so by organizing Netflix’s own, secret category codes. You can click off Netflix-Codes.com and go there directly, or find the code and type it into your browser yourself, like this, (swapping out [INSERTNUMBER] for the code, of course): http://www.
