When it comes to digital media consumption, no other company has had a greater impact on the industry than Netflix. Launched in 1999, the service has evolved a lot over the time and now covers more than 190 countries around the world. It will be near impossible for you to find a service which is as ubiquitous as Netflix. One of the biggest reasons behind the success of Netflix apart from its huge catalog of shows and movies is its easy to use interface. Even a child can learn to use Netflix in mere hours if not minutes. That being said, if you are ready to learn some advanced tips and tricks, it will certainly enhance your experience. In this article we are going to focus on the same as we bring you 9 Netflix tricks which can help you stream better:
1. Browse Genre and Categories like a Pro
While Netflix gives a fairly respectable genre and categories browser, the company maintains a far more powerful genre browser in the background which users don’t have access to. Netflix associates all these genres with codes that you will need to add at the end of the URL (given below) to get access to that specific genre.
For example, the genre code for Asian Action Movies is 77232. So, if we want to access this category we will be using the following link:
Since it’s impossible to remember these codes, I suggest that you keep the list handy where it is easily accessible and bookmark the ones that you visit most. This simple trick will change the way you browse Netflix and find interesting content.
2. Stop Videos from Autoplaying
While I love everything about Netflix, the one thing that I hate about the service is its auto-playing videos. I don’t want the featured title to start auto-playing whenever I launch the service on my browser. If you also hate this feature, this trick can save you a lot of headaches. We will accomplish this with the help of an extension called Netflix Tweaked. The only thing that this extension does is to stop videos from auto-playing when you are browsing. So, just click on the link below to install it and thank me later. Do note that sometime just the audio plays back in the background so you will need to mute it by clicking on the button marked in the picture below. The good thing is that you only have to do it once and not every time you open Netflix.
I hate the fact that Netflix keeps on showing me shows and movies in my “Continue Watching List” even when I have completed it just because I didn’t take the time to scrub it to the end. For this reason, I remove items from my ‘watchlist’ weekly so that they don’t plague my homepage. If you also want to remove content from the Continue Watching List, first, login to your account on a browser (it doesn’t work through the app), click on your profile icon and then go to Account -> Viewing Activity and then click on the “⊘” button next to the item that you want to remove. We have already covered this in a previous article so you can find the full tutorial by clicking here.
Most of you might know that Netflix brings a built-in subtitle player which ads subtitles to almost all the content on its platform. However, not many people know that you can customize the look and feel of the subtitle tracks if you want to. To customize subtitles, first, click on the profile icon and then go to Account -> Subtitle Appearance. The Subtitle Appearance settings will be under the “My Profile” section. Once you are there, you will be able to change the look, the font, the color of the text, text size, and more. Once you have set your preferences, it will be synced across all your devices.
While Netflix is present in more than 190 countries, all of its content is not universal. Due to media rights complications, the content catalog of one country will be different from the other in most cases. It used to pretty easy to bypass this ban using a VPN, however, Netflix has taken quite strict steps against VPNs and you won’t be able to use them to unlock geo-locked content now. But all hope is not lost as there are services out there which allow you to unblock geo-locked content of Netflix.
6. Manage Devices
If you tend to use Netflix on any device that you get your hands on, chances are that you have left your account logged into multiple devices. This is not only bad for privacy reasons but it will also mean that the devices are counting against the number of your allowed devices. That’s why it’s good to check the devices that you are logged in on from time to time, and disallow the ones that you are not using any longer or are unfamiliar with. To do so, click on your profile icon and then go to Account -> Sign out of all devices, and then log back in on the devices that you want to use Netflix on. You can also click on “Recent device streaming activity” to see which devices are using your account.
If you find yourself moving back and forth between Netflix and IMDb to see if a title is worth viewing or not, this trick is going to save you a lot of trouble. By default, Netflix doesn’t allow you to see IMDb ratings of shows, that’s why we will be using an extension to enable this feature. The extension is called “IMDb Ratings for Netflix” and once you have installed it on your browser, you will be able to see IMDb ratings of all the shows and movies when you hover over their title, just as shown in the picture below. While this extension is only available for Chrome, there’s a similar extension for Firefox too which I have linked below.
8. Change CDN and Bitrate for Smoother Playback
If your network cannot support smooth playback on Netflix, you can use this trick to ensure that you never have to deal with buffering again. Basically, we will be using this trick to select the bitrate and CDN so that you can select the optimal streaming speed that your network can handle. The trick works only on Chrome so you will need to use the Chrome browser. To select CDN and bitrate, just play something on Netflix and then hit the Ctrl+Shift+Opt+S keyboard combo on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S on Windows. Once you do that, a hidden window will open allowing you to select CDN and bitrate. Then all you need to do is start from the top and then go down to find the setting on which Netflix doesn’t buffer on your Network.
While Netflix is mainly a streaming app, its mobile apps including iOS and Android allow users to download content for offline playback. This is great for keeping content to watch when you don’t have access to the internet. I mainly use it download shows when I am on my home or office WiFi so that I don’t have to waste my mobile data on Netflix. Downloading a show is as easy as tapping on the download button shown in the picture below. There’s also a separate “Downloads” section which will host all your downloads shows.
