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You sit down on the couch, open the Netflix app and look for something to watch. An hour later you finally found something. Netflix is aiming to make that a thing of the past, with its new ‘Play Something’ shuffle feature.
Play Something had been available in beta for some users, but now Netflix is rolling it out for everyone. However, it is only available on TV devices right now. It does have plans to bring it to Android and iOS devices in the future however.
It’s not a true shuffle button, where it’ll start playing a random title. Instead, when you click on it, it’ll shuffle some movies and TV shows that you might want to watch. So instead of browsing through the thousands of titles available on Netflix, you can browse through a handful of titles to find something to watch.
How does the ‘Play Something’ feature work?
It’s not just a button that brings you random titles to choose from. Instead, it will use your profile that has all sorts of data on titles you’ve watched and liked (and disliked) in the past, to provide you with titles you will actually want to see. Netflix says it will show a variety of algorithmically curated content. This also includes new movies, shows and films that you may have already started. Or those on your watchlist.
Given all of the info that Netflix has on us, it should come as no surprise that this feature would use that data. As it will also work to bring you titles that you may have otherwise never known existed on Netflix.
We’ve all been there, scrolling through Netflix for what seems like hours, to find something to watch while we eat dinner, or before we go to bed. Hopefully this feature will fix that, so we can jump into a show much faster and start watching.