Netflix may have a metric ton of shows, but most of the things that actually made it feel more intelligent and even more delightful have been gradually taken away over the years.
Whether you were trying to make choices during the film or just wanted to watch something without putting too much brain power in it, these features contributed wonders to the Netflix experience—and I am missing them. Here are five features that I wish will return.
1. Interactive Shows
Does Black Mirror: Bandersnatch still ring a bell with you? The audience was not just watching the story; they were part of it. The interactive series from Netflix allowed viewers to change the direction of the story, thus delivering various endings and a rewatch experience that no regular shows could give.
The situation now is that there are only four interactive shows at the moment, and they might be gone soon too. The availability of interactive content marked a significant shift towards the audience from being passive to involved and showing off new ways of creativity in the story.
2. Play Something
There’s such a thing as too much selection, and that is what we are talking about. Netflix in 2021 launched the Play Something feature which helped combat decision fatigue. Instead of aimlessly and endlessly searching for something to watch it was at your disposal the auto-playing of a movie or a show curated to your likes, and the Play Something button was very instrumental in that process.
It was like you were switching your TV on and seeing what’s playing, only a bit more clever. Unfortunately, this Shuffle play-style feature looks like it is unavailable to most users at the moment.
With a large content library, this algorithm-driven feature allowed viewers to reach their desired content quickly and was an ideal solution for indecisive people.
3. Sleep Timers
If you’ve ever nodded off while watching back-to-back episodes, sleep timers made your life easier. Netflix made a brilliant decision to float the sleep timer feature on their Android app, which let users select 15, 30, or 45 minutes but also to let it go until the end of the episode.
For those who prefer to watch TV when they are getting ready to sleep or just to cut the screen time, the sleep timer was an actual solution to Netflix. Why it didn’t become widespread is still a question mark to many people.
4. Friends Feature
Before Netflix became the individual, one-account-per-household platform it is today, it had a fun yet functional social feature known as Friends. Friends can be considered as a mini social networking site within Netflix. Users were allowed to invite up to 50 friends.
Even that the Friends feature had a quiet closure in the early 2010s due to not reaching a large number of users, saying that this was the case would not be completely right, as accounts sharing passwords had a lot to do with it.
5. User Reviews
Netflix previously permitted users to write down their reviews and give the show a star rating. These are not only places for comment, but they also provide the user with the information they need to avoid terrible shows, find hidden gems, and make better choices.
