Does your Netflix home screen — you know, the one with your user profiles — now have a “Shuffle Play” button?
Netflix is testing a ‘Shuffle’ button, because you’re tired of picking what to watch
One variant is called Shuffle Play, and you might already see it
One variant is called Shuffle Play, and you might already see it
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
That’s because Netflix is actually planning to bring a shuffle feature to its collection of streaming movies and TV shows, letting you avoid yet another argument with your spouse/housemate/partner/etc about what you’ll be watching this evening. The company tells us it’s actually been running this test since July.
The company is already testing a few potential ways the feature might look, including the “Play Something” variant that my colleague Julia Alexander snapped a quick picture of below. But it sounds like it’s not just an experiment: “The hope is to absolutely productize something,” a spokesperson told Variety. The company tells us it’s only available so far on “TV devices.” I didn’t see it on my Roku.
Photo by Julia Alexander / The Verge
When Julia gave the “Play Something” button a spin, it fired up an episode of Netflix’s Umbrella Academy with the explanation “because you watched Spider-Man.” (Both are about comic book superheroes and — depending on which Spider-Man we’re talking about, Julia? — fairly well received, so I guess that makes perfect sense.)
TechCrunch seems to have spotted the test first; as it points out, Netflix previously tested a feature that’d show you a random episode of a specific TV series. This sounds far more useful.
“We run these tests in different countries and for different periods of time - and only make them broadly available if people find them useful,” a Netflix rep tells us.
Update, 8:02PM ET: Added comment from Netflix.
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