Netflix is trialing a shuffle button, which will hopefully help you spend your Sundays actually watching something rather than scrolling indecisively through their catalogue.
Some viewers have noticed a Shuffle Play button appearing on the Netflix TV app’s user profile screen, right beneath their display image and name. The option has alternately materialised in the left-side menu bar available after a profile is selected, renamed “Play Something” for some, as well as the main screen.
Give any of these a click, and Netflix will obligingly serve up something it thinks you might like, whether that be a movie you’re in the middle of watching, a show you’ve saved to your watch list, or just whatever the algorithm figures you’ll enjoy.
OMG i just realized Netflix added a “play something” feature DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I’VE WAITED FOR THIS
— ✨syd • oh.. wow.. sports🌈 • (@sydtheshipper) August 12, 2020
It’s a potentially helpful addition, particularly considering the countless hours many of us have frittered away by flicking endlessly through Netflix’s offerings. This way you can let Netflix decide what you should watch, rather than asking your partner “Well, what are you in the mood for?” back and forth ad infinitum.
That is, of course, assuming that you don’t immediately reject whatever show Netflix gives you to roll the dice again.
There’s a new Netflix feature called Shuffle Play that picks a show for you and starts it.
I’m on show 15 that I immediately stopped and my night looks to be seeing what the Netflix gods will pick next.
— MBJet (@mbjet) August 18, 2020
Netflix begun experimenting with a shuffle mode in 2019, testing it on the service’s Android app in April. It then conducted another round of testing this July, trialing the feature on both the Android and Amazon Fire apps. This latest worldwide test appears to have hit a wider selection of Netflix’s TV apps, though is still not available to all users.
Though even if you are part of the chosen few, you may not necessarily see all of the shuffle options Netflix is trying out — while I don’t have the profile screen Shuffle button on my Android TV app in Australia, for example, it does appear in the side menu bar.
Mashable has reached out to Netflix for more details.