Netflix is great! You have great movies and series in one place. But it can get cumbersome for many to navigate their expansive catalogue. Luckily for you, there are many tips that can help you get the most out of your subscription. Without further ado, let’s take a look at these amazing tips to take your Netflix experience to the next level.
Watch Videos Available in Other Countries
Netflix is available in almost every place on Earth now (over 190 different countries), but not every piece of content is the same for every part of the world. Copyright issues and cultural differences make or break the Netflix catalogue in some regions.
For instance, at the time of this writing, if you want to watch Pulp Fiction, then you have to live in Canada. Lucky viewers in Turkey get to see The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and so on.
Now, let’s say that you want to see some part of the Netflix catalogue not available in your region. Fortunately, there is a way to get this done. And that is a VPN.
A VPN is a Virtual Private Network and basically enables your PC, your mobile phone, whatever device you’re using, to log into a country. Then, once you're logged in, you can log into Netflix, and then Netflix will think you're in that country. Giving you access to all the movies and TV shows for that country!
A word of warning here, though, because Netflix doesn't encourage the use of VPNs, but it also doesn't aggressively stop you from using one either. Technically, Netflix could cancel your subscription if it caught you using a VPN. But we've never heard of them actually doing it. Plenty of people around the world have been using VPNs for years with no issues.
There are lots of companies offering VPN options. Certainly, the easiest that we've found to use so far has been ExpressVPN. But there is an app for pretty much every device. Whether it's your PC, your mobile phone, or even your Android TV.
Connecting to a country of your choice is as easy as logging into the VPN app, choosing the country you want to log into, and clicking on ‘connect’. It is just so easy to use.
Once you have connected to your country of preference, say Turkey in this case, then you log into Netflix after you’ve connected to the VPN, andNetflix will then show you all the videos, movies, and TV shows available in Turkey, including The Lord of the Rings. So it's definitely worth having a go.
Thus, finding out what movies and TV shows are available in what country can be a little bit hit and miss as you log into each country.
Fortunately, there is a really easy way to find out what movies are available where.
You need to go to a website called unogs.com, or the Unofficial Netflix Online Global Search tool. There, it will give you a list of all the movies and the TV shows, and the countries that they’re available in. You can either browse a website or type in a particular movie, and it will tell you if it's available.
So if you use that website, along with the VPN, you've got a really powerful set of tools that enable you to find new videos, new movies, new TV shows that you otherwise wouldn’t have known were there.
Browse Hidden Categories
Now, just browsing movies on Netflix can be a thankless task because you seem to spend hours and hours just trawling through the movies and finding nothing that you want to watch.
Happily, we have access to a website called whats-on-netflix.com, which can give you a deep look at every single category that Netflix manages. Then you only have to go to your browser and type in the Netflix genre URL.
Just type the category ID at the end. So if you want to look up something like ‘Australian Crime Thrillers’, then you can just type that category ID, and it will show you all the movies that are available in that genre.
It's a quick way of being able to narrow down and focus on subcategories that you absolutely want to watch and save you wasting hours just scrolling through Netflix.
Creating Profiles
A few of the next tips rely on Netflix profiles. So, in your Netflix account, you can set profiles for every person in your house, and then all recommendations that you watch in your profile will just be relevant to you.
That's really useful if your other half is binge-watching Grey's Anatomy because then you won’t get recommendations for it on your profile. You can also create profiles for your kids, and you can also age restrict the content, so they’re not going to see anything inappropriate.
Downloading Videos
Now, as well as streaming videos on Netflix, you can also download them as well. Now that's great if you want to watch them on a plane, for instance. This only works with the Netflix app. It won't work if you're watching Netflix in a browser.
If you find the movie or the TV show that you want to watch, the Netflix App should show you a Download Button. If you click on that, the app will then download it so you can then watch it offline. Now there is some content where the download button isn't available, but for most content it should be there.
Sticking with the download theme, the Netflix app has ‘Smart Downloads’. There are actually two different options in this space. The first one is ‘Download Next Episode’. That is pretty self-explanatory.
There's also ‘Downloads for You’. This will let Netflix choose the movies and TV shows that it downloads based on your previous viewing preferences. So if you're not too sure what to watch, just turn it on and let Netflix do the hard work for you.
You can set the storage limit. The more space you give it, the more movies and TV shows it will download. You can also set storage limits per profile, so if you want to go and download every episode of Grey's Anatomy, you can go ahead.
Meanwhile, you can stop your kids from downloading the entire series of Avatar…
Although that's actually a good series!
Surprise Me!
If you've been flicking through Netflix for hours and still haven't managed to pick something that you want to go and watch, then just click the ‘Surprise Me’ button. Similar to the same option that certain famous search engine offers, Netflix will take you to something random in its catalogue, based on your viewing habits.
Try it! You might be pleasantly surprised by what it picks.
Sharing a Video
And when you do finally find something you want to watch, you can share that with other people using the ‘share’ button.
On the page of the video you want to watch, clicking on that will allow you to share that video on most social media platforms, such as WhatsApp, Instagram stories, and Messenger. People can then see on your Instagram stories, or in a direct message, click on it, and be taken to the video that you've just shared.
Change Subtitles Appearance
If you are watching a movie with subtitles and you do find those subtitles a little hard to read, or you just want to change it up a bit, then you can change the appearance of those in your Netflix account.
So log into your Netflix account on your browser, go to your profile, and then click on ‘subtitle appearance’.
There, you can mess around with the font, the colors, and the size to your heart's content. Now this is on a per-profile basis, therefore it will only change for the profile that you're in, which is really useful if someone wants massive fonts and, quite frankly, you don't.
Turn off Auto-play
If you ever get annoyed by Netflix playing those auto-preview snippets as you're browsing through the videos or automatically playing the next episode, well, you can turn that off!
To do that:
- Log in to your Netflix account again in the browser.
- Go to your account settings.
- Select your profile and click on ‘playback settings’.
You can then turn either off or on, depending on your preference.
TikTok on Netflix
Netflix now does TikToks! Well, kind of. The Netflix mobile app now has a ‘fast laughs’ section. Clicking on that will take you to a vertical TikTok-like stream of movie snippets guaranteed to ensure you waste hours of your life. Flicking through short movie clips, pretty much how you do watching YouTube shorts and TikTok videos…only with fewer cats!
Conclusion
That concludes our guide to Netflix. We hope you found it useful. To truly jumpstart your streaming experience, we offer Netflix 1 year accounts, at competitive prices depending on your region. If you know of any useful Netflix tips, please leave a comment below.
