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Netflix is currently testing a shuffle play feature, which as the name suggests will play random movies or TV shows to help you decide what to watch. This become

The feature will take into consideration your viewing history and your “my list”. For instance, It could play a random episode from a TV series that you are currently watching or a movie from a genre that you usually like.

The feature will likely help viewers who take hours to select a movie, and is supposed to stop you from closing the app out of the ‘I can’t decide what to watch’ problem. Moreover, it will provide users with more varied and different content. Many users will probably find some buried treasure by using this feature. For Netflix, it will lead to more viewing time. Netflix said that “the idea is to help viewers quickly and easily find content that’s tailored to their tastes.’

The company is still deciding what the ideal position for this feature can be, and thus, has multiple tests in place right now. In one of the tests, the “shuffle play” button can be seen on the start page under the user profiles. In other tests, it can be seen in the “billboard” area on the home screen of a user’s profile or on the TV menu sidebar.

This isn’t the first time that Netflix has experimented with shuffling. Last year it introduced a feature which played random episodes from a series. A few months ago, it also added the “disable autoplay” option. According to the report by TechCrunch, all of these are variants of the shuffle option. “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 spokesperson told The Verge.

The feature has received mixed reactions from users on twitter. For instance:

This test has been running since July 2020 and available only on TV screens.

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