Netflix may have 44 million subscribers, and add content frequently, but it really doesn’t add new features all that often, which can make the interface a little boring. Luckily, other developers have built all kinds of tools to help users enjoy a more helpful or otherwise pleasant browsing experience.
For Chrome users, there are quite a few options in the Chrome Web Store. Here are a few free extensions you might consider adding to your browser.
Netflix Enhancer
This one‘s been getting some attention on reddit recently for its random episode button, which lets you play a random episode of any TV show, but that’s not all it does. It adds ratings from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, lets you show and hide rows, and gives you trailers from YouTube. There are other extensions that provide some of these features separately, but this one is kind of an all-in-one.
Netflix Showdown
Netflix Showdown is for users who take too much time figuring out what they want to watch. You start a timer, pick up to three choices, and force yourself to quickly decide what to watch. Consider it something of a productivity tool.
Filtered Netflix
Filtered Netflix filters the movies you’ve already watched and rated, so the stuff you haven’t seen yet stands out more. It makes the browsing experience a little easier if you’re just looking to find things you’ve never seen.
Netflix Snob
Netflix Snob filters out the titles deemed to be a waste of time. You can adjust the number of stars you want it to use to consider a title not worth watching.
Netflix Sort Queue By Rating
If you’re like me, your queue (or “My List” if you prefer) is just about maxed out, meaning you have nearly 500 titles in it. This extension will sort them by rating, so you can at least push the more poorly reviewed titles to the end. It’s not perfect, but it does a fairly decent job. It only works with My List, and not with the DVD queue.
Better Flix
Better Flix will do a couple helpful things for you. It will add a hide button next to each movie so you can prevent it from showing up in your lists in the future, and remove the slider to just expand the whole section you want to browse so you can see the full list of movies. It also honors profiles, so it won’t hide the same stuff from all members of your household.
Netflix Popout
Netflix Popout adds a button to Chrome to open Netflix in a popout window. Pretty simple, that’s the point.
Images via Chrome Web Store