Netflix Quietly Removes Features That Will Make Browsing Much More Frustrating
by Witney Seibold · /FilmWhy doesn't Netflix want people to find anything?
When Netflix became the first notable streaming service to be widely used, it bafflingly invented one of the least intuitive ways to browse imaginable. Rather than a list of titles, presented alphabetically or by year, the front page always seemed to be a random sneeze of newer hits, old classics, and, eventually, Netflix originals. Titles were presented as tiny rectangular images, so one had to thumb through long horizontal "channels" to find what they wanted.
Every other streaming service since then has followed suit, presenting similar channels, usually divided up by genre, presented in an apparently random order. It would take some delving to find movies or shows presented alphabetically. Streaming services have also become so aggressively coy about what their libraries contain that entire sub-industries have sprung up explaining where certain movies or TV series can be found at any given time. In this day and age, sites like Whats-On-Netflix and JustWatch are godsends. Even /Film publishes articles regularly about where one might be able to stream a specific film or show. Check out this one about feel-good movies on Netflix.
All of this was born from a horrible, non-intuitive user interface that remains frustrating and oblique to this day. Now, as reported on by Whats-On-Netflix, it's about to get even worse. It seems that Netflix is removing users' ability to look up movies and TV shows alphabetically at all. This is specifically for the users who watch Netflix on their laptops. Previously, they could click a dropdown menu and sort movies and series by "Suggested for you," "Year released," "A — Z" and "Z — A." Unfortunately, it appears that the dropdown menu has vanished.
Netflix is making its service harder to navigate for some reason
This change was, as is Netflix's wont, made without an announcement. The drop-down menu was just gone one morning. It took people a few days to notice, though users on Reddit were quick to register complaints. Some revealed they're already having trouble searching for movies and TV shows within certain genres, with older titles being buried.
One might begin to suspect that Netflix is deliberately hiding its older works for some reason. Maybe this is merely a way to direct users to the streamer's newer offerings. But whatever the reason, it's annoying. Netflix has long behaved like the world's worst video store of yore. It has a decent enough selection, but nothing is all that properly categorized.
Whats-On-Netflix also pointed out, though, that this categorization change is part of a much more sweeping overhaul of the Netflix user interface — an overhaul that's been largely about eliminating manual browsing. In recent months, as the website noted, Netflix even moved its "New & Popular" and "Categories" tabs to a central homepage, on top of adding a TikTok-like "scroll" of previews and clips. All of these come across as the anathema to browsing movies and TV series, at least as one might on a laptop.
Then again, Whats-On-Netflix observed that more people watch Netflix on TVs than on laptops, so the removal of the A — Z option might simply be a means to streamline its tech. It's gotten rid of interactive movies like "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch," for instance, as they didn't work as well on TVs.
What's more, this may allow Netflix to obfuscate just how small its catalog is. There's not as much on there as you think. Maybe it's time to consider bringing physical video stores back.