Netflix Confirms Shuffle Play Feature Will Officially Launch This Year

Netflix’s Shuffle Play feature, which the company was spotted testing last year, will launch on a large scale in the first half of 2021. Variety reports that the company made the announcement as part of its latest financial results. In its testing phase, Shuffle Play worked by selecting content based on your viewing history, helping you avoid feeling overwhelmed by the Netflix home screen full of content.

Greg Peters, COO and COO of Netflix, said the feature is designed for users to “tell us that they just want to skip browsing completely, click a button and we’ll pick a title for them. just to play instantly. During its testing of the feature, Netflix experimented with including a “Shuffle” button on its profile selection screen, and a “Play Something” option on its menu.

Here’s how it ended up looking like:

Photo by Julia Alexander / The Verge

The big question now is what Netflix will end up calling the feature. During his presentation of the results, co-CEO Reed Hastings joked that they might call him “I’m feeling lucky,” after the Google search function jumps straight to the first search result. But Peters quickly rejected the idea.

“We’re going to find something better than that, so expect that. You will see it when it is deployed, ”said Peters.

Whatever its name, Shuffle Play will join Netflix’s other recent attempt to make it easier to find content to watch. Last year, it added a “New and Popular” tab to the service, which features a mix of new, popular and upcoming content.