With over 140 million subscribers globally, I don’t need to explain what Netflix is or what it does. This blog is for binge watchers who truly love eat and breathe Netflix. Since you are so much in to streaming platform, there are some tips and tricks that you should know of to enhance your viewing experience.

So without further ado, let’s takes a look in to the secret tips and tricks to enjoy Netflix at its best and impress your friends.

1. There are computer shortcuts that you don’t know off

Speaking of tricks, who isn’t impressed by shortcuts using the keyboard instead of doing things the conventional way? Next time when your buddies are there, impress them with these 5 short cuts.

• Full Screen

Pressing “F” while watching a show, will instantly take you to full screen, press escape to come back out of full screen.

• Pause & Play

Simply pressing the spacebar will pause the screen for you, pressing it again will resume the film. But that’s no science, most people know this. So instead use, PgDn to pause and PgUp to play.

• Forward and Rewind

Now, don’t you dare, embarrass me in front of your friends. Don’t touch the mouse to forward or rewind. Remember, you’re a pro, so you do things differently! If you want to fast forward a scene, you’re going to press Shift + Right Arrow and Shift + Left Arrow to rewind. If you want 10 second skips just press the Right Arrow for forward and Left Arrow for rewind.

• Instant Mute

Simply press “M” to instantly mute the film

These tips are guaranteed, to astonish anyone who is looking at you. And if it’s a Netflix and Chill scene, you know all the right buttons to press (If you know what I mean LOL)

These were just shortcuts to make you look like a pro, let’s move on further and get to explore more of the functions that Netflix offers. You can customize the platform to a great extent.

2. You Can Remove Embarrassing Titles from Your History

Okay, let’s admit, sometime we all fall prey into watching or at least checking out sexual or non-sense content on the platform. Now this can be a real relationship breaker if your spouse or girlfriend finds out! Or maybe all the friends have collected for a movie night and all the “oh I didn’t click” that kind of titles start appearing.

Luckily you can remove your history manually, so it doesn’t even look fishy. Follow these steps to remove titles:

Go to Account > Select Your Profile> Viewing Activity

Now you can manually hide whichever title you want to hide or remove and it won’t show on your list.

3. Add IMDb ratings Chrome extension

Who wants to watch a badly rated movie, that didn’t probably even breakeven at the box office? Of course, thumbnails can be attractive and make you want to start watching a particular movie. But two hours later you curse yourself for investing your time in total crap.

This is where the IMDb Chrome extension comes in to save the day. Once you download the extension, whenever you however over a title its ratings will appear. So that show that looked like complete non-sense, actually rates at around 8.8/10 while the attractive thumbnail you were going to go with only rates 4/10. IMBd is one of the most reliable movie database website with accurate ratings.

This extension will make it amazingly easier for you to choose what to watch and what not to.

4. Get a VPN Service

Most of you may or may not know that Netflix libraries and the number of titles vary greatly according to regions. For example if you want to access the American library which has over 5000 shows and movies you can do so with a VPN.

Using a VPN to access different libraries can massively increase the number of titles available to you. A VPN simply replaces your IP address which is an indication of your physical location. Once you connect to a different server, your IP address is changed and Netflix is tricked into thinking you’re accessing from a different location.

5. Pre Download Movies or Shows that You Want to Watch Offline

This was one of the greatest feature offered by the streaming platform to download movies and shows for offline viewing. This feature is great, whether you’re commuting to work or are travelling you won’t have to spend on expensive mobile data. You can easily download shows on your homes internet network beforehand.

 So now you don’t have to worry about connectivity issues or expensive data packages, everything’s on your device!

6. No More Free Riding

Have you ever shared your Netflix password with a friend? And then that friend shares it with another friend until at least 15 people are using your account. And you, the one paying gets the error message “Too Many Screens”.

First of all why should you be the one paying for a “nobody’s” entertainment fix, secondly, everyone searches different stuff which messes up with the algorithm of Netflix. This makes your home page full of unwanted titles and recommendations, totally destroying the algorithm that Netflix has set according to your taste.

So it’s time to go and get rid of all these free bees!

Go to My Account > Sign out of all devices.

7. Customize your subtitles

Did you know you can customize your subtitles? Netflix’s dubbing is on many occasions incorrect and misleading, therefore, it’s best to turn on the subtitles instead of watching the show dubbed. Netflix provides a lot of options in the way subtitles are shown. You can change the font size of the subtitles, color of the font, color of the drop shadow, background and the window!

So whatever settings suit you best, set subtitles accordingly and watch Netflix with full customization.  All you need to do is go to Your Account > Your Profile > Subtitle Appearance

8. Curate Recommendations Based on Profiles

If you’re someone like me, single, lonely and hate to share your stuff, then this is the perfect hack for enhancing your experience. You can create different type of profiles for different genres so that Netflix recommends your shows and movies according to it only.

Let’s say you made a profile for comedy, one for documentaries, one for science fiction and one for action content. This will make Netflix believe different people are viewing from different profiles and therefore, its algorithm will make the right kind of recommendations on each profile.

Posted by Mighty Gadget Blog: UK Technology News and Reviews