Today February 22 Netflix announced its new Downloads For You feature. The new feature is an evolution of Netflix’s smart download features which the company rolled out a couple of years ago. This will make it easier to download your favorite shows onto your Android phone.
As reported by Android Central the new feature works like automatic downloads do on music streaming services. Similar to how Spotify and YouTube music, Netflix’s implementation does differ in a major way. Netflix’s previous automatic download feature grabs the next episodes of a show you were watching.
Downloads For You grabs shows or movies after peeking into your suggestions. These shows and movies are most likely content you would have viewed anyway. As a result, Netflix will automatically pull down the episodes of the shows and movies for you.
Even though Netflix will automatically download this content you can control how much storage the feature can use. Being able to do this will keep your device from being bogged down.
Downloads For You makes sure you will always have something new to watch
Users will be able to keep their devices from being bloated even if their device has a paltry 64GB. As many people are still quarantined and stuck at home this feature may seem silly. However, for those users who may be stuck at home with weak internet, this can help.
Being able to download videos locally to your device instead of streaming it is better. With a weak connection, streams can be choppy if they work at all. This feature from Netflix also marks the first time a video streaming service offers a smart download feature.
You may be thinking, but YouTube premium does this. However, you would be wrong. Although yes YouTube Premium does recommend individual videos and playlists to download, it does not automatically download them or you.
Hopefully, with Netflix bringing this feature to the table other video streaming services will jump on the bandwagon. Being stuck somewhere with weak internet is terrible. It is even worse when you can not indulge in your favorite content.
This is an amazing feature. This feature is a quality of life improvement. But it is a very welcome one. When the world is able to freely travel more this feature will definitely be appreciated. Especially if you find yourself traveling through dead zones, or while in airplane mode 35,000 feet in the air.
The new Downloads For You feature is available today worldwide for Android and will come to iOS later.