Ever wonder the rhyme or reason behind Netflix’s organization of your list? Because it’s clearly not in the order of date added, alphabetical, or even separated by television and movies. In fact, sometimes it feels down right random when I’m searching through my ever-growing list for my comfort shows or something I thought I added not too long ago.
With just a bit of digging into the Netflix help documents, I did confirm that it is in fact not organized by any of those aforementioned, and more logical, methods. However, Netflix does apply its own internal logic to the ordering.
The Netflix “My List” Sort Order
Here’s how it works.
Titles that automatically appear to towards top of the “My List” feature:
- were recently added by you
- have a new season available
- are expiring soon
(This is why your list changes all on its own.)
Can I Order My List on Netflix?
There is no way to manually order your list*, or even sort it for that matter. You can only add or remove titles.
*Update: Apparently Netflix very recently announced that it’s adding list sorting / filtering options to their mobile app. This change will be available to the Android app first followed by iOS. However, there is no word about whether or not this functionality will be rolled out to desktop or smart TVs (which is where I assume most people are actually watching…)
If I Could Rearrange “My List”
With the ability to add up to 2,000 TV shows and movies per profile, it seems wild to me that Netflix thinks it’s a good user experience to potentially scroll through thousands of titles, one by one. Obviously the search feature can provide a shortcut, but that only works if you already know exactly what you want to watch and can remember the name of the title to boot.
In my perfect world, Netflix can have its default design, but I’d also appreciate the ability to sort my curated selection of tv shows and movies, which I’ve been compiling for literal years, by more useful attributes and identifiers such as:
- Alphabetical
- Genre
- Medium
- Date Added
- Release Date
- Runtime or Episode Count
- Rating / Review
- Watched vs. Unwatched
It’s not as if Netflix doesn’t already have this data at its disposal…
Even more disappointing is the fact that I can’t even point to another streaming service as a better example. In general I still think the Netflix interface is better than most (*cough* Apple+ *cough*), but the fact that no one has managed to provide a truly satisfying and intuitive browsing and list feature in the streaming era is fairly absurd.
Comments
Netflix used to have several of those things. They did away with them one by one. The last one they removed was being able to sort your own list at all. Also, the list used to be all text once upon a time. Then they made it all image-based, but you could still see the text list with small thumbnails if you clicked through to see everything (instead of in the genre band things). I can never find anything anymore. At least in my case, I rarely re-watch anything, so as soon as I watch a film or finish a series, it gets airlocked. It makes it less odious to search what I have. I definitely would like being able to see immediately how old one is and how long it is (mainly movies). Sometimes I have a certain amount of time and I don’t like starting to watch something if I’m not going to be able to finish it.