After years of being pestered, Netflix has finally given in. The streaming service is now giving subscribers the choice to turn off autoplaying previews — i.e. the trailers that play when you browse through the Netflix carousel. That solves a long-standing pain point for a subset of Netflix’s 167 million members, who have voiced displeasure with the sudden burst of audio that was part of the autoplaying previews, jolting viewers out of their seats who were merely flicking through the available choices to find something they were interested in. Netflix claimed the previews made it easier for users to decide, but all too often, it forced people to mute the TV, switch menus, or do anything to make it stop.
How to turn off autoplay previews on Netflix
To put an end to the menace, you’ll need to open Netflix in a browser — that’s Netflix.com. This can’t be done from Netflix apps on any platform. Here’s how to do it:
- Navigate to netflix.com and Sign In from the top-right.
- On the ‘Who’s Watching’ screen, select Manage Profiles.
- Select the profile you’d like to change the setting for.
- On the ‘Edit Profile’ screen under ‘Autoplay controls’, uncheck Autoplay previews while browsing on all devices.
- Click Save, then click Done on the next screen.
Per Netflix, “there may be a delay before the setting takes effect. You can force an update by switching to another profile, then switching back in order to reload your profile with the updated setting.”
You can also use the ‘Edit Profile’ screen to turn off “autoplay next episode in a series”, if you find the five-second timer to be pushy. Once you uncheck it, you’ll need to manually play each episode.
