Netflix Reveals Big Overhaul, Here’s What’s Coming And When

It’s been a while since Netflix changed its UI all that significantly, but now the company is about to roll out what it deems significant changes to how it looks and operates, as shown off in new trailers and blog post today.

It doesn’t look that different initially, but there is sort of a lot going on here. Here’s what Netflix is saying about it:

• Navigation will be easier on the page with shortcuts to Search, Shows, Movies, Games, and My Netflix that will always be at the top of the screen, and you can get to those using the back button on your remote (this is mainly a TV UI update for now).
• “Responsive” recommendations. The homepage will now give more and more personal recommendations based on your viewing habits or even “exploring,” whatever that means. The idea is finding things you want to watch more quickly rather than endless scrolling. I’m not sure how this gauges how to “suit your mood in the moment,” as the preview says, but that’s the goal.
• There is a new “My Netflix” hub which has your ongoing watches (this is good, as those can be annoyingly hard to find sometimes), and you can put shows on your “to watch” list there. You can be reminded of when certain shows are releasing or returning as well.
• You can now read blurbs about each title you hover over without clicking through to the page (where the show often starts autoplaying a trailer or the series itself half the time). You can even see things like runtime, award wins, it’s top 10 history or its cast. Again, the goal seems to be to get you to watch something straight from the page rather than scrolling.

The term “AI” is not used at all in this preview, which is honestly kind of surprising, given all the recommendation algorithms for your personal “experience” and how much big tech has dove into this. I’m not sure if they are avoiding talking about AI on purpose because they realize it’s annoying at this point, or if it’s genuinely not using it.

When is this coming? In two weeks starting May 19 where it will begin to roll out globally. Once you get it, you’ll get a “walkthrough” preview when you login, and the interface will look like this going forward. You almost certainly will not be able to change it back.

Honestly, a lot of these seem like pretty good changes? Especially the info shown on the homepage for each title specifically. We’ll see how it works in practice soon enough.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.