You know how HBO’s slogan is “it’s not TV, it’s HBO”? That statement wasn’t just a slogan for so many years, it was the truth. HBO shows were in a league of their own, offering writing and production value that had no equal. These days, however, HBO isn’t what it once was. The network still makes phenomenal shows, but other networks have upped their game and you can now find “HBO-quality” shows from at least a dozen different studios. Among them is Netflix, of course, and some might say that Netflix has surpassed HBO in many ways. Just yesterday, a colleague asked me which I would choose if I had to cancel either my Netflix subscription or my HBO subscription. Even as recently as 5 years ago, there’s no way I ever would have canceled HBO. Today, however, I would choose to keep Netflix over HBO in a heartbeat. You get original shows that match HBO in terms of quality, plus a large library of third-party content with new additions all the time. This is obviously why
I don’t believe that I’m alone in thinking that Netflix is currently the one streaming service that I wouldn’t want to be without. That doesn’t mean Netflix is perfect, though. Once you pick a show, movie, or special and start streaming, you’re golden. But there are so many bumps in the road along the way on Netflix’s site that users often grow more and more annoyed each time they open it. Thankfully, I found a new app that has quickly become my favorite way to stream Netflix because it fixes all of the most annoying problems with the service’s streaming interface.
If you watch Netflix on a Mac, Clicker For Netflix by dbk labs will be the best $5 you’ve ever spent. This wonderfully simple app serves as a portal into the Netflix website, but it filters out all the junk you hate and leave only the excellent content you want to stream.
This nifty new Netflix app is packed full of features, but there are a few in particular that I enjoy most.
First and foremost, Clicker for Netflix includes a fix for the Netflix problem that people hate most. That’s right, I’m talking about auto-playing trailers. There is nothing worse than launching Netflix and immediately being assaulted by a trailer for whatever original show or movie Netflix happens to be promoting at the time. Then you scroll away from it to get it to stop playing, and what happens? That’s right… another damn trailer starts auto-playing. And what happens when you scroll to something that doesn’t have a trailer? Yup… it just starts playing a random scene from the show or movie on loop. Ugh.
Clicker for Netflix stops the madness with a single box you can check on the preferences screen. You can also disable hover effects on posters, automatically skip intros, automatically advance to the next episode of a show when each episode ends, and so much more. Also great is the fact that you can control everything from the Touch Bar if you’re on a MacBook Pro, and you can pop out the video and enter picture-in-picture mode if you want to try to get some work done while you’re catching up on your favorite shows.
It’s a terrific app that completely changes the way you watch Netflix, and it costs about as much as a cup of fancy coffee at Starbucks. Definitely check it out.
