- Netflix added a feature to its Android and iPhone apps last year that allows users to remove titles from the Continue Watching row.
- The “Remove from row” option is now available on the web version of Netflix for the first time ever.
- The option lets users quickly remove any movies or TV shows that they might have started on the streaming service but don’t intend to finish.
You won’t realize how important the Continue Watching feature is until a Netflix rival launches without it. The feature lets you jump directly back into the movies and TV shows you’ve been watching, and it’s absolutely essential. Disney+ didn’t get its Continue Watching feature several days after the service launched. That made resuming playback incredibly frustrating in the first days of Disney+, and users were very angry about the omission. But Netflix’s Continue Watching also has an annoying aspect: It retains all the shows you tried but have no intention of ever finishing.
Netflix issued a “fix” for the problem back in June, when Android users discovered a new “Remove from Row” button that allowed them to remove items from Continue Watching. The feature moved over to iPhone, where it’s also possible to remove titles that you don’t plan on watching ever again. The feature was a good enough fix, giving users the option of going through the entire Continue Watching section on mobile and removing the films and TV shows they didn’t care for. But it’s now even easier to remove items from your Continue Watching list on desktop, as Netflix just added a handy new button to the web interface.
Once you’ve loaded Netflix in your browser on a desktop or laptop computer, you can head to the Continue Watching section, which should be right near the top of the user interface. Hover over one of the titles, and the film or TV show’s title card comes to the forefront to reveal a bunch of buttons. You can resume playback, add the show to your list, like or dislike it, and get more information about it. But there’s also a new “X” button in the list that has the familiar label “Remove from row” that you might recognize from your smartphones and tablets:
Click the X and a new dialog prompt appears, inviting you to give Netflix feedback about your choice to remove the film or TV show from your Continue Watching list. The options include “I like this but don’t want to continue watching,” “I don’t like this,” and “Just cleaning up.”
Apart from being an added convenience for users, the new feature also provides more information to Netflix about your viewing preferences. But there’s a sneaky way to deal with the prompt without providing any feedback. Just click on the “X” in the top-right corner, as seen in the screenshot above. The prompt goes away and the title disappears from your Continue Watching list, but you won’t provide Netflix with any additional data. Of course, that also means Netflix won’t learn from your choices, so your future suggestions might be less appealing.
