'Smart Downloads' appears to be a new feature that showed up out of
nowhere on my Android device. I'm currently watching season 2 of Van Helsing on
the popular streaming platform and today, I went to check the status of the
episodes I downloaded to watch offline when I saw a new feature on the 'My
Downloads' page.
I check for app updates every day and Netflix is one of
those apps that almost never publishes detailed change logs. The last time they
did, according to my records, was in April of last year. Anyway, there's a new feature on the 'My
Downloads' page that will automatically delete watched episodes and download
the next ones. Netflix will do that only when your device is connected to
Wi-Fi. However, it is not clear how many episodes Netflix will download.
'Smart Downloads' is not enabled by default. To activate it,
tap the hamburger menu at the top left corner of the app, then select 'My
Downloads' and 'Smart Downloads' should be there at the top. Use the toggle to enable it. 'Smart Downloads' can also be enabled in the app settings.
Since I only just noticed this feature, I cannot tell how
well it works. I will update this post after I experiment with it. Also, 'Smart
Downloads' doesn't seem to be available to everyone. My wife did not have it
on her phone despite the fact that we use the same account. 'Smart Downloads' appeared about an hour later though. A friend and
frequent Netflix user also confirmed not seeing 'Smart Downloads'. I'm running
Netflix version 5.13.1 on my OnePlus 5T. The only difference on my wife's
Samsung S7 Edge is the OS API. Mine is 26 while her phone has version 24. [Update] 'Smart Downloads' showed up on her phone about an hour later.
You can download Netflix in the Play Store for free and let
me know if you see 'Smart Downloads' in the app. It appears to be a server-side update.
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