Image Credit: Casey Moore/What’s on Netflix
Over the past year, we’ve seen Netflix drastically change its interface on televisions and smartphones. Now, it looks like the desktop web browser experience is finally getting its turn with a new color, even if it’s still an early test and quite limited in scope.
If you’re logged in to Netflix.com on your computer, some users may notice that things look a little different. While the core layout remains largely the same, Netflix is introducing a visual refresh to its web UI that brings it much closer to the TV experience.
Take a look at the new layout:
(Pictured above: The refreshed Netflix web UI featuring a prominent hero banner for ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ and new TV-style lines).
Rather than a complete dismantling, Netflix has opted to refine the existing interface. The visual presentation of the title boxes has been changed to look a little more rounded and dynamic – mirroring the exact aesthetic you get when browsing on your Roku, Apple TV, or smart TV. You’ve also got a gradient background, which reacts to the title being shown. The animations also seem a bit snappier, although the pagination of its rows (little boxes indicating how far down the row you are) feels a bit awkward in my book. Even in my profiles, I’ve noticed that games play a much more prominent role, usually always appearing as the second line.
The most notable addition in this web refresh is the additional metadata now arriving directly on the box art. Like on the big screen, as you scroll through the rows, you’ll now see little helpful tags below the tiles marking things like “New season coming,” “Recently added,” or “Highly rewatched.” It’s a great quality of life update that gives you more context even before you click or hover over a title.
However, the changes have not been implemented sitewide. While all the individual tiles are rounded, the standard top-level and sub-level category pages look the same to me. Similarly, tapping on a title is the same as before for now.
Part of gradual web overhaul
This visual new look should come as no big surprise if you’ve been following our coverage. Throughout this year, we’ve seen a number of behind-the-scenes tweaks and minor tweaks to the web version of Netflix as they’ve laid the groundwork for this update.
For example, earlier this year, Netflix quietly removed By and other sorting options from the web UI, signaling that a broader navigation makeover was underway. A few months before that, we saw Netflix remove the “Netflix Original” branding label from tiles on the web, leaning toward the cleaner, less cluttered look we’re finalizing today.
bringing the ecosystem together
This web refresh brings the desktop browser in line with the rest of the Netflix ecosystem, which has seen some dramatic and highly publicized changes recently.
On the big screen, Netflix has been rolling out its massive new TV app UI for the past two years, with a full launch last year and this year. A mobile refresh also came with it.
Just last month, the mobile UI received another evolution update. The smartphone app introduced new navigation menus and placed an emphasis on clips, eventually removing the “New & Popular” tab to make way for a new layout.
With the web UI now mirroring these TV-style tiles and metadata badges, it looks like Netflix is finally planning to unify its design language across all your screens.\
Have you seen the new web UI on your account yet? What do you think of the new metadata tags and TV-aligned tiles? Let us know in the comments below!
