A new bookmarklet humorously called “God Mode” and created by developer Renan Cakirerk aims to solve the problem of inconvenient horizontal scrolling through Netflix menus on a desktop computer.
Those who access Netflix through a tablet or smartphone can conveniently use their finger to quickly scroll side to side through the menu of available titles in a specific category, until they find the show or movie they want to watch or know more about. Easy, peasy. But on a desktop computer, browsing through pages and pages (and pages) of content requires that you hold the mouse over the left or right arrow icon and wait frustratingly as the titles slide across the screen at what seems like a snail’s pace. This mode mod aims to prevent that.
Moreover, God Mode gives you a glance at everything in the category at once, allowing you to quickly survey multiple categories, and make that perfect choice to blast your eyes with binging goodness for hours on end. The hack simply re-arranges all of the image icons in a simple, but more easily scrollable, grid pattern that occupies your entire computer screen rather than a single, scrollable line.
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If you’re so inclined, you can access the bookmarklet here. It’s really easy to use – just drag the green button to your bookmarks bar, open Netflix, then click on it, and voila! A much easier view to find what you want to binge watch. It’s worth noting that, while many viewers use a smart TV or streaming device to watch Netflix on the big screen, God Mode can be a great way to search for titles from your laptop, before calling them up on the tube.
Cakirerk is clear that the bookmarklet has no affiliation with Netflix whatsoever. But chances are, if this takes off, Netflix may very well update its user interface to this view, or at least include this as an alternate view for desktop users.
Sometimes, ensuring that a website is optimized for desktop is just as important as optimization for mobile.