We’ve all been there: You’re getting drowsy and you’ve got work early the next morning, but you’re four hours deep into a Dexter binge-watching session and there’s no way you’re dragging yourself to bed until you wrap just one more episode. But eventually, biology wins and you end up passing out on the couch during the ninth episode. Well, a new hack dreamed up by Netflix staffers during an internal 24-hour hack-fest promises to make this sloth-like routine a bit less frustrating. It’s the ultimate couch-potato technology.
The hack is a collaboration with Fitbit (you’ll technically need either the One or the Flex for their sleep monitoring capabilities), a maker of fitness tracking bands, according to a post on Netflix’s blog.
Presumably, the device is connected wirelessly via Bluetooth to whatever you’re using to watch Netflix. When you fall asleep, the Fitbit informs Netflix, which then pauses whatever show or movie you’re watching, simultaneously setting a sleep bookmark so you’ll be able to pick up where you left off the next day.
The hack-fest occurred earlier this month, and the rules stated that, to be accepted, all hacks had to be created within 24 hours. The internal hack day was meant to help solve some of the service’s problems and come up with additional technologies to improve upon the Netflix experience.
Here are some of the other hacks that the media streamer’s staffers came up with:
- Playlists: Enables multiple playlists as opposed to the single default queue, allowing skipping between movies and shows without going back the main browse screen
- Radial: A keyboard for entering search text on consoles, enabling faster character input.
- Netflix Beam: Let’s your guests access your Netflix account on their personal devices while they’re at your house, and auto-logs them out upon exiting.
- Pin-protected profiles: Lock down your profile within a shared account using a four-digit PIN, preventing unwanted changes to your queue
Read more about the hack day and check out videos for each of the hacks here.
