Netflix is testing a ‘Shuffle’ button

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Does your Netflix home screen – the one with your user profiles – now have a “Shuffle Play” button? That’s because Netflix is actually planning to bring a shuffle feature to its collection of streaming movies and TV shows, letting you avoid yet another argument about what you’ll be watching this evening. The company tells us it’s actually been running this test since July. The company is already testing a few potential ways the feature might look, including the “Play Something” variant. But it sounds like it’s not just an experiment: “The hope is to absolutely productize something,” a spokesperson told Variety. The company tells us it’s only available so far on “TV devices.” When we gave the “Play Something” button a spin, it fired up an episode of Netflix’s Umbrella Academy with the explanation “because you watched Spider-Man.” (Both are about comic book superheroes – fairly well received, so I guess that makes perfect sense.) TechCrunch seems to have spotted the test first; as it points out, Netflix previously tested a feature that’d show you a random episode of a specific TV series. This sounds far more useful.


Google Meet now lets you cast your videoconferences to the TV screen

Does the idea of having your work meetings on the biggest screen in your house seem appealing? Google Meet is adding Chrome cast support to let you do exactly that. You can now cast your meeting to the company’s Chrome cast streaming sticks, Android TV, and smart displays. “Earlier this year, we launched Google Meet, and it just felt right to expand Meet to even more screens in your home,” Google’s Grace Yang wrote on the Chrome cast support forum. “We recognise that many schools are moving to distance/remote learning, and we wanted to support this new learning environment for teachers and students,” Yang said. “Meet on Chrome cast will let you host or join meetings giving you the opportunity to connect with classmates, collaborate on projects, and even attend lectures.” When casting a Meet to your TV, your own audio and video feed will still be coming from your computer. Supported Chrome cast models include the Chrome cast Ultra and both the current and second-gen Chrome casts. Google notes that “performance may vary” across Android TV and Cast-enabled displays. To cast your Google Meet to the TV, open the meeting in Chrome and you should see a “cast this meeting” option, which is accessible both before and during a meeting.

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