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It’s been awhile since Netflix has allowed viewers to screengrab straight from the app. Any attempts to screenshot or screen record are usually met with a black screen as the result. But this hasn’t stopped fans from finding ways to collect images and clips from their favorite shows and movies to share on social media, making fancams and edits to share their favorite moments. Now, it seems, Netflix is planning to make these efforts at least a little easier.
Starting today, iOS users can bookmark, save, and share their favorite scenes using the Netflix Moments feature in the app. The feature will be made available to Android users in the coming weeks.
Whether you want to save Wednesday’s viral dance scene for reference or share the Bridgerton carriage scene with the group chat, Moments will make it easier for the casual viewer to spread short clips that go viral.
While you’re watching something through the Netflix app, all you have to do is tap the Moments icon at the bottom of the screen, and it’ll save the scene to your “My Netflix” tab, essentially bookmarking it for the future. You can revisit Moments at any time, and if you go back to rewatch the movie or episode, you’ll automatically start from any Moment you’ve saved. Timestamps of Moments can also be shared via social media and text as soon as you make them or at any point from the My Netflix tab.
Even though this feature does encourage the TikTok-ification of television and film, something that this TV writer isn’t too thrilled about, it’s not wholly a bad thing. Moments might encourage word-of-mouth marketing of movies and TV shows, something that can often mean the difference between cancellation and survival for Netflix originals.
This kind of feature actually isn’t all that new of a concept either. Twitch has had a similar clip feature since 2016 that lets users save moments from live streams that they want to revisit later and share them with their friends. This might be the first time we’ve seen something like this implemented for scripted content, but the technology to do so isn’t entirely new. However, one major difference is that sharing Moments via social media or through other means will simply reroute someone back to that timestamp on Netflix, rather than sharing the clip outright.
The fact that it’s taken Netflix this long to get back on board with screengrabs in any form is a bit of a surprise, given that it’s essentially free marketing of their content. People have been finding ways around their black screen blocks for years, so this fight has felt almost futile on their part. It’s hard to scroll Instagram Reels or TikTok for more than a few minutes without coming across an account (or several) that’s nothing but movie and TV clips, trying to get people interested in watching whatever they’re posting about. It seems like Netflix hopes that this new feature will encourage people to go right to Netflix instead.
While Netflix Moments doesn’t seem to give users the option to edit or fully share the clips they save as of yet, nor the ability to use this feature in a web browser, Netflix’s press release notes that it hopes to expand upon Moments in the future. If this feature is popular, it’s probably only a matter of time before Netflix gives us a way to make TikToks right in the app.
The post Netflix Is Making a Major Update for the TikTok Era appeared first on Den of Geek.
